Privacy

This page is written to be checkable rather than reassuring. Anything below can be verified from your own browser in about a minute, and the last section tells you how. Where something does leave your browser, it is named here — a privacy page that claims “no third-party requests” while loading two of them is worse than no privacy page at all.

What Sofritools does not do

• No accounts. There is no sign-up, no login, no email field, and no mailing list.
• No cookies. None — not for sessions, not for preferences, not for advertising. The site's own visit statistics (Matomo, below) run with cookies switched off. That is also why you have never seen a consent banner here: there is nothing to consent to.
• No uploads. Files you drop into a tool are read by your own browser and processed in memory. They are never transmitted anywhere.
• No backend and no database. The site is a set of static files. There is no application server that could receive your input even if the code tried to send it.
• No storage of your content. Tools do not write what you type tolocalStorage, IndexedDB, or anywhere else. Close the tab and it is gone. The one thing this site may store on your device is your own choice, if you make it, to switch off visit statistics (see below).
• No ads, cross-site trackers, pixels, session recording, heatmaps, A/B testing SDKs, or chat widgets. There is no advertising code on this site at all, and nothing from Google loads any more. (Five English pages carry one plain affiliate link each — see “Affiliate links” below.)

What does leave your browser

Two analytics services are contacted. Neither receives your tool input (the text you type, the files you open).

• Cloudflare Web Analytics — static.cloudflareinsights.com. A small beacon script is injected by the host on every page. It reports the page URL, the referrer, and coarse load-performance timings, and Cloudflare derives country, browser and device class from the request itself. It sets no cookies, does no cross-site tracking, and builds no per-visitor profile; what I see is an aggregate count of which pages get visited.
• Matomo — stats.sofritools.com. Open-source analytics running on my own server, not a company's: the data stays with me and is not shared, sold or combined with anything else. It reports the page you view, the site or campaign link that brought you (for example utm_source=linkedin), your country, browser, operating system and device type, page load time, how long the page stays open, and which of the page's own buttons you click — by the button's name in the code, such asss-draw. It never receives what you type, the files you open, the contents of share links, or where an outside link goes. Cookies are switched off and your IP address is shortened (the last two parts are removed) before anything is stored. To tell visits apart without cookies, Matomo derives a temporary identifier from that shortened address and your browser type; it resets every day, so it cannot follow you from one day to the next. If your device is set to a European time zone, your visits go to a separate, stricter setup (Matomo's consent-free mode for the EU) that keeps only the referring site's name, drops campaign tags and keeps no per-visit log. Raw visit records are deleted after 13 months; only totals are kept after that.

Switching visit statistics off

If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, Matomo does not load at all. You can also switch it off for this browser here. The choice is saved as a single setting in this browser's localStorage on your device, and it is never sent anywhere.

Stop counting my visits on this browser

The two typefaces, Bricolage Grotesque and IBM Plex Mono, used to come from Google Fonts. They are now served from this site’s own origin under /fonts/, so no request goes to fonts.googleapis.com or fonts.gstatic.com any more — which is why font-src in the policy below is 'self'.

One more thing worth stating plainly, since it is true of every website: the site is hosted on Cloudflare, so requests for these pages pass through their network and appear in ordinary edge logs (IP address, URL, timestamp, user agent) the same way they would with any host. That is request metadata, not your data. SeeCloudflare’s privacy policy for what they do with it.

Share links

A few tools — the random name wheel, the random picker, the group generator, and the binary and Morse translators — have a share button. It puts what you entered (the list of names, the groups, the message) inside the link itself, after a #s=. That part of a URL is never sent to any server by any browser, so the link works without anything being stored anywhere: there is no database of shared wheels. When someone opens the link, the page reads it and immediately removes it from the address bar before either analytics script loads, so the contents are not recorded in page-view analytics either. Keep in mind the obvious part: anyone you send the link to can read what is in it — that is the point of sharing it. Only press share on things you are happy for them to see.

The Secret Santa generator uses the same mechanism for its private links: each person's link carries only their own match (plus the event name, budget and date), and the organizer link carries the whole draw so a lost link can be resent. The draw is never stored on this site. The WhatsApp button opens WhatsApp with the message and link filled in — from then on it is a message you send through WhatsApp, like any other. In a color exchange, each person's gift color travels in their own link too. The organizer's message for the group chat is written on your device from the event details and the participants' names — never the matches — and its WhatsApp button works the same way. On the reveal screen, "Save the date" makes a calendar file on your device; only if you tap Google Calendar does it open Google Calendar with the exchange name, date, budget and gift color filled in, which Google then receives like anything typed into it. Neither one ever includes who you drew.

