Legal Notice & Terms of Use

Last updated: 25 March 2026

1. Service Description

PQ PDF (pqpdf.com) is a free online document-processing platform operated by Fated LLC. The platform provides 46 tools across five categories:

Core Manipulation

  • Compress — reduce PDF file size while preserving visual quality.
  • Delete Pages — permanently remove selected pages from a PDF.
  • Auto-crop & Deskew — automatically detect page borders, remove excess whitespace, and correct skewed scans.
  • Extract Pages — pull a specified range or set of pages out of a PDF into a new file.
  • Flatten PDF — flatten interactive form fields, annotations, and layers into a static document.
  • Grayscale / B&W — convert a full-colour PDF to greyscale or monochrome.
  • Merge PDFs — combine multiple PDF files into a single document, in any order.
  • N-up / Imposition — arrange multiple pages onto a single sheet (2-up, 4-up, 6-up, 9-up, 16-up) for booklet printing or paper reduction.
  • Repair PDF — attempt to recover and rebuild structurally damaged or corrupt PDF files.
  • Reorder Pages — drag-and-drop interface to rearrange pages within a PDF.
  • Rotate Pages — rotate individual pages or entire documents by 90°, 180°, or 270°.
  • Split PDF — divide a PDF into individual pages, fixed ranges, or custom splits.

Conversion

  • PDF → Word — extract and convert PDF content into an editable Word (.docx) document.
  • PDF → Excel — convert PDF tables and structured data into Excel (.xlsx) spreadsheets.
  • PDF → HTML — export PDF content as a web-ready HTML document.
  • PDF → Images — render each PDF page as a high-resolution PNG or JPEG image.
  • PDF → Markdown — extract and convert PDF text into Markdown format.
  • PDF → PowerPoint — convert PDF pages into editable PowerPoint (.pptx) slides.
  • PDF → PDF/A — convert standard PDFs to ISO 19005-compliant PDF/A archival format.
  • PDF → PDF/X — convert PDFs to ISO 15930-compliant PDF/X print-production format.
  • Excel → PDF — convert Excel spreadsheets to PDF.
  • HTML → PDF — render HTML pages or documents as PDF files.
  • Images → PDF — combine one or more images (PNG, JPEG, TIFF, WebP) into a single PDF.
  • PowerPoint → PDF — convert PowerPoint presentations to PDF.
  • Word → PDF — convert Word documents to PDF with full fidelity.

Security & Privacy

  • PDF Forensics Scanner — deep forensic analysis across 44 independent engines including structural integrity checks, JavaScript AST deobfuscation, YARA rule matching, ClamAV signature scanning, entropy analysis, ML anomaly classification with SHAP explainability, offline threat-intelligence correlation, MITRE ATT&CK mapping, and a multi-renderer behavioural sandbox. Produces a scored forensic report with AI-generated narrative. File size is capped at 10 MB for forensic scanner submissions on the free public service.
  • Protect PDF — apply user and owner password protection with configurable access-control restrictions (print, copy, edit, annotate) using AES-256 encryption.
  • Unlock PDF — remove owner-level password restrictions from PDFs where you have the authority to do so.
  • Redact PDF — permanently and irrecoverably remove sensitive text, images, or regions from a PDF. Redacted content cannot be recovered.
  • Watermark — overlay text or image watermarks on PDF pages with configurable position, opacity, and rotation.
  • Sign PDF & PAdES — add visible or invisible digital signatures to PDF documents, including PAdES-compliant signatures for EU regulatory compliance.
  • Send for E-Signature — create and send signature-request workflows to recipients, collecting legally binding e-signatures.

