Browser Extension Privacy Policy

The PageScouter browser extension sends web page content to a PageScouter server that you configure and control. It is designed to collect and transmit as little as possible.

Limited Use

PageScouter's use of information received from the extension adheres to the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements. The extension collects and transmits data only to provide its single purpose — web-page change monitoring — by sending the pages you choose to monitor to your own PageScouter server. It is not sold or transferred to third parties, is not used for advertising, and is not used to determine creditworthiness or for lending.

What the extension stores locally

Stored in your browser via chrome.storage.local and never transmitted anywhere except to your configured PageScouter server:

• The PageScouter server URL you enter.
• The capture token used to authenticate to that server — whether you paste it in or obtain it through the "Log in with PageScouter" flow.
• Your background-capture and badge preferences (on/off, poll interval).
• A short summary of the most recent background poll, and the set of hostnames you monitor (used to colour the toolbar icon), for display in the popup.

What the extension transmits, and to whom

The extension sends captured content and its capture token only to the PageScouter server URL you configure. It transmits to that server:

• The URL, HTML, and text content of pages you capture (manually or on schedule), so PageScouter can detect changes.
• For each capture, a small amount of technical metadata about the fetch: the HTTP status code and a few response headers (content type, entity tag, last-modified, Cloudflare mitigation), used by the server's change and caching logic.
• Your capture token, to authenticate the request.

In return, the server tells the extension which of your monitors are due, their IDs and URLs, and a count of unread changes (shown on the toolbar badge). This is your own monitoring data, exchanged only with your server.

Scheduled background capture also makes ordinary page requests to the specific sites you chose to monitor, using your existing browser session, so those sites receive the same request data they would receive if you visited them in Chrome. The extension does not send the captured page content or capture token to those sites, the extension author, Google, or any analytics/advertising service. There is no analytics, telemetry, or tracking.

Monitoring pages behind a login

If you point a monitor at a page that requires you to be signed in, the extension captures that page using your existing browser session and sends the resulting content to your PageScouter server — so the stored content can include information visible only to your logged-in account, which may contain personal, financial, health, or private communication data depending on the page. Only capture pages whose content you are comfortable storing on your PageScouter server. The extension refuses to follow a redirect to a different site, so a monitored page cannot cause another site's logged-in content to be captured.

Ordinary server logs

Like any web service, the PageScouter server your extension talks to keeps routine operational logs of the requests it receives. Each entry typically records the source IP address, the timestamp, the HTTP method and endpoint path, the response status, and the browser user-agent string. The server additionally keeps a security audit trail (with IP address and timestamp) of account-level events such as signing in and creating or revoking a capture token.

These logs exist for operating and securing the service — debugging errors, spotting abuse — and are not used for advertising, profiling, or tracking you across sites, and are not shared with third parties. Because the server is one you configure and control, its log retention is set by whoever operates that server.

Data retention & deletion

Captured content is retained by your PageScouter server under that server's retention policy (by default, change history is pruned automatically over time). You can delete a monitor — and its stored content — at any time from the PageScouter web app. Locally stored extension data is removed when you disconnect the extension or uninstall it. Disconnecting also revokes that browser's capture token on the server, so the credential is invalidated and not merely forgotten; tokens are additionally revocable at any time from Preferences → Capture tokens.

Page content

When you capture a page, its content is read by your own browser and sent to your PageScouter server — the same content you can see on the page. The server stores it to compare against future captures, exactly as it does for pages it fetches itself.

Permissions

The manifest declares optional site access (*://*/*) so arbitrary user-selected sites can be supported, but the extension requests access only to the specific origins of your capture monitors when you enable scheduled background capture. It is used solely to fetch those pages with your existing session. The login permission (identity) is used only for the "Log in with PageScouter" handshake.

Data security

The extension requires an https:// PageScouter server URL (except localhost for development), so page content and tokens are transmitted over a secure connection. Capture tokens are revocable at any time from Preferences → Capture tokens.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or requests about data held about you, can be sent to support@pagescouter.com. If you run your own PageScouter server, the operator of that server controls the data stored on it and is the right first point of contact for anything held there.