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Privacy Policy (GDPR & CCPA Compliant)

Last Updated: October 2026 • freeOCR.me Trust & Ephemeral Architecture
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1. Zero Persistent Document Storage Guarantee

freeOCR.me is engineered from the ground up on a zero-retention, ephemeral-first architecture. When you upload a PDF or image for optical character recognition, the file is written exclusively to volatile Linux RAM disk (tmpfs).

Your uploaded documents and synthesized searchable outputs are purged immediately upon conversion completion or within 24 hours under our automated watchdog janitor. We never inspect, store, mine, sell, or retain your raw documents on persistent hard drives.

2. Data We Collect & Process

To operate our free OCR platform, prevent abuse, and serve programmatic advertisements, we collect minimal operational metrics:

  • Technical Session Metadata: Anonymized session IDs, conversion duration, file size, page count, and OCR engine routing choices.
  • IP Address & Request Headers: Transient IP addresses logged in memory for DDoS rate limiting (maximum 10 requests per minute) and rate-limit evaluation.
  • Optional Email Address: If you explicitly use our "Send via Email" delivery feature, your email address is used solely to dispatch the download link and is unlinked after delivery.

3. Third-Party Advertising Networks, Programmatic Display & Cookies

To keep freeOCR.me 100% free and open to everyone without mandatory account registration or paywalls, we partner with verified digital advertising networks to display non-intrusive banner advertisements, native recommendation cards, and sponsored limit-boost units.

Our advertising partners include:

  • Google AdSense / Google Ad Manager: Serves contextual and programmatic display units. Google uses cookies (including the DoubleClick cookie) to serve ads based on user visits to this or other websites. You may manage your ad preferences via Google Ads Settings.
  • Monetag (PropellerAds Network): Delivers clean in-page push units and optional rewarded sponsorship vignettes (Zone 12057513, Zone 12057981). Monetag utilizes ephemeral session tokens for frequency capping and viewability audit.
  • Adsterra Advertising Network: Provides standard clean display banners (300x250 and 728x90) filtered strictly to exclude mature, gambling, or deceptive creative feeds.
  • Infolinks: Provides secondary contextual in-frame and bottom-docked display units.

Third-party ad networks may place standard HTTP cookies, web beacons, or client-side identifiers to measure ad performance, prevent bot fraud, and enforce frequency capping (preventing repetitive ad exposure). You can opt out of third-party vendor cookies for personalized advertising by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), or the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance (EDAA).

4. Session Limit Boosts & Local Browser Storage (localStorage)

freeOCR.me uses your browser's local storage (localStorage) strictly for essential client-side state preservation. We never use local storage for cross-site behavioral tracking or fingerprinting:

  • Theme Preferences (freeocr_theme): Persists your chosen Light or Dark Mode visual theme across page reloads.
  • Session Limit Boost Passes (freeocr_boost_*): When you voluntarily watch a short sponsored video to boost your conversion quota from 100 MB up to 150 MB (or 1 GB), an encrypted timestamp token is stored locally in your browser. This records remaining boost duration (e.g. 15 minutes) and clears automatically upon expiration without transmitting personal identity to our backend.

5. Affiliate Partner Recommendations & Commercial Transparency (FTC Disclosure)

In accordance with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines, freeOCR.me transparently discloses that select educational guides and post-conversion result pages may feature recommended desktop utilities (such as EaseUS PDF Editor or CloudConvert) for users requiring complex offline batch workflows, PDF signing, or redaction.

Outbound links to these partner tools are designated with rel="sponsored nofollow". If you elect to purchase commercial software through these partner links, freeOCR.me may earn an affiliate referral commission. This occurs at zero supplementary cost to you and directly subsidizes the cloud compute resources required to maintain our free OCR service.

6. Complete Data Isolation: Zero Third-Party Document Access Guarantee

We enforce strict architectural separation between our client utility, our ephemeral conversion pipeline, and third-party advertising scripts:

  • Zero Access to Uploaded Files: Advertising tags and affiliate scripts operate exclusively within sandboxed browser DOM or iframe contexts. They have no technical access to the dropzone file buffer, binary file streams, or conversion metadata.
  • Zero Access to OCR Text: Third-party ad vendors cannot read, scrape, or process document text, synthesized PDFs, or OCR output results.
  • Ephemeral RAM Disk Isolation: All OCR processing runs inside an isolated, containerized Linux volatile RAM-disk (tmpfs) backend completely detached from ad servers.

7. Your GDPR & CCPA Rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), users enjoy comprehensive data privacy rights:

  • Right to Erasure (Right to be Forgotten): Because all uploaded documents and generated files are purged immediately from volatile RAM disk, document data is permanently erased by design.
  • Right to Access & Portability: You may request confirmation of any operational logs associated with your session.
  • Do Not Sell My Personal Information: freeOCR.me never sells personal information, email addresses, or document contents to any third party.

8. Contact Data Protection Officer

If you have questions, feedback, or data privacy inquiries regarding this policy, contact our Data Protection Officer at privacy@freeocr.me.