Content & Annotation

  • PDF Scanner (Camera) — use your device camera to scan a physical document and convert it to a clean, deskewed PDF.
  • Accessibility Checker — analyse a PDF for WCAG/PDF/UA accessibility compliance, identifying missing tags, reading order issues, alt text gaps, and colour contrast failures.
  • Colour Inspector — inspect colour spaces, spot colours, ICC profiles, and colour usage across PDF pages; useful for print production pre-flight.
  • Compare PDFs — perform a visual and textual diff between two PDF files, highlighting additions, deletions, and modifications.
  • Edit PDF — add, modify, or remove text, images, and annotations in a PDF without converting to another format.
  • Extract Text — extract all machine-readable text from a PDF and export it as plain text or a structured document.
  • Fill PDF Form — fill in interactive PDF form fields (text, checkboxes, dropdowns, radio buttons) and flatten the completed form.
  • Font Inspector — enumerate all fonts embedded in a PDF, their encoding, embedding status, subsetting, and licensing flags.
  • OCR PDF — extract machine-readable text from scanned or image-based PDFs using the Tesseract 5 LSTM neural network, outputting plain text, a searchable PDF overlay, or both.
  • Outline / Bookmarks — view, add, edit, and reorder the bookmark outline (table of contents) of a PDF.
  • PDF Info — display document metadata, page dimensions, encryption status, font inventory, and XMP/EXIF properties.
  • Tables to JSON — detect and extract tabular data from PDF pages and export as structured JSON.

Automation

  • Workflow Builder — construct multi-step document pipelines by chaining any combination of the above tools into a single automated workflow, applied to one or more files in sequence.

All processing is performed server-side on infrastructure controlled solely by Fated LLC. No third-party cloud storage or processing services are used. The service is provided free of charge with no registration required. General uploads are capped at 50 MB per file; the Forensics Scanner accepts files up to 10 MB. These limits do not apply to enterprise deployments (see Section 14).

2. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing or using any tool on PQ PDF you agree to these Terms of Use in full. If you do not agree with any part of these terms, please discontinue use immediately.

3. Permitted Use

You may use PQ PDF solely for lawful purposes. Uploading a potentially malicious or suspicious PDF to the Forensics Scanner for the purpose of analysis, investigation, or sanitisation is explicitly permitted — that is precisely what the tool is designed for. Security researchers, IT professionals, and cautious recipients checking a file before opening it are all welcome users of the scanner.

You agree not to:

  • Use this service as a weaponisation or evasion aid. You must not use the scanner or any other tool to craft, refine, or test malware or exploits with the intent of deploying them against others. Analysing a suspicious file you received is permitted; using the scanner's output to make a malicious payload harder to detect is not.
  • Process files containing illegal content (e.g. child sexual abuse material, unlawfully obtained personal data, or material obtained through criminal activity).
  • Attempt to circumvent, probe, or deliberately abuse the service infrastructure, including its rate limits, upload restrictions, or security controls.
  • Use automated scripts or bots to overload the service (DoS attacks, rate-limit evasion, or bulk scraping).
  • Resell, rebrand, or redistribute this service as your own product without written permission from Fated LLC.

4. File Handling & Privacy

Uploaded files are processed entirely on our server in an isolated temporary directory. Files are deleted immediately after processing and are never stored, shared, or transmitted to third parties. No cloud storage is involved. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

5. No Warranty

PQ PDF is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the service will be error-free, uninterrupted, secure, or that processed output will be perfectly faithful to all PDF variants or document formats. We make no warranty regarding the suitability of any output for any particular purpose, including legal, medical, financial, or archival use. You should always retain a copy of your original files before using this service.

The post-quantum cryptographic tools are implemented to the best of current knowledge and use NIST-standardised algorithms. However, no cryptographic implementation can be guaranteed free of vulnerabilities, and you should not rely solely on this service for the protection of highly sensitive, classified, or irreplaceable material without independent security review.

6. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Fated LLC, the operators of PQ PDF, and any contributors to the platform shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages of any nature whatsoever, arising from or in connection with:

  • Use of, or inability to use, the service or any tool therein.
  • Loss, corruption, alteration, or destruction of data or files.
  • Errors, inaccuracies, or deficiencies in processed output.
  • Unauthorised access to, or alteration of, your transmissions or files.
  • Interruption, suspension, or termination of the service.
  • Any security breach, data exposure, or vulnerability in third-party open-source components (including Ghostscript, Poppler, LibreOffice, Tesseract, or the @noble/post-quantum library) used by the platform.
  • Any loss of profit, revenue, business, or goodwill.

This limitation applies regardless of the legal theory under which such damages are claimed (contract, tort, negligence, strict liability, or otherwise), even if Fated LLC has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In jurisdictions that do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages, liability is limited to the maximum extent permitted by law.

7. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Fated LLC and any associated operators, developers, contributors, and service providers from and against any and all claims, damages, losses, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to:

  • Your use of PQ PDF or any tool provided on the platform.
  • Your violation of these Terms of Use.
  • Any files you upload or content you submit through the service.
  • Your infringement of any third-party rights, including intellectual property rights.
  • Any harm caused to third parties as a result of your use of the service.

