Privacy policy

Datenschutzerklärung · Last updated 7 October 2026

This page explains what personal data the MarkItDown website, the license server behind it and the MarkItDown app process, why, and for how long. The short version: no cookies, no tracking, no outside analytics; the site only counts visits and downloads as anonymous totals. To run licenses we store your email address, your license key and, for each computer you activate, its name and an anonymous device ID.

Who is responsible

Jannik Wiest
Hauptstrasse 55
22962 Siek
Germany

Email: siekwieyt@gmail.com

Hosting

The website and the license server run on a server we rent from Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany, in a data center in Germany. Hetzner processes the data on our behalf under a data processing agreement (Art. 28 GDPR).

Visiting the website

• Your browser sends its IP address and technical details (such as the browser type) with every request. The server uses them to deliver the page and to limit abuse: the IP address is kept in memory for a few minutes at most to count requests. No access log is written.
• If an error occurs, the server writes a short error message to its log (the requested address, but not your IP address). These logs are overwritten automatically after a few megabytes.
• The server counts, as totals per day: how often each page is opened and each installer is downloaded, how many visitors there were, which website a visitor came from (only that site's name, for example "reddit.com") and which operating system visitors use. To count a visitor only once per day, the server keeps a salted hash of the IP address and browser type in its memory until midnight (UTC). The hash is never written to disk and cannot be turned back into an IP address. The totals say nothing about you, and no outside analytics service is involved.
• The site sets no cookies, uses no local storage, and loads no fonts, scripts or images from other companies. Nobody is followed across pages or visits.

Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in running the website securely.

Buying a license

The checkout runs on Stripe's pages. Stripe sells the license as reseller (merchant of record) through Stripe Managed Payments: Stripe collects the payment, handles taxes and sends you the receipt. Payment details you enter there are processed by Stripe and never reach us. Stripe's privacy policy applies to the checkout: stripe.com/privacy.

After the purchase, Stripe tells our server, and we store:

• your email address (the one you entered at checkout),
• the license key we create for you,
• Stripe's reference numbers for the purchase (checkout session and payment), the time of purchase,
• whether the license was refunded or the payment disputed (a refunded license is switched off).

Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR, delivering and managing the license you bought. We keep this data as long as the license exists, and beyond that only as long as tax and commercial law requires.

Activating the app

When you enter your license key in MarkItDown, the app sends the license server:

• the license key,
• a device ID: a SHA-256 hash derived from your operating system's machine ID. It identifies the computer to the license server but cannot be turned back into the machine ID,
• the name of your computer (its host name, as set in your operating system).

We store the device ID, the computer name, the date of activation and the date the app last checked in, together with your license. When it is online, the app checks in about once a week to renew its license; it sends the same information again. Your IP address is used only as described under "Visiting the website".

This is needed to keep a license to 3 computers, and to let you see which computers use your key. Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR. When you deactivate a computer (Help → License → Deactivate), its entry is deleted immediately.

Apart from activating and renewing the license, the app does not contact us or anyone else on its own: no usage statistics, no crash reports, and your documents never leave your computer. One thing to know: if a document you open embeds pictures or media from the web, the app loads them from their address, as a browser would, and the server they come from sees your IP address.

Email

If you write to us, we use your message and email address to answer you (Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR when it concerns your license, otherwise Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR). Our email is hosted by Google (Gmail; Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland).

Who receives data

• Hetzner Online GmbH, which runs our server on our behalf.
• Stripe, for the purchase. Stripe may process data in the United States; transfers are covered by the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses.
• Google, for email you send us. Google may process data in the United States under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses.

Nobody else. We don't sell data and don't use it for advertising.

Your rights

You can ask what data we store about you, have it corrected or deleted, have its processing restricted, receive it in a machine-readable form, and object to processing based on our legitimate interests (Art. 15 to 21 GDPR). Write to siekwieyt@gmail.com. If you have your license deleted, it stops working.

You also have the right to complain to a data protection supervisory authority, for example the one where you live.