How eThorns works
What runs on your device, what goes online and what we keep, tool by tool.
Most eThorns tools run entirely in your browser. Your photos, texts, passwords and files are processed on your own device and never travel to a server.
A few tools have to ask something on the internet: a DNS lookup, where a short link goes, whether a password appears in a breach. And some file tools need programs a browser can't run (EPS to PNG or JPG, Compress PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint to PDF, PDF to Word, Scanned PDF to text (OCR), PDF to SVG, Remove PDF password): when you press their button, they send your file to our server, which converts it in memory and deletes it as soon as the result comes back. For all of these, this is everything they send and to whom.
| Tool | What is sent · To whom |
|---|---|
| Is it a scam? | Only the links found in the text go to our server (api.ethorns.com), which follows them and asks the domain's registry when it was registered; results are kept for up to 1 hour. The message text itself never leaves your browser. |
| Short link expander | The link goes to our server (api.ethorns.com), which follows each redirect for you and keeps only the result, in memory, for 10 minutes. It also looks up the final domain's registration date (kept for 1 hour). |
| Website security scan | The domain goes to our server (api.ethorns.com), which checks it and keeps only the result for 1 hour. |
| SSL certificate checker | The domain goes to our server (api.ethorns.com), which opens a TLS connection to it on port 443 and keeps only the result for 10 minutes. |
| Domain age checker | The domain goes to our server (api.ethorns.com), which asks the domain's official registry (RDAP, or WHOIS where there is no RDAP) and keeps only the dates, registrar, status and name servers for 1 hour. |
| Leaked password check | Only the first 5 characters of the password's SHA-1 hash go to Have I Been Pwned. The password never leaves your device. |
| What's my IP? | It reads the connection you already made to ethorns.com (served by Cloudflare). Nothing else is sent. |
| Email security | Public DNS lookups for the domain go from your browser to Cloudflare (cloudflare-dns.com). We store nothing. |
| DNS lookup | Public DNS lookups for the domain go from your browser to Cloudflare (cloudflare-dns.com). We store nothing. |
| DNS propagation checker | The name and record type go to our server (api.ethorns.com), which asks 10 fixed public DNS resolvers and keeps only the result for 1 minute. |
| Is it down? | The address goes to our server (api.ethorns.com), which requests that page from Colombia (following redirects, and retrying over http if https fails) and keeps only the result for 1 minute. |
| Link preview checker | The URL goes to our server (api.ethorns.com), which downloads that page's HTML, checks its preview image with a single HEAD request and keeps only the result for 5 minutes. To draw the previews, your browser then loads that image straight from the checked site. |
| EPS to PNG or JPG | When you press the button, the EPS file goes over HTTPS to our server (api.ethorns.com), passing through Cloudflare, our network provider. It's turned into an image in memory inside a sealed container with no internet access and deleted as soon as the image is sent back; we keep no copy, and the file name is never sent. |
| Compress PDF | When you press the button, the PDF goes over HTTPS to our server (api.ethorns.com), passing through Cloudflare, our network provider. It's compressed in memory inside a sealed container with no internet access and deleted as soon as the result is sent back; we keep no copy, and the file name is never sent. |
| Word, Excel, PowerPoint to PDF | When you press the button, the file goes over HTTPS to our server (api.ethorns.com), passing through Cloudflare, our network provider. It's converted in memory inside a sealed container with no internet access and deleted as soon as the PDF is sent back; we keep no copy, and the file name is never sent. |
| PDF to Word | When you press the button, the PDF goes over HTTPS to our server (api.ethorns.com), passing through Cloudflare, our network provider. It's converted in memory inside a sealed container with no internet access and deleted as soon as the Word file is sent back; we keep no copy, and the file name is never sent. |
| Scanned PDF to text (OCR) | When you press the button, the PDF goes over HTTPS to our server (api.ethorns.com), passing through Cloudflare, our network provider. It's read in memory inside a sealed container with no internet access and deleted as soon as the result is sent back; we keep no copy, and the file name is never sent. |
| PDF to SVG | When you press the button, the PDF goes over HTTPS to our server (api.ethorns.com), passing through Cloudflare, our network provider. It's converted in memory inside a sealed container with no internet access and deleted as soon as the SVG is sent back; we keep no copy, and the file name is never sent. |
| Remove PDF password | When you press the button, the PDF and the password you typed travel together over HTTPS to our server (api.ethorns.com), passing through Cloudflare, our network provider. The password is used only to open the file, in memory inside a sealed container with no internet access, and it's never stored or logged. The file is deleted as soon as the unlocked copy is sent back; we keep no copy, and the file name is never sent. The tool can't recover or guess a password you've forgotten. |
Runs on your deviceThe other 61 tools send nothing you type or upload. Most keep working offline once the page has loaded; the PDF, HEIC and QR-reader tools need the connection the first time you use them, to load their engine.
Four rules we don't break
- Free, with no account, no email and no daily quotas (online checks and file conversions have a short per-minute limit).
- If it can run on your device, it runs on your device.
- We never publish or sell what you paste. Online checks send it only where the table above says, and there are no saved links holding your data.
- Every result says what it means and what to do next.
How we stay free
We may show ads from Google AdSense (never on these tools: Is it a scam?, Is this file safe?, Short link expander, Website security scan, SSL certificate checker, Lookalike domain detector, Domain age checker, Password generator, Certificate decoder, Leaked password check, Link cleaner, Watermark an ID copy, Encrypt text, Email security, DNS lookup, Email header analyzer, DNS propagation checker, DMARC report reader, Is it down?, Link preview checker, HEIC to JPG, Remove EXIF & GPS, EPS to PNG or JPG, QR code reader, SHA-256 hash, JWT decoder, Compress PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint to PDF, PDF to Word, Scanned PDF to text (OCR), PDF to SVG, Remove PDF password, Merge PDF, Split PDF, Rotate PDF, Delete PDF Pages, PDF Page Numbers, Watermark PDF, JPG to PDF, PDF to JPG, PDF to PNG, Sign PDF), and our shop has optional printable kits for companies. We don't sell data: we don't have your data to sell. If eThorns helps you, you can also buy us a coffee.
Our web server keeps a technical log: IP address, time, the page address without anything after the ?, and browser type, never what you type into a tool. It isn't kept by date: the oldest lines are deleted automatically once the log reaches a fixed size, which at current traffic is a few weeks.
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