Privacy policy

Last updated: 17 September 2026

The short version

Vitela works without an account. Without one, your projects — every file you write or import — live only in your own browser, on your own device; compiling, checking and rendering happen there, and nothing of your documents reaches us. With an account, only what you choose leaves your device: the papers you save to the account, and the documents you send to our server to compile. This page says exactly what that means.

Your projects, without an account

Projects are stored in your browser's local database (IndexedDB) on your device. They are not synchronized anywhere and are not accessible to us or to anyone else. You can delete any project from the library at any time, or remove everything by clearing this site's data in your browser. Export produces a plain LaTeX copy that is yours to keep — we recommend it as your backup, since browser storage can be cleared by you or, rarely, by the browser itself.

Your account, if you create one

An account is a place to keep papers, share them with co-authors, and compile on our server. You can create one with an email address and a password, or sign in with Google. We store:

• Your name and email address; your institution or company if you gave one; and, for a Google account, the profile picture Google provides.
• Your password only as a hash (argon2id). We cannot read it or recover it; a reset replaces it.
• The papers you choose to save — their files, name, tags and the list of people you share them with — plus a record of who saved which version and when.
• The documents you send to compile on the server, kept in a working folder for that project so the next compile is faster. Nothing is compiled or stored there unless you press the button.
• A session: a random token in a cookie (vitela_session, HttpOnly, 90 days), and, during a Google sign-in, a second short-lived cookie that ties the return from Google to the browser that started it.

A saved paper is visible to you and to the people you share it with, in the role you gave them, and to nobody else. Deleting a paper from the library removes it from your account as well when you say so. Everything lives on a server we operate in Amazon Web Services' Stockholm region (eu-north-1). To delete your account entirely, write to us (see below) and we remove the account, its sessions and every paper it owns.

Services that take part

• Google, only if you sign in with it: Google tells us your name, email address and picture. We send Google nothing about your documents.
• Cloudflare Turnstile, on the forms that create an account or ask for a password reset, to tell a person from a program. Cloudflare sees that request, including your IP address, as any web service you load would.
• Amazon SES, which delivers our two emails: the link that confirms your address, and the link that resets a password. Your address is given to it for delivery and for nothing else.
• Vercel, which hosts this site and counts visits to its pages with Vercel Analytics — page views without cookies and without identifying you.

Each of the four acts on our instructions and for nothing else. All four are United States companies, and each one is certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and offers the European Commission's standard contractual clauses as well, which is what allows European data to reach them.

Server logs and limits

Like most web servers ours keep standard technical logs (IP address, time, requested path) for security and operations; these contain nothing of your documents. The account server also counts sign-in and registration attempts per address for a short time, to slow down guessing. Requests for TeX package bundles reveal only that some document needed a package — never which document or whose.

Why we are allowed to hold it

Everything on this page rests on one of two reasons, and neither of them is advertising. Your account, your saved papers and the documents you send to compile: we hold them to give you the service you asked for. Without them there is no account and nothing to compile. Server logs, the counters that slow down password guessing, Turnstile, and the page counts described above: we hold them to keep the service standing and to know how much traffic it carries.

We ask your consent for none of it, because we do nothing that needs asking: no advertising, no profiling, no following you to other sites.

How long we keep it

• Your papers and your account: until you delete them. Deleting a paper removes it; asking us to delete the account removes the account, its sessions and every paper it owns.
• A session: 90 days, or until you sign out.
• The link that confirms your email address: 24 hours. The link that resets a password: one hour. Each stops working once it is used.
• The short cookie that ties a Google sign-in to the browser that started it: ten minutes.
• The counters that slow down guessing: one hour for registration and password-reset requests, ten minutes for sign-in attempts. They count addresses, not people, and then forget.
• The working folder where your paper compiles on our server: it stays with the project so the next compile is faster, and goes when the project goes.
• Server logs: 30 days.

Why there is no cookie banner

Because there is nothing to ask you about. Loading this site stores nothing on your device and calls nobody but us. Opening the editor stores your own documents in your own browser, which is the service itself. Signing in sets one cookie, which is what keeps you signed in.

European law asks for your consent before anything is stored on your device that is not needed for the thing you asked for. We store nothing else, so there is nothing to consent to.

What we do not do

• No advertising, no tracking across sites, no selling or sharing of anything.
• No reading of your documents by us or by any system, on the server or in the browser, beyond what compiling them requires.
• No emails other than the two above, and none at all unless you asked for an account.
• Vitela is not aimed at children, and we do not knowingly hold a child's data.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of everything we hold about you, correct it, delete it, take it elsewhere in a portable form, or object to something we do with it. Write to camilo@artificialfallibility.com. We answer within a month.

If our answer does not satisfy you, you can complain to a data protection authority. In Spain that is the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos.

Who we are, and how to reach us

Vitela and the ExactTeX language are a creation of Artificial Fallibility Labs. The person responsible for the data described on this page is Camilo Chacón Sartori, in Barcelona, Spain.

Write to camilo@artificialfallibility.com about anything here: a question, a correction, a copy of what we hold about you, or a request to delete your account. The same address answers all four.

When this page changes

The date at the top changes with it. A change in what we hold, or in why we hold it, is described here before it takes effect.