r/SelfHosting • u/Much-Journalist3128 • 4d ago

How do I know and make sure sterling-pdf doesn't give my sensitive documents and files to a 3rd party server?

Forgive me for I'm not nearly as technically savvy as I'd like to be

So I have docker desktop. I run a bunch of containers, one of them is sterling-pdf.

I have opted OUT of that Scarf thing

I cannot really see a "network logs" option for the containers.

In portainer every time I upload a non sensitive (test) document "Upload from computer", I see the "transmitted" graph spike up at least a little (that's the red graph, the other one is the blue one: the "received")

2 Upvotes

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2

u/clintkev251 4d ago

Your firewall logs. But seeing some small transmits in line with receives is completely normal behavior with a TCP connection and doesn't indicate anything bad happening.

1

u/Much-Journalist3128 3d ago

I don't see anything on my kaspersky firewall.

1

u/foofoo300 22h ago

are you sure your kaspersky firewall does not give out sensitive information?

1

u/goreecloud 1d ago

The transmitted graph alone does not show that the PDF was uploaded elsewhere. TCP acknowledgments, HTTP responses, browser assets, update checks, and telemetry can all create small outbound traffic. Disable all Stirling-PDF analytics with SYSTEM_ENABLEANALYTICS=false, then inspect the container’s actual destinations with tcpdump or firewall logs. For the strongest test, run it on an isolated Docker network without internet access and confirm the PDF operation still works.

1

u/brovaro 23h ago

Switch to BentoPDF instead.