Effective Date: July 22, 2025
This Privacy Policy describes how the CleanRead Chrome Extension ("the extension," "we," "us," or "our") handles your information. Your privacy is important to us, and this extension has been designed from the ground up with a "privacy-first" approach, meaning it does not collect or transmit any personal data.
1. Core Philosophy: We Do Not Collect Your Data
CleanRead is designed to be a completely client-side tool. This means all its operations happen locally on your computer, within your browser.
We do not collect, store, or transmit any personally identifiable information (PII) such as your name, email address, or location.
We do not collect, store, or transmit any of the text you select or copy, even though the extension's purpose is to process it. The processing is ephemeral and local.
We do not use any third-party analytics, trackers, or advertising.
We do not monitor your Browse history or user activity.
2. How the Extension Works and Handles Information
The sole purpose of CleanRead is to help you clean up text before you copy it. Here is a step-by-step breakdown of how data is handled:
You, the user, manually select a piece of text on a webpage.
You right-click and choose the "Copy with CleanRead" option from the context menu.
The extension reads the selected text. This is considered "Website Content."
The extension processes this text locally on your device to remove hidden characters and reformat dashes.
The extension then uses the browser's functionality to place this cleaned text onto your computer's clipboard.
The text you select is processed ephemerally and is never stored by the extension or transmitted to us or any third party.
3. Permissions and Why We Need Them
The extension requests a limited number of permissions to perform its specific function. Here is what each permission is used for:
contextMenus: To add the "Copy with CleanRead" option to your right-click menu. This is the primary way you interact with the extension.
activeTab: To allow the extension to run on the webpage you are currently viewing when you click the context menu item. It does not have access to your other tabs or Browse history.
scripting: To execute the code that reads your selected text and performs the cleaning operation.
clipboardWrite: To place the final, cleaned text onto your clipboard. The extension cannot read from your clipboard.
storage: To store a single setting: whether the extension is toggled "ON" or "OFF." This setting is saved locally on your device so the extension can remember your preference.
host_permissions ("<all_urls>"): To ensure the context menu option is available on any website you might need to copy text from.
4. Data Storage
The only piece of data the extension stores is the "ON/OFF" toggle state (cleanreadEnabled), which is kept in your browser's local chrome.storage.local area. The actual text you select and clean is never stored.
5. Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy in the future if the extension's functionality changes. We will post the updated policy on the extension's Chrome Web Store page. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically.