Terms of Service

Hidden Ink ("the Service") is a web-based PDF redaction tool operated by Hidden Forge Ltd ("we", "us", "our"), a company registered in the United Kingdom. These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the Service, including the free manual redaction tools and the paid AI-assisted redaction feature. By using the Service you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

The Service provides:

a) Free manual redaction. Your PDF is opened, displayed, edited and exported entirely within your web browser. Your document is not uploaded to our servers in this mode.

b) Paid AI-assisted redaction. For a one-time, per-batch fee, plain text extracted from your document in your browser is sent over an encrypted connection to our server, which forwards it to Anthropic's Claude model for analysis. Suggested redactions are returned to your browser for your review. Your document file itself is never uploaded.

c) Ancillary features including OCR of scanned pages (performed on your device), batch processing, detection presets, document metadata removal on export (performed on your device), purchase-code recovery, and audit report generation.

Accounts are optional. You may sign in with Google to save detection presets and reusable redaction templates; the account stores only your email address, name, profile picture and those preferences — never your documents. All core redaction features work without an account.

When you pay for AI-assisted or template redaction you are issued a purchase code. The purchase code is the only means of restoring an unused purchase — treat it like a receipt. Purchases are not linked to accounts, so if you lose the code and your browser data, we may be unable to restore your purchase. Purchase codes are single-purchase credentials and may not be shared, resold or published.

AI-assisted redaction is charged per batch based on the combined page count of all documents in the batch (as displayed before purchase). Payment is processed by Stripe; we do not receive or store your card details. Each payment includes one AI run and one re-run of the same batch.

Because the Service is delivered immediately upon payment, you expressly consent to immediate performance and acknowledge that you lose any statutory right of withdrawal once the AI run has been used. If the AI feature fails to complete due to a fault on our side and both included runs are unusable, contact us and we will re-enable your run or refund the payment. A run that is interrupted by a connection failure before completion is not consumed.

You are solely responsible for:

a) ensuring you have the right to process and redact any document you use with the Service;

b) reviewing every redaction before exporting or sharing a document. AI suggestions are assistance, not a guarantee. The AI does not detect visual-only content such as photographs, signatures, QR codes, barcodes, stamps or handwriting, and may miss or mis-identify text, particularly on skewed or low-quality scans;

c) verifying that the exported document meets your legal, regulatory or contractual obligations before relying on it;

d) keeping your purchase code secure.

You must not use the Service to:

a) process documents you are not lawfully entitled to process;

b) falsify, forge or materially misrepresent documents, or remove information with intent to deceive or defraud;

c) probe, disrupt, overload or circumvent the Service, its payment flow, run metering or purchase codes;

d) violate any applicable law or third-party right.

We may suspend or block access for breach of this section.

The Service, its design, branding and software are owned by Hidden Forge Ltd or its licensors. You retain all rights in your documents. We claim no ownership of, or licence over, any document you process — in manual mode we never receive it at all.

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose. We do not warrant that AI detection will identify all sensitive information, that OCR output will be accurate, or that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free. Redaction is destructive by design: exported redactions cannot be undone, and we cannot recover redacted content — keep your originals.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any other liability that cannot be limited by law. Subject to that, our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim and (b) £50. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of data (including redacted content), or losses arising from your failure to review redactions before sharing a document.

We may modify the Service or these Terms at any time. Material changes will be indicated by updating the date at the top of this page. Continued use after changes constitutes acceptance. Fees are shown before each purchase; changes never affect purchases already made.

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, except where mandatory consumer law in your country of residence provides otherwise.