8. Intellectual Property

The PQ PDF source code, design, branding, and documentation are the intellectual property of Fated LLC unless otherwise noted. Open-source components (Ghostscript, Poppler, LibreOffice, Tesseract) are used under their respective licences.

You retain all rights to files you upload. By uploading a file, you grant PQ PDF a transient, limited licence solely to process that file and return the result to you.

9. Cookies & Local Storage

PQ PDF uses functional cookies and browser local storage solely to store your in-app configuration preferences on your own device — for example, your last-used tool settings or display options. This allows the application to remember your choices when you return to the site.

These cookies and storage entries:

  • Are stored entirely on your device — they are never transmitted to our servers or shared with any third party.
  • Contain no personally identifiable information.
  • Are used solely to improve usability — not for tracking, profiling, advertising, or analytics of any kind.
  • Can be cleared at any time by clearing your browser's cookies and site data.

We do not use tracking cookies, advertising cookies, or any third-party cookie networks. See our Privacy Policy for complete details.

10. Post-Quantum Encryption (PQC)

The PQC encryption feature uses NIST-standardised algorithms (ML-KEM-1024, ML-DSA-87, SLH-DSA-SHA2-256s) implemented via the @noble/post-quantum library. While every effort is made to implement these correctly, no cryptographic software should be relied upon as the sole protection for highly sensitive material without independent security review.

11. OCR (Optical Character Recognition)

The OCR tool uses the Tesseract 5 LSTM open-source engine to extract text from scanned or image-based PDF pages. By using this feature you acknowledge and agree to the following:

  • Accuracy is not guaranteed. OCR output quality depends on the source document's scan resolution, image clarity, language, font style, and contrast. Results may contain errors, omissions, or misread characters.
  • Not a legal substitute. OCR output must not be relied upon as a verbatim, certified, or legally authoritative transcription of any document. You are solely responsible for verifying extracted text before using it in any legal, medical, financial, or official context.
  • Language and script limitations. Accuracy varies across languages and scripts. Handwritten text, decorative fonts, low-contrast scans, and non-Latin scripts may produce poor results. No warranty is made as to completeness or accuracy for any specific language.
  • Files are deleted immediately after processing. OCR output is returned to you over HTTPS and is not retained on our servers.
  • No liability for OCR errors. Fated LLC and PQ PDF shall not be liable for any loss, damage, decision, or action taken in reliance on OCR output produced by this service.

12. Redaction

The Redact PDF tool permanently and irrecoverably removes selected content from documents. Redacted content cannot be recovered. You are solely responsible for:

  • Identifying all content that should be redacted before processing.
  • Retaining an unredacted original if you may need it in future.
  • Verifying that the resulting file meets any legal or regulatory redaction requirements applicable to your jurisdiction and use case.

PQ PDF makes no warranty that the redaction tool will satisfy the standards of any particular court, regulator, or compliance framework. Fated LLC shall not be liable for any consequence arising from incomplete, incorrect, or insufficient redaction.

13. E-Signature & Send for E-Signature

PQ PDF provides tools to apply digital signatures (including PAdES-compliant signatures) and to send documents to recipients for electronic signature. By using these features you acknowledge:

  • Legal validity varies by jurisdiction. Electronic and digital signatures are recognised under different legal frameworks in different countries (e.g. eIDAS in the EU, ESIGN/UETA in the US). You are solely responsible for determining whether a signature produced by this service meets the legal requirements for your specific use case.
  • PAdES signatures. PAdES signatures conform to ETSI EN 319 100 series standards. Validation requires a trusted certificate chain. Self-signed or untrusted certificates will produce signatures that may not be considered legally binding in all contexts.
  • Recipient consent. You are responsible for ensuring that any person to whom you send a signature request has consented to the use of electronic signatures and that their identity has been adequately verified for your purposes.
  • No legal advice. PQ PDF does not provide legal advice. Consult a qualified legal professional if you are unsure whether e-signatures are appropriate for a particular document or transaction.

