Terms of Use

By using blotmarked.app (the "Service"), operated by Derrick Tawah, trading as Leanstart Africa, you agree to these Terms of Use. If you don't agree, don't use the Service.

Blotmarked is a tool that finds and permanently blacks out personal data (names, emails, phone numbers, IDs, and similar) in PDF and image documents. Detection and redaction run entirely in your browser: your document is never uploaded to us. Once you confirm which items to redact, the app rebuilds the file from flattened page images with no underlying extractable text, embedded metadata, or hidden layers, verifies that automatically, and hands you the result to download.

A page-by-page "sweep" and manual box/erase tools are provided for anything automatic detection misses (handwriting, stamps, logos, text baked into an image, and similar). Using them is your responsibility, not something the Service does for you automatically.

You don't need to register an account to redact documents. Opening a document, reviewing what was found, marking it up and checking it page by page all cost nothing. Saving the finished redacted file is what consumes one credit, and one credit covers one document however many pages or redactions it has. There is no subscription and nothing recurring.

Prices include VAT. The price shown on the Credits screen is the total you pay; no tax or fee is added at checkout.

Credits you have bought do not expire. Credits granted under the test programme are the exception: those stop working on the date given in the message that issued them.

Because there is no account, credits are held against a credit code rather than against a person. The code can be entered on any device to move the balance there, and anyone holding it can spend it, so keep it somewhere safe. If you lose it we cannot look you up, because there is no record tying it to you.

Blotmarked is for adults. You need to be 18 or over to buy credits or to ask for test access, because both involve a payment or an agreement we cannot make with a child.

Redacting a document does not require an account and we cannot tell who is at the keyboard, which is deliberate - the app holds no identity at all. If you are under 18 and want to remove personal information from a document, ask an adult to buy the credit and do it with you. If you believe a child has given us an email address through the request form for test credits, write to us and we will delete it.

The privacy policy refers to a lower age of 16. That is the age at which someone can consent to an online service handling their data; 18 is the age at which they can agree to buy something. Both apply, to different things.

You can request a refund in the app, through the refund form linked from the Refunds section of the help page, by providing your credit code and a reason. You can also reply to your receipt email. Requests are reviewed and decided by us.

Credits that have been spent are not refundable. Spending a credit produces a redacted file on your own device, which we cannot recall and cannot verify the deletion of, so that part of the purchase is delivered and final. Credits you bought and have not used can be refunded.

If you believe you were charged twice, or paid and never received credits, contact us using the address on your receipt and we will look at it whatever has been spent.

Your statutory right of withdrawal is unaffected. For digital content supplied immediately, that right lapses once you have agreed to immediate performance and confirmed that you know it lapses.

Access to the tester program is granted at our discretion, by approving a request or issuing an invite code. We may revoke tester status or an invite or credit code at any time, in particular for suspected abuse, fraud, or violation of these Terms.

• You're solely responsible for the documents you process, for confirming that detected and manual redactions actually cover everything you intend to hide, and for reviewing the output before you rely on, share, publish, or submit it anywhere.
• You won't use the Service to process content you don't have the right to handle, or for any unlawful purpose.
• You won't attempt to disrupt, reverse engineer for malicious purposes, or gain unauthorized access to the Service, the admin console, or other users' codes/payments.
• You're responsible for keeping any credit code, invite code, or admin sign-in link you receive confidential. They act like a password.

Automatic detection (text-layer parsing and on-device OCR) is designed to catch common personal-data patterns, but it can miss things and, less often, flag things unnecessarily. The Service does not perform automatic face or biometric detection. Because of this, the Service is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including as to completeness, accuracy, or fitness for a particular purpose (e.g. a specific legal, regulatory, or publishing requirement). You should independently verify a redacted document meets your own requirements before relying on it, especially for anything with legal, medical, financial, or safety consequences.

Derrick Tawah, trading as Leanstart Africa is liable without limit for intent and gross negligence, and for injury to life, body or health. For ordinary negligence we are liable only where an obligation is breached whose fulfilment makes proper performance of this agreement possible in the first place and on which you may rely, and then only up to the foreseeable damage typical for this kind of agreement.

Liability under the German Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz) is unaffected. Beyond that we are not liable, in particular not for indirect damage or for personal data that was not redacted, incorrectly redacted, or disclosed after it left the Service.

Parts of the Service may rely on third parties you interact with directly. For example, a payment processor (Stripe and/or Wero) for card payments, or Google if an administrator chooses to sign in that way. Your use of those services is subject to their own terms, which we don't control.

The Service, its branding, and its underlying code belong to Derrick Tawah, trading as Leanstart Africa (or its licensors). You retain all rights to the documents you process. We never receive a copy of them, so we have nothing to claim rights over.

We may suspend or revoke access to the tester program, an invite code, or a credit code, and may restrict access to the Service, if we reasonably believe these Terms have been violated or the Service is being abused.

We may update the Service and these Terms from time to time; material changes will be reflected by updating the date at the top of this page. Continued use after a change means you accept the updated Terms.

These Terms are governed by German law, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. Mandatory consumer-protection rules of the country where you habitually live are unaffected.

Questions about these Terms: leanstart.africa@gmail.com.