Privacy Policy | The LaTeX Lab

This Privacy Policy explains how TheLaTeXLab (“we”, “our”, “us”) collects, uses, and protects personal information when you visit thelatexlab.com, use our formatting, conversion, and typesetting services, or use our free online tools, Google Docs add-on, or WordPress plugin. It also explains the choices and rights you have.

1. Information we collect

Information you give us

When you request a quote, place an order, book a call, or contact us, we may collect:

Your name and email address
Your institution or organization and your role, if you tell us
Your WhatsApp number, if you give it, so we can reply there
The files you send us, such as Word, PDF, or LaTeX documents, templates, and journal or university guidelines
Billing details needed for an invoice
Anything you write to us by form, email, WhatsApp, or during a call
The details of your project you enter in our enquiry form: the service, page count, deadline, journal or university, and any notes

We do not receive or store your card details. Card payments are processed by Stripe.

Information collected automatically

When you visit the website, we and our service providers collect:

IP address and approximate location (country or region)
Browser, operating system, and device type
Pages visited, time on the site, and the page that referred you

When you use our enquiry form, we also record how you reached it (the page and button you came from, and the site or campaign that referred you), your country, your type of device and browser, and which steps of the form you completed. We do not store your IP address; to stop automated abuse we keep a scrambled version of it for at most one day.

This comes from Google Analytics, Cloudflare, standard server logs, and, when we run ads, advertising platforms such as Google Ads and Meta.

What our free tools, add-on, and plugin collect is described in sections 8 to 10.

2. How we use your information

To do the work you order, including conversion, typesetting, formatting, templates, and revisions. (Legal basis: performing our contract with you.)
To answer your enquiry, email you a confirmation of it, and send quotes, invoices, and order updates. (Contract, or steps you ask us to take before one.)
To provide our free tools, including emailing you a result when you ask for it. (Doing what you ask; our legitimate interests.)
To keep the website and tools working, secure, and free of abuse, and to understand how they are used so we can improve them. (Our legitimate interests.)
To advertise our services, measure which ads bring visitors, and show our ads to people who have visited our website. (Consent in Europe; our legitimate interests elsewhere.)
To send occasional updates about our services or plugin, only if you asked for them. You can opt out at any time. (Consent.)
To keep accounting and tax records and meet other legal duties. (Legal obligation.)

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information.

3. Your documents and files

We know you often send us unpublished research. We treat every file as confidential:

Your files are used only to complete your order.
We never publish, sell, or share your files, and we never use their contents for marketing.
Client may ask Company to delete the files at any time.

Your research is your intellectual property. We make no claim over anything you send us, and the files we deliver belong to you.

4. Cookies

We use as few cookies as possible:

Essential cookies keep the site secure and working, for example Cloudflare’s security checks.
Analytics cookies from Google Analytics tell us which pages are visited, how people find us, and how well our marketing works.
Our custom cookie(tll_attr) that remembers, for 90 days, the first page you visited on our website and the site or campaign that brought you, so we can see which pages lead to enquiries. It is treated like the analytics cookies: in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland it is set only if you accept them.
Advertising cookies from advertising platforms such as Google Ads and Meta, used only when we run ads, measure which ads bring visitors and let us show our ads to people who have visited our website.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, analytics and advertising cookies are set only if you accept them in the cookie banner. Change your cookie settings.

You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings. The site will still work, but we will not be able to count your visit.

Service providers

We share information only with providers that help us run the website, deliver your order, and provide our free tools, and only what each one needs:

Cloudflare: website delivery, security, bot protection, and our citation lookup service. If our website cannot be reached at the moment you send an enquiry, Cloudflare keeps it for us until the website is back (normally within an hour, at most 30 days)
Google Analytics: website traffic statistics
Advertising platforms such as Google Ads and Meta: advertising and ad measurement, when we run ads
Google Cloud: runs our free online tools and stores shared accessibility reports for 48 hours
Brevo: sends the confirmation of your enquiry and the files you ask our tools to email you and, only if you ask for them, our updates; keeps our contact list
Tally: our backup enquiry forms, used only if our own form is unavailable
Calendly: call booking
WhatsApp (Meta): chat, only if you choose to contact us there
Stripe: card payments
Our bank: bank transfers
Our email and website hosting providers: email and website hosting

Our citation tools also look up the identifiers you enter in public scholarly databases (CrossRef, Europe PMC, arXiv, OpenLibrary, doi.org, and Google Books), as described in section 8. Each provider handles data under its own privacy policy.

