howITwork

Privacy policy

Short version: the file tools run in your browser and your files are never uploaded. The site keeps a small visit log for the owner, uses one short-lived first-party cookie, and may show ads from Google. Details below.

Last updated: 10 October 2026.

Files you use with the tools

PDF, image, Word and Excel tools process files inside your browser. The files are not sent to howitwork.net or stored by us. Some tools load an open-source library (for example pdf.js or pdf-lib) from cdnjs.cloudflare.com; that request contains no file data.

Visit log

To see which pages help people, the site keeps its own visit log. For each visit it records the page, the website you came from (site name only), device type, operating system, browser family, time on page and, if our host provides it, your country. IP addresses are not stored in the log; a one-way hash of the IP address is used only to stop abuse such as repeated login attempts or contact-form spam. The log is visible only to the site owner, is never sold, and entries older than 90 days are deleted.

Cookies

  • hiw_sid (howitwork.net): a random ID that groups pages from one visit in the visit log. It expires after 12 hours and contains nothing about you.
  • WordPress cookies: set only if you log in to the site admin.
  • Advertising cookies: see the next section.
  • YouTube: guide pages embed videos from youtube-nocookie.com (privacy-enhanced mode). YouTube does not set cookies until you play a video; once you do, Google’s privacy policy applies.

Advertising

howITwork.net may show ads served by Google AdSense to pay for the site. If ads are shown:

  • Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your previous visits to this and other websites.
  • Google’s use of advertising cookies lets it and its partners serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
  • You can opt out of personalised advertising in Google Ads Settings, or opt out of some third-party vendors’ cookies at aboutads.info.
  • Visitors in the EEA, UK and Switzerland are asked for consent before personalised ads or advertising cookies are used.

More: How Google uses information from sites that use its services.

Contact form

When you send a message, your name, email address and message are emailed to contact@howitwork.net so we can reply, and a copy is kept privately in the site admin. They are not added to a mailing list or shared.

Remote help

If you hire remote help, you give only the access the job needs, and you should remove it or change passwords when the job is done. We never ask for banking passwords or one-time codes.

Videos and social media

The howITwork YouTube channel and Facebook page are run on those platforms, under their own privacy policies.

Your choices

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings; the tools keep working. To ask what we hold about you, or to have a contact message deleted, email contact@howitwork.net.