14. PDF Forensics Scanner

The PDF Forensics Scanner is a comprehensive, multi-layer forensic analysis tool that subjects uploaded PDF files to 44 independent forensic engines operating across structural, behavioural, provenance, statistical, and intelligence dimensions. The analysis stack includes:

  • Structural integrity verification (qpdf, PeePDF, deep object-graph analysis)
  • JavaScript AST deobfuscation and static analysis
  • Launch action, OpenAction, and auto-trigger inspection
  • Embedded file, stream, and font entropy analysis
  • YARA rule matching against curated malicious-PDF ruleset
  • ClamAV signature and heuristic scanning
  • CVE exploit-pattern matching for known PDF vulnerabilities
  • Font anomaly and glyph-substitution detection
  • Polyglot and embedded binary detection
  • Differential parser comparison across multiple independent PDF parsers
  • ExifTool and XMP metadata provenance and origin analysis
  • Offline threat-intelligence correlation (no external network calls during scan)
  • MITRE ATT&CK technique mapping for detected indicators
  • Dynamic behavioural sandbox with multi-renderer analysis and syscall tracing in isolated namespaces
  • ML anomaly classification with SHAP-based explainability (see ML Intelligence Engine below)
  • AI-generated forensic narrative report

Each engine documents a different forensic dimension of the file independently, producing a composite forensic score. Files can be sanitised to strip active content and dangerous structures after analysis. The free public service accepts files up to 10 MB for forensic scanning. Enterprise deployments have no file-size restriction.

The PDF Forensics Scanner is a genuinely capable tool. Its 44-engine stack is built to surface real threats — including sophisticated exploits that single-engine and signature-only scanners miss — and its AI-generated reports are designed to be actionable for security practitioners. That said, digital forensics is an interpretive discipline, not a deterministic science. No automated system produces conclusions that are unconditionally correct, and scan results should always be reviewed by a qualified human before significant decisions are made. By using this feature you expressly acknowledge and agree to the following:

  • Results are forensic indicators, not verdicts. Scan output — including risk scores, engine findings, SHAP explanations, MITRE ATT&CK mappings, and AI-generated narrative — constitutes a set of forensic indicators for your review, not a final determination of malice or safety. Indicators must be interpreted in context. Nothing produced by this tool should be submitted as authoritative forensic evidence in any legal, judicial, regulatory, or disciplinary proceeding without independent verification by a qualified forensic professional.
  • This is not a certified security audit. Scan output is not a professional penetration test, security certification, compliance assessment, or legal opinion and must not be represented as any of these.
  • No detection system is exhaustive. Highly novel exploits, advanced obfuscation, and zero-day techniques may evade some or all engines. A clean result significantly reduces risk — it does not certify that a file is safe.
  • Both false positives and false negatives occur. A flagged file is not automatically malicious; a clean file is not automatically safe. Exercise independent judgement and, where the stakes are high, seek professional verification.
  • Sanitisation is a risk-reduction step, not a guarantee. The sanitisation feature removes detected active content and dangerous structures effectively, but it cannot guarantee that every threat has been neutralised or that the resulting file is safe in every operational environment.
  • Files are deleted immediately after analysis. No uploaded file or scan artefact is retained beyond the duration of the scan.
  • No liability for outcomes. Fated LLC and PQ PDF shall not be liable — under any legal theory, including contract, tort, negligence, or strict liability — for any security incident, data breach, loss, damage, or regulatory sanction arising from actions taken or not taken in reliance on the results or output of this tool.

ML Intelligence Engine & Continuous Improvement

The scanner includes an ML Intelligence Engine that sits above all other engines and learns from every scan. It operates in three layers:

  • Bayesian contextual scoring — adjusts risk dynamically based on document origin signals. A file produced by a known exploit kit (Metasploit, msfvenom, Canvas) is amplified; a file from a recognised benign creator (Microsoft Word, JasperReports) is contextually dampened.
  • IsolationForest anomaly detection — an unsupervised model that flags documents whose structural fingerprint is statistically unusual compared to the population of previously scanned files. Active from the very first scan — no labelled training data required.
  • RandomForest classifier — a supervised model that activates once sufficient labelled samples have accumulated, producing calibrated probability scores for maliciousness trained on real scan data. Accuracy improves continuously as more scans and feedback are collected.

The scanner gets better the more it is used. Every scan extracts a 38-dimensional feature vector from the combined engine outputs and persists it to our database. This record contains structural analysis results only — never file content — and builds the population that the anomaly detector and classifier learn from over time.

