Browser extension privacy
The short version: the extension reads the address of the page you’re on, checks it against a list stored on your own device, and never sends that address anywhere.
What the extension does
The extension tells you when the site or profile you’re viewing belongs to a creator who has a public sponsorship wall on SponsoredBy, and links you to it.
What it reads
To do that, it reads the URL of your active tab. That is why Chrome asks you to grant access to your browsing activity when you install it — the permission is required for the extension to see the address of the page at all.
What it sends — and doesn’t
URLs you visit are never sent to us, or to anyone else. They are not logged, stored, or transmitted. The matching happens entirely inside your browser.
It works this way because we deliberately built it to. Once a day the extension downloads a single public file listing the verified handles and domains of creators with walls. Checking whether your current page is in that list is done locally, against that downloaded copy. We could have built it to ask our server about each page you open — that is the simpler design — but it would have meant receiving a record of everywhere you go, which we did not want to hold.
The extension makes exactly two kinds of network request, both to sponsoredby.io:
- The creator list, roughly once a day. This is the same public file for every user and tells us nothing about you beyond the fact that someone downloaded it.
- One creator’s public profile, only when the page you are on matches a wall and you click the extension icon to open the preview. This tells us that someone looked up that creator — the same thing that visiting their public wall would tell us.
What it stores
The downloaded creator list, and the time it was last refreshed, in your browser’s local extension storage. Nothing else. No browsing history, no page contents, no identifiers. Removing the extension deletes it.
What it never does
- It does not read the contents of any page — only the address in the address bar.
- It does not inject anything into the pages you visit.
- It does not track you, build a profile of you, or use cookies.
- It does not require an account, and it does not know whether you have one.
- It does not sell, share, or transfer any data, because it does not collect any.
The creator list
The list contains the verified social handles and verified domains of creators whose walls are public, mapped to their SponsoredBy username. All of it is already public on each creator’s own wall. Creators whose profiles are hidden are not included.
Changes
If the extension ever changes what it reads or sends, this page will be updated before that version ships. Questions go to privacy@sponsoredby.io.