Reviews and customer stories

We publish a client’s name, review, or customer story only with that client’s permission. If you would like something removed, email us and we will take it down.

Legal requirements and business transfers

We may disclose information if the law requires it, to protect our rights or the safety of others, or to a new owner if our business is ever sold or merged. In that case this policy continues to apply to your information.

6. International transfers

We work with clients around the world, and our service providers may store or process your information in countries other than your own, including the United States. When we transfer information, we rely on providers that protect it with safeguards recognized by data protection law, such as standard contractual clauses.

7. How long we keep information

Your files: Client may ask Company to delete files at any time.
Invoices and payment records: kept for as long as tax and accounting law requires.
Data from our free tools: kept for the periods described in section 8.

8. Our free online tools

Our free tools (the LaTeX and PDF accessibility checkers, LaTeXdiff Online, and the citation and BibTeX tools) need no account. You do not have to give us your name or email to use them.

Accessibility checkers

Your file is analyzed and discarded immediately. Only the report is kept, for a short time, so the page can show it. The report contains the scores and findings, not your file or its text.

If you create a share link, the report is stored on Google Cloud servers in the United States so the link works, and it is deleted 48 hours after the link is created. Anyone you give the link to can open the report until then. Email us if you want it deleted sooner.

The checkers are protected from automated abuse by Cloudflare Turnstile.

LaTeXdiff Online

Your files are compared in a temporary folder on Google Cloud servers in the United States. The folder is deleted as soon as the result is returned.

Citation and BibTeX tools

The identifiers you enter (such as a DOI, PubMed ID, ISBN, or arXiv ID) are looked up in the public databases that hold the records: CrossRef, Europe PMC, and OpenLibrary directly from your browser, and arXiv through our server. If CrossRef has no record of a DOI, your browser asks doi.org which organization registered it; only the DOI is sent. ISBNs that OpenLibrary does not have are looked up in Google Books through our server, so Google does not see your IP address.

Reference files you import (BibTeX, RIS, EndNote, or NBIB) are read in your browser and are not uploaded.

Emailing a result to yourself

When a tool gives you a result, you can choose “Email me” to receive it by email. This is optional. If you use it:

You give us your email address and first name, and the file you asked for is sent to you through our email provider, Brevo.
We keep a record of each email: your address, first name, the tool, the file name, the date, and whether you asked for updates. We do not keep a copy of the file ourselves.
We add you to our contacts in Brevo, with the tools you have used, so we can reply if you write back and understand which tools are useful.
We send you news about our services only if you tick the box asking for it. Every message includes an unsubscribe link.
To prevent abuse, we count how many emails are requested from one IP address and sent to one email address in a day. These counts are deleted within a day.

Usage statistics and logs

Our tools send anonymous usage events to Google Analytics, such as which tool was used, whether it worked, file sizes, processing time, and error codes. These events never include the text, identifiers, or files you enter; for a pasted link, only the website’s name is recorded. The cookie choices in section 4 apply.

For security and troubleshooting, our tool servers log technical details of each request, such as IP address, time, file size, and result, but not the contents of your files.

How long tool data is kept

Files you check or compare: discarded as soon as the result is ready.
Accessibility reports: kept only briefly so the page can show them. Shared reports are deleted 48 hours after the share link is created.
Email records and your Brevo contact: kept for up to 3 years after the last file we emailed you, or until you ask us to delete them.
Server logs: kept only briefly, for security and troubleshooting.

9. TheLaTeXLab Citation Generator (Google Docs add-on)

This section describes how the TheLaTeXLab Citation Generator add-on for Google Docs (“the add-on”) handles your data.