Your feedback directly trains the model. After a scan you can flag a result as a false positive or confirm a detected threat. These labels are stored alongside the feature vector and feed directly into RandomForest retraining. Every correction you submit makes the classifier more accurate for everyone who uses the scanner after you. Each scan also produces an explainable ML report identifying the specific features that most influenced the result, so you can see exactly why the model scored the file as it did.

By submitting feedback on a scan result you consent to that label and its associated feature vector (derived from engine outputs, containing no file content) being stored and used to retrain the ML model. You must not submit false or deliberately misleading labels — doing so degrades the model for all users and constitutes misuse of the service under Section 3.

15. Third-Party Services

PQ PDF uses an enterprise API hosted at api.pqcrypta.com for AI-based human verification on the contact form. That service is subject to its own terms. No advertising networks, analytics platforms, or social-media trackers are used.

16. Enterprise Licence

16.1 Scope of This Section

PQ PDF is available as a free public service at pqpdf.com and as a commercially licensed on-premise product for organisations that require a private, self-hosted deployment. This section governs enterprise licences only. Free public use is governed by the remaining terms of this document.

16.2 Licence Grant

Subject to payment of the applicable licence fee and acceptance of these terms, Fated LLC grants the licenced organisation a non-exclusive, non-transferable, perpetual (one-time licence) or annual (subscription licence) right to:

  • Install and operate PQ PDF on any number of servers or virtual machines owned or controlled by the organisation.
  • Make the service available to any number of users within the organisation.
  • Run any number of concurrent instances for load balancing, high availability, or geographic distribution.
  • Modify configuration files and deployment scripts supplied as part of the distribution for the purpose of integration with the organisation's own infrastructure.

16.3 Licence Model — What Is and Is Not Metered

Enterprise licences are priced per organisation. The following are never metered or subject to additional charge:

  • Number of users, seats, or named accounts.
  • Number of servers, cores, vCPUs, or virtual machines.
  • Number of running instances or containers.
  • Volume of files processed or API requests made.
  • Amount of data stored on the organisation's own infrastructure.

The only things that may be subject to separate agreement are:

  • Annual maintenance and support — optional; renews the right to receive software updates and priority support.
  • Installation assistance — optional professional services engagement for initial deployment.

16.4 Restrictions

The enterprise licence does not permit:

  • Sublicensing, reselling, or redistributing PQ PDF or its source code to third parties as a standalone product or SaaS offering.
  • Removing or altering copyright notices, licence headers, or attribution in source files.
  • Reverse engineering any compiled or obfuscated components beyond what is permitted by applicable law.
  • Using the PQ PDF name, logo, or branding in a way that implies endorsement by Fated LLC without prior written consent.

16.5 On-Premise Deployment and Data Ownership

When deployed on-premise, all data processed by PQ PDF remains entirely within the organisation's own infrastructure. Fated LLC and PQ PDF have no access to, and do not receive, any files, documents, scan results, feature vectors, or user activity generated by an on-premise deployment. The organisation is solely responsible for:

  • The security and integrity of the server environment.
  • Compliance with applicable data protection regulations (including GDPR, HIPAA, or equivalent) in respect of their own users' data.
  • Backups, retention policies, and database management for any data stored by the deployment.
  • Keeping the deployment updated with security patches supplied by PQ PDF.

16.6 Warranty and Liability for Enterprise Licences

Enterprise licences are provided as-is unless a separate written support agreement expressly provides otherwise. Fated LLC warrants that the software will perform materially as described in the accompanying documentation for a period of 90 days from the date of delivery. Beyond this period, and in all other respects, the No Warranty and Limitation of Liability clauses elsewhere in these Terms apply equally to enterprise deployments.

In no event shall Fated LLC's aggregate liability to a licenced organisation exceed the total licence fees paid by that organisation in the twelve months preceding the claim.

16.7 Enquiries and Licensing

For enterprise licensing enquiries, pricing, compliance questionnaires, or to request a security architecture review, use the contact form or email contact@pqcrypta.com with the subject line Enterprise Licence.

17. Modifications to These Terms

We reserve the right to update these Terms of Use at any time. Changes take effect immediately upon publication. Continued use of the service after changes constitutes acceptance. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision.

18. Governing Law

These terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the jurisdiction in in which Fated LLC is registered, without regard to conflict-of-law provisions.

19. Contact

For legal enquiries, please use the contact form.