After seeing their match, a participant can also write a short wish list and send it to the group. The list travels inside its own link the same way: it carries only what they typed (plus the exchange name, budget and date) and never who they drew, and it is stored nowhere. Web links someone puts in a wish list are shown exactly as they were pasted — this site never changes or tags them.

The Secret Santa questionnaire works the same way: when someone fills it in and makes a link, the link carries only their answers (plus their name, the exchange name and the budget), and opening it shows them as a card. Nothing is stored; links in the answers are shown exactly as pasted. Printed and copied questionnaires contain no affiliate link.

The virtual Rosca de Reyes link carries the rosca itself — the number of slices, where the figurines are hidden and the rosca's name — and no names or results. Whoever opens it cuts a slice on their own device; nothing about who cut what is sent anywhere.

Affiliate links

Five English pages show one link to Amazon: the Secret Santa generator, on the screen where a participant sees who they are buying for (or opens a wish list); the Secret Santa questionnaire, when you open someone’s answers; the White Elephant generator, next to the gift price limit; the Christmas tree calculator, for lights that fit the tree height you entered; and the address labels page, for label sheets of the size you picked. It is an ordinary link to an Amazon search, marked as an affiliate link: if you buy something after clicking it, Amazon pays this site a small commission, at no extra cost to you.As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Nothing from Amazon loads on these pages — no script, pixel or widget — and the link carries only a number — a budget, a tree height or a label sheet’s product number — and, in a color exchange, the color (for example “red gifts under $25”): never a name, a match, an address or anything from a wish list or questionnaire. Amazon learns about you only if you click, and from then on you are on Amazon’s site, underAmazon’s privacy notice. The Spanish pages have no affiliate links.

How to check all of this yourself

Do not take my word for it. Three things you can do right now:

1. Open your browser’s developer tools, go to the Network tab, then use any tool on this site with real input. You will see the two analytics hosts above and nothing else. You will not see your input going anywhere, because there is no request carrying it.
2. In the same panel, look at the response headers for the page. The site sends a Content-Security-Policy that your own browser enforces — it is a list of the only places this page is permitted to talk to. A tool that tried to POST your data to some other endpoint would be blocked by the browser, not merely discouraged by me.
3. Turn off your Wi-Fi and keep using the tool. After your first visit the tools keep working offline, which is only possible because the work was never happening on a server.

default-src 'self';
script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' https://static.cloudflareinsights.com https://stats.sofritools.com;
style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline';
font-src 'self';
img-src 'self' data: https://stats.sofritools.com;
connect-src 'self' https://cloudflareinsights.com https://stats.sofritools.com;
object-src 'none'; base-uri 'none'; form-action 'self';
frame-ancestors 'none'; upgrade-insecure-requests

Offline use and the service worker

The site registers a service worker so the tools work with no connection. It keeps copies of pages, styles, scripts, and icons in your browser’s own Cache Storage, on your device. That cache holds the site’s files, never your input, and nothing in it is sent anywhere. You can wipe it any time by clearing site data for sofritools.com in your browser settings. Pages are always fetched from the network first when you are online, so an update reaches you immediately rather than being masked by a stale copy.

Your data rights, briefly

There is nothing to request, export, or delete, because there is nothing held: no account, no email address, no analytics profile tied to you. Matomo keeps visit records with shortened IP addresses and a daily-resetting identifier, so there is no way to find “your” records in it; you can stop new ones with the switch above. If you are evaluating this site for GDPR, CCPA, or an internal review, the useful summary is that Sofritools processes no user content off-device; the only processing that happens at all is your host-level request metadata at Cloudflare and cookieless, IP-shortened visit statistics in a self-hosted Matomo (consent-free mode for European time zones), with Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track honored.

If any of this changes

Sofritools now carries contextual affiliate links (see above), and high-traffic converter pages may one day carry ads. Whenever something like that is added, this page changes first and says exactly what was added, what it loads, and from where. Three things are not on the table regardless: uploading your files, tracking cookies, and selling anything about you. If you ever find this page contradicting what the site actually does, treat your browser’s network tab as the source of truth and this page as the bug.