Google data we access. The add-on requests the minimum Google permissions needed to work:

See and edit only the current document (documents.currentonly): used only to insert in-text citations and a formatted bibliography into the document you have open, when you ask it to. The add-on cannot see or access any of your other documents or Drive files.
Display a sidebar in Google Docs (script.container.ui): used to show the add-on’s citation manager.
Connect to an external service (script.external_request): used to look up reference details and to parse or convert bibliography files by contacting our service at api.thelatexlab.com.

What we send to our servers, and what we do not. When you look up a reference, the add-on sends only the identifier or URL you enter (for example a DOI, PubMed ID, ISBN, arXiv ID, or a link). When you import a bibliography file, it sends the contents of that file so we can parse it. We do not send the contents of your Google document, your other files, your name, or any other personal information. Our service looks the identifier up in the public database that holds the record (CrossRef, Europe PMC, arXiv, OpenLibrary, or Google Books) and passes on only the identifier. Lookups and imports are used only to return citation data.

Your reference library. The references you save are stored in your own Google account’s add-on storage and are available to you across your documents. They are not stored on our servers.

No sale, no advertising, no human access. We do not sell your data, use it for advertising, or allow humans to read it, except as needed to provide or maintain the service, comply with the law, or where you explicitly request it.

Limited Use. TheLaTeXLab Citation Generator’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Data retention and deletion. Reference lookups are not kept beyond what is needed to return a result. Your saved library lives in your Google account and is removed when you uninstall the add-on or delete the entries. Questions or deletion requests: help@thelatexlab.com.

10. WordPress plugin: TheLaTeXLab Citations & Bibliography

We publish a free WordPress plugin, “TheLaTeXLab – Citations & Bibliography”, in the WordPress.org plugin directory. If you install it on your own WordPress website, it connects to our citation service at https://api.thelatexlab.com to look up and format references. This section explains exactly what the plugin sends to us.

What the plugin sends to our service

Identifiers you look up: when you resolve a DOI, PubMed ID (PMID), PMC ID, ISBN, arXiv ID, or a URL, that identifier is sent to our API so we can return the citation details. Our API looks it up in the public database that holds the record (CrossRef, Europe PMC, arXiv, OpenLibrary, or Google Books) and passes on only the identifier.
Reference files you import: when you import a .bib, .ris, .enw, or .nbib file, the contents of that file are sent to our API to be parsed into citation records.
Reference data you edit or export: when you edit a reference or export to RIS, the affected reference data is sent to our API to regenerate the BibTeX or RIS output.
Your website address: each request includes your site URL, which we use for diagnostics and to prevent abuse of the service.

What the plugin does not send

We do not receive your post content, your site’s visitor data, or any personal data about your readers.
Nothing is sent when a visitor simply views a page that contains a bibliography. Bibliographies are formatted on your own server.

Optional email updates

The plugin includes an optional “Get plugin updates by email” box. Only if you enter your email and submit it are your email address and website address sent to us and stored, so we can email you occasional updates about the plugin. This is off by default, and you can unsubscribe at any time by contacting us.

Self-hosting

The plugin lets advanced users point it at their own copy of our service instead of ours. If you do that, the data above goes to your chosen server instead of to us.

Data sent through the plugin is handled in line with the rest of this policy, including sections 2, 7, and 11.

11. Your rights

Depending on where you live, including the European Union, the United Kingdom, and California, you have the right to:

See the personal information we hold about you
Correct anything that is wrong
Have your information deleted
Receive a copy of your information in a common format
Object to or limit how we use it
Withdraw consent and unsubscribe from updates at any time
Opt out of our use of your information for targeted advertising

You can also turn off personalized ads in your Google and Meta account settings. To use any of these rights, email help@thelatexlab.com. We will reply within 30 days. You also have the right to complain to the data protection authority in your country.

12. Security

All pages and file transfers are encrypted with HTTPS, our website sits behind Cloudflare’s security network, and access to client files is limited to the work on your order. No method of storage or transfer is completely secure, but we work to protect your information and will tell you promptly if a breach affects you.

13. Children

Our services are for university students, researchers, and organizations. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has sent us information, contact us and we will delete it.

14. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page. If a change is significant, we will say so clearly on this page before it takes effect.

15. Contact us

Questions, requests, or concerns about your privacy: