5 ms·

Show HN: Track and Control Your PDFs

24 points by wsieroci 8y ago

wsieroci 8y ago
Hi, my name is Wiktor. Together with my friend Tom, we built HelpRange, tool to help you track and control your PDFs. What do you think about the idea? I would love to get feedback! Best, Wiktor
- nwsm 8y ago
  Can you confirm that the end result is no longer a PDF, but content hosted on your site? Or rather a PDF hosted on your site that the user doesn't copy to their computer but views on your site in their browser?
  - wsieroci 8y ago
    Yes, but there is optional possibility to allow for downloading the file, which we can't track in this case
    - swanlyk 8y ago
      So people will screenshot it if they want a copy?
      - swanlyk 8y ago
        Sorry didn't read download option :/
- tombrossman 8y ago
  I'm curious, do the two of you consider privacy at any point when building this? Well done launching, it's a nice looking site and a good idea which should appeal to non-technical people who need to track visitors and what they read. I note you are using multiple tracking technologies, each of which have some Terms & Conditions you must conform to. Your embedded Google Analytics code carries the following condition, for example: "You must post a Privacy Policy and that Privacy Policy must provide notice of Your use of cookies that are used to collect data. You must disclose the use of Google Analytics, and how it collects and processes data."[0] I see something called 'Hotjar' on the page too, and I imagine they have their own responsible disclosure and opt-out requirements, but one of my browser add-ons is blocking their site entirely and there is no way I'm disabling it to confirm my suspicions.[1] Launching so soon after the GDPR came into effect, my only recommendation is 'begin to think about privacy' and consider adding a privacy policy page, so visitors know what is happening behind the scenes. Just be upfront about it, and consider removing any tracking that is not absolutely essential. Imagine a user uploads PDFs about a sensitive or personal topic, and visitors later discover you were silently tracking them without disclosing it. Are you OK with that? [0]https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html [1]https://www.hotjar.com/privacy https://www.hotjar.com/privacy
- onyva 8y ago
  Horrible idea. Ethically. More so if the reader is not notified. You should probably add “loose potential customers” to the “cons” section. I would not follow such a link the way I don’t follow links to Scribd and such.
- turc1656 8y ago
  I'm not sure there is much of a market for this. Seems geared towards business users, as I can't imagine what the average person would need this for. As far as the business potential goes, I work at a company where we have many controls over data, documents, etc. for compliance reasons. I am fairly sure we would never use a service like this. The primary reason is that we would have to upload to your website the protected/controlled content, as that would mean you have access to it which would be a direct violation of the compliance practices we have in place. For content that isn't protected, I can't think of a single reason why we would ever need to track who's reading documents and what pages they are reading. Also, seems intrusive to monitor and report back that information. Most companies also have internal/intranet sites of their own where they could post the data themselves on something like a sharepoint sub-site and they could track who's accessing it. I just don't see a real market for this because I don't see a problem being solved here. Only an added layer of cost and complexity to controlling and tracking content.
- purerandomness 8y ago
  Hey Wiktor, ignore the HN hivemind, the age and target group is strongly skewed. While your competitor DocSend is recommended over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17095323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17095323 in this thread, you only get negative feedback. I'm sure there's a market for this B2B product, but the typical HN reader isn't your target group.
  - turc1656 8y ago
    "recommend" is a bit strong. Yes, two people recommended it. But another indicated that DocSend is disliked by investors and an actual investor chimed in to say they don't usually open DocSend links and never open them if they are from cold pitches.
eps 8y ago
Can’t seem to find any information which PDF readers are supported (read - that fetch external resources without explicit user’s consent). I suspect that not that many... Edit - in fact, the site badly needs “How it works” section, because otherwise it reads like yet another “self-destructing emails” type of product.
- DanHulton 8y ago
  Pretty sure you don't open the PDF in a reader - in fact it looks like there is no "resulting PDF". Instead the PDF is hosted on the site, which you link to, and the analytics are run on the page.
  - kevin_b_er 8y ago
    So they're not PDFs anymore?
  - codingdave 8y ago
    At which point, why even bother with the PDF... just host your content on any web site, and run Google Analytics.
- hmyr0 8y ago
  I haven't tried it, but it seems to me that this only works if the PDFs are stored on the site and viewed online, so essentially just regular analytics with an embedded document viewer.
  - wsieroci 8y ago
    Yes, that's right
kevin_b_er 8y ago
The only two questions that matter: 1. Why is the PDF reader running active or remote content without prompting? 2. What PDF readers do not respect my privacy?
- knolax 8y ago
  It seems from the trial that the link you use to look at the pdf is a page with a custom version of pdf.js . I don't think it can actually track you from your own pdf reader.
- Spivak 8y ago
  Yeah, why does a document format have the ability to run code and contact the network without the user's knowledge or permission? (glares at the web)
shashanoid 8y ago
Seems like a good tool for professors at universities. For some classes my professors send out quizzes along with (mandatory watch) lecture videos (3-4 min) long and they track how much of it have you actually watched. Mostly to see if a student is actually putting up effort or simply copying.
mifeng 8y ago
I was CEO and co-founder of doxIQ (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/doxiq https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/doxiq), a similar product. We were acquired by Nitro, another PDF software company, after a couple of years. DocSend started around the same time as us and has become the standard for final format document tracking. My suggestions: - read analytics are valuable, but it's hard to get people to pay for that alone given how many other products offer it for free - pick your target user persona (SMB vs enterprise) and focus on making them happy - focus on integrations with other systems that your target persona uses, like CRM/marketing automation/email/etc - ignore shiny object syndrome. you'll be tempted to add more analytics tools or insights to "add more value." while YMMV, i've found this to be a waste of time.
- wsieroci 8y ago
  Thanks, quite interesting tips!

