How Long Does Smallpdf Store My PDF After Signing?

A crucial aspect of e-signing and digital signing is security. But what happens to your PDF when you’re done signing? Is it stored and for how long?

Is Smallpdf’s eSign Tool Safe To Use?

Absolutely. We’re serious about data protection and privacy and always do our utmost to ensure that everyone’s personal information is both safe and secure. We’re both GDPR compliant and ISO/IEC 27001 certified, and all our tools carry a host of other security features.

Safety Measures To Expect With Smallpdf Tools, Including eSign

Whether it’s to compress, convert, or digitally sign a document, all Smallpdf’s PDF tools are compliant with the major information security standards, are hosted on our site protected with HTTPS (or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), and all file transfers are secured with advanced TLS (or Transport Layer Security) encryption.

Smallpdf’s eSign tool offers both electronic and digital signing, the latter of which carries additional security features, including LTV (or Long-Term Validation) timestamping, and eIDAS compliance.

LTV timestamping, which can't be forged, records the precise date and time a signature is placed on a document. This is created when Smallpdf processes the file, adding a secure and trustworthy layer of security to a digitally signed PDF.

eIDAS, on the other hand, is an EU regulation and stands for Electronic Identification and Trust Services. It covers a host of functionalities, including being able to verify an individual’s or business’s identity online as well as electronic document authentication.

In short:

1. Our site is protected with HTTPS and we use TLS encryption for every file transfer.
2. We’re ISO/IEC 27001 certified, and GDPR and eIDAS compliant.
3. Privacy is guaranteed for you and your signees, who are the only people who can access your documents.
4. We offer secure digital signing with eSign with LTV timestamping.

Data Storage With Smallpdf

We respect your privacy and we’re here to help you get work done better and faster. When you process a file using Smallpdf web tools, you’ll first upload it to our servers. Even though your file will encounter our servers in order to be processed, it won’t be stored for longer than 14 days if you do this without an account or without logging in. This should be enough time for you to download your processed file. We delete these files permanently after 14 days. If you open the file within those 14 days, the 14-day clock will restart.

The same applies to documents processed with the eSign tool, which will be scheduled for deletion from our server 14 days after the last signee has completed the sign request.

However, if you sign into your Smallpdf account, whether it’s with a free or paid subscription, you can have your files stored indefinitely and for as long as you like if you upload them to the Document Hub. If you delete a file from your storage, it will be removed from our servers in one hour.

However, if you have an account, but upload a document without saving it to the Document Hub, the document will be deleted after one hour of processing.

In short:

1. Without an account or without logging in, documents are deleted after 14 days. Opening a file will restart the 14-day clock. Likewise, eSign documents are scheduled for deletion 14 days after the last signee is done signing.
2. Logged into a free or paid account, files are stored permanently in the Document Hub and are removed from our servers 14 days after deletion.
3. Logged into a free or paid account, documents not uploaded to the Document Hub will be deleted from our servers after one hour of processing.

How To Turn Off Smallpdf’s Document Storage Service

While Smallpdf’s storage is secure, users have the option to disable this function. For anyone who doesn’t want to have their documents saved to the Document Hub automatically, this can be disabled via the Preferences tab on the Account page.

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