Security and Data Protection

How ilovemardown.com handles your files and your data, written in plain language and accurate to how the product actually works. No account is ever required, we keep as little as possible, and the one thing we do keep deletes itself within 24 hours. Last reviewed: 2026-07-14.

Our Commitment

iLoveMarkdown is built around a simple principle. We want your documents converted, not your data collected. There is no signup, no login, and no user database. We collect only what is needed to run the service, and we never sell data to anyone.

No account required. Every tool works without registration. There is no password, no profile, and no personal record for us to lose in a breach.

Files delete themselves. Converted PDFs expire after 24 hours and are permanently removed from our servers. Deletion is automatic, so you never have to ask.

The preview and validator never upload. Both tools run entirely in your browser. The text you type or paste there never reaches our servers at all.

What Happens to a File You Convert

We are deliberately transparent about this. PDF conversion happens on our server, not in your browser. We say that plainly rather than pretending otherwise, and we designed the pipeline so the server holds as little as possible, for as short a time as possible. This is the exact journey your file takes:

Encrypted upload. Your Markdown file travels to our server over an encrypted HTTPS connection. Only .md and .markdown files up to 5 MB are accepted.
Conversion, then nothing. The file is read once, converted to PDF by an automated pipeline, and discarded when the request finishes. Your original Markdown is never written to storage.
A private link, shown only to you. The finished PDF is stored outside the public web root under a cryptographically random link. Files cannot be listed, browsed, or discovered. Without your exact link there is no way to reach them.
Encrypted download. You download the PDF over the same encrypted connection. 24 hours later the link is dead and the file is gone.

No human looks at your documents. Files are touched only by the automated conversion and cleanup jobs described on this page.

Automatic Deletion Within 24 Hours

Every converted PDF has a hard 24-hour lifetime, enforced in two independent ways:

Links expire at read time. A download link stops working exactly 24 hours after conversion. Expired files return a 404 even before they are physically removed.
A scheduled purge removes the data. A cleanup job runs continuously on the server and permanently deletes every expired conversion, the PDF and its metadata together.

Deletion is unconditional and requires nothing from you. There is no retention setting to configure, no premium tier that keeps files longer, and no backup that quietly holds a copy.

Tools That Never Upload Anything

The Markdown preview and the Markdown validator are fully client-side. The rendering and linting engines are downloaded to your browser as JavaScript, and your text is processed on your own machine.

You do not have to take our word for it. Open your browser’s developer tools, watch the network tab while you type, and you will see that no document content is transmitted anywhere.

Encryption in Transit

All traffic to ilovemardown.com is encrypted in transit with HTTPS (TLS). That covers the pages you browse, the Markdown you upload for conversion, and the PDF you download. Your files are never transferred over an unencrypted connection.

What We Collect and What We Never Do

We keep the collection list short enough to state in full:

Standard server logs. IP address, requested page, and timestamp. We use these to operate the service, debug problems, and investigate abuse.
Product analytics. Aggregate usage events that tell us which tools get used and where errors happen, so we know what to improve. This telemetry is about the product, never about the content of your documents.
Conversion records, for 24 hours. The generated PDF, the original filename, the file size, and the conversion time. All of it is deleted together with the file.

And the things we never do:

We never sell or share your data with data brokers or advertisers.
We never show ads or embed advertising trackers.
We never ask for your email address, name, or payment details. The service is free and anonymous to use.
We never keep your original Markdown, and we never open or read your documents.

Your Data Rights

We follow the GDPR principle of data minimisation. The best way to protect your data is to not hold it in the first place. Because there are no accounts, there is no profile to access, export, or correct. The one thing we ever store on your behalf, a converted PDF, deletes itself within 24 hours.

In other words, erasure is satisfied by design rather than by request. Close the tab and within a day the service holds nothing that came from you.

Ongoing Review

This page is a commitment, not marketing copy. It is reviewed against the actual code whenever the conversion pipeline, storage, hosting, or analytics change, so that what you read here stays true to what the service does. If we ever change how files are handled, this page changes first.