24 points by wsieroci 8y ago

Hi, my name is Wiktor. Together with my friend Tom, we built HelpRange, tool to help you track and control your PDFs. What do you think about the idea? I would love to get feedback! Best, Wiktor

nwsm 8y ago
Can you confirm that the end result is no longer a PDF, but content hosted on your site? Or rather a PDF hosted on your site that the user doesn't copy to their computer but views on your site in their browser?
- wsieroci 8y ago
  Yes, but there is optional possibility to allow for downloading the file, which we can't track in this case
  - swanlyk 8y ago
    So people will screenshot it if they want a copy?
    - swanlyk 8y ago
      Sorry didn't read download option :/
tombrossman 8y ago
I'm curious, do the two of you consider privacy at any point when building this? Well done launching, it's a nice looking site and a good idea which should appeal to non-technical people who need to track visitors and what they read. I note you are using multiple tracking technologies, each of which have some Terms & Conditions you must conform to. Your embedded Google Analytics code carries the following condition, for example: "You must post a Privacy Policy and that Privacy Policy must provide notice of Your use of cookies that are used to collect data. You must disclose the use of Google Analytics, and how it collects and processes data."[0] I see something called 'Hotjar' on the page too, and I imagine they have their own responsible disclosure and opt-out requirements, but one of my browser add-ons is blocking their site entirely and there is no way I'm disabling it to confirm my suspicions.[1] Launching so soon after the GDPR came into effect, my only recommendation is 'begin to think about privacy' and consider adding a privacy policy page, so visitors know what is happening behind the scenes. Just be upfront about it, and consider removing any tracking that is not absolutely essential. Imagine a user uploads PDFs about a sensitive or personal topic, and visitors later discover you were silently tracking them without disclosing it. Are you OK with that? [0]https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html [1]https://www.hotjar.com/privacy https://www.hotjar.com/privacy
onyva 8y ago
Horrible idea. Ethically. More so if the reader is not notified. You should probably add “loose potential customers” to the “cons” section. I would not follow such a link the way I don’t follow links to Scribd and such.
turc1656 8y ago
I'm not sure there is much of a market for this. Seems geared towards business users, as I can't imagine what the average person would need this for. As far as the business potential goes, I work at a company where we have many controls over data, documents, etc. for compliance reasons. I am fairly sure we would never use a service like this. The primary reason is that we would have to upload to your website the protected/controlled content, as that would mean you have access to it which would be a direct violation of the compliance practices we have in place. For content that isn't protected, I can't think of a single reason why we would ever need to track who's reading documents and what pages they are reading. Also, seems intrusive to monitor and report back that information. Most companies also have internal/intranet sites of their own where they could post the data themselves on something like a sharepoint sub-site and they could track who's accessing it. I just don't see a real market for this because I don't see a problem being solved here. Only an added layer of cost and complexity to controlling and tracking content.
purerandomness 8y ago
Hey Wiktor, ignore the HN hivemind, the age and target group is strongly skewed. While your competitor DocSend is recommended over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17095323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17095323 in this thread, you only get negative feedback. I'm sure there's a market for this B2B product, but the typical HN reader isn't your target group.
- turc1656 8y ago
  "recommend" is a bit strong. Yes, two people recommended it. But another indicated that DocSend is disliked by investors and an actual investor chimed in to say they don't usually open DocSend links and never open them if they are from cold pitches.

eps 8y ago

Can’t seem to find any information which PDF readers are supported (read - that fetch external resources without explicit user’s consent). I suspect that not that many... Edit - in fact, the site badly needs “How it works” section, because otherwise it reads like yet another “self-destructing emails” type of product.

DanHulton 8y ago
Pretty sure you don't open the PDF in a reader - in fact it looks like there is no "resulting PDF". Instead the PDF is hosted on the site, which you link to, and the analytics are run on the page.
- kevin_b_er 8y ago
  So they're not PDFs anymore?
- codingdave 8y ago
  At which point, why even bother with the PDF... just host your content on any web site, and run Google Analytics.
hmyr0 8y ago
I haven't tried it, but it seems to me that this only works if the PDFs are stored on the site and viewed online, so essentially just regular analytics with an embedded document viewer.
- wsieroci 8y ago
  Yes, that's right

kevin_b_er 8y ago

The only two questions that matter: 1. Why is the PDF reader running active or remote content without prompting? 2. What PDF readers do not respect my privacy?

knolax 8y ago
It seems from the trial that the link you use to look at the pdf is a page with a custom version of pdf.js . I don't think it can actually track you from your own pdf reader.
Spivak 8y ago
Yeah, why does a document format have the ability to run code and contact the network without the user's knowledge or permission? (glares at the web)

shashanoid 8y ago

Seems like a good tool for professors at universities. For some classes my professors send out quizzes along with (mandatory watch) lecture videos (3-4 min) long and they track how much of it have you actually watched. Mostly to see if a student is actually putting up effort or simply copying.

mifeng 8y ago

I was CEO and co-founder of doxIQ (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/doxiq https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/doxiq), a similar product. We were acquired by Nitro, another PDF software company, after a couple of years. DocSend started around the same time as us and has become the standard for final format document tracking. My suggestions: - read analytics are valuable, but it's hard to get people to pay for that alone given how many other products offer it for free - pick your target user persona (SMB vs enterprise) and focus on making them happy - focus on integrations with other systems that your target persona uses, like CRM/marketing automation/email/etc - ignore shiny object syndrome. you'll be tempted to add more analytics tools or insights to "add more value." while YMMV, i've found this to be a waste of time.

wsieroci 8y ago
Thanks, quite interesting tips!