Text Compare
Privacy policy

What Text Compare reads

Text Compare shows the difference between two drafts you paste or drop into the workspace. Compare is the one job. Both sides live in the open tab until you close it. This page is the privacy story for that job.

What stays in the tab

  • The two sides you paste or drop. Left and Right live in the open workspace tab. They are not written to extension storage, and they are not sent anywhere by the extension.
  • The last compare result. The highlighted difference sits in that same tab until you run Compare again, reload, or close the tab.

What the extension stores

The extension keeps two entries in the browser's own extension storage, on this device.

  • textCompare.v1 - wrap and Strict. Two toggles: whether long lines wrap, and whether newlines stay as typed. No draft, no file, no name.
  • textCompareRatePrompt - whether we have already asked you to rate the extension: up to three timestamps of when the short rating line was shown, and, if you answered it or waved it away, the fact that you did. It holds nothing about you or the drafts you compared.

Those two entries are everything the extension stores. There is no e-mail and no identifier of you or of your computer in either one. To delete them, remove the extension: uninstalling deletes everything it stored.

The only pages this extension opens

  • The welcome page you see after installing is part of the extension itself, not a website. It loads one 1x1 pixel image from Yandex Metrica (mc.yandex.ru) so that we can count how many people installed the extension. That request carries your IP address, your browser user agent and the time, the way any image request does, and Yandex sets its own cookie for its own domain. It carries nothing from your work, it runs no script, and it exists on this page only: no other page of this extension contacts anyone.
  • An optional form on removal. When you remove the extension, Chrome may open a short form in a new tab, if one has been set up for this version. Answering is optional. The address carries no parameters from your work. The form, when published, is a Google Form hosted by Google LLC under Google's own privacy policy.
  • The rating line inside the extension. After a finished compare the extension may show a short row of five stars. Nothing opens until you click one. One, two or three stars open a private Google Form in a new tab, once that form exists. Four or five stars open this extension's reviews page in the Chrome Web Store, once the item is listed; until then a click there opens nothing and the line tells you so.

Those are the only pages the extension opens.

Legal bases

Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, we handle data on the basis of your consent and to perform the feature you asked for - the two sides are read only in order to show the difference you asked for. You can withdraw consent at any time by closing the tab or removing the extension.

Retention and deletion

  • The two sides and the result: only in the open tab, until you reload or close it. Nothing of them is written to storage.
  • Wrap and Strict (textCompare.v1): until you change them or remove the extension.
  • The rating record (textCompareRatePrompt): until you remove the extension. Answering or waving it away does not erase the record - that is what keeps the line from coming back.
  • On our side: nothing. The compare job does not call a server.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you have rights over your personal data:

  • GDPR / UK GDPR: access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, objection, withdrawing consent, and lodging a complaint with a supervisory authority (such as the ICO).
  • CCPA / CPRA (California): to know, access, delete and correct your data, and not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights. We do not sell or share your personal information.

Because the drafts live in the tab in front of you, you can exercise most of these yourself. Removing the extension erases the two storage entries. If you would still like to make a request, use the feedback link in the extension once it is published, and we will answer.

Counting installations

We count installations, and that is the only measurement in this extension. The welcome page shown once after installing loads a single 1x1 image from Yandex Metrica, a service of YANDEX LLC, acting as our processor. Yandex receives the request itself: your IP address, your browser user agent, the time, and a cookie Yandex sets for its own domain. We see only the resulting count and the approximate region Yandex derives from the IP address. No text, no draft, no file, no setting and no identifier of you is part of that request, and nothing of the kind appears anywhere else in the extension: the working surface makes no network request at all. If you do not want this count, block mc.yandex.ru in your browser before you install, or use the Yandex Metrica opt-out at https://yandex.com/support/metrica/en/general/opt-out.html. Closing the welcome page after it has loaded does not undo the request that already happened.

Security

The two sides are handled inside your browser by the extension's own code. They are not sent to us, and no third party receives any part of them: no cloud service, no error-reporting service, and not the analytics provider that counts installations on the welcome page either. The differencing code is packaged inside the extension, so no code is fetched from the internet while it runs. Your drafts are protected by your own device and browser profile, the same way the rest of your documents are.

Children

Text Compare is intended for users 13 and older. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children.

What we do not do

  • No accounts, no sign-up, no subscription.
  • No advertising and no ad networks.
  • We do not follow what you do inside the extension and we build no profiles. The one measurement is the install counter on the welcome page, described above.
  • No history of the drafts you compared after you close the tab.
  • We do not sell or share your data.

Limited Use

The use of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Changes to this policy

This policy takes effect on 14 September 2026. This is the first published version, written for the first release of the extension. If it changes, we will update the date at the bottom of this page.

Contact

Privacy contact: the feedback form at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfT9w7oiYuP_ZtKwEsmTxMF0uLPcFGR8SqUSCR89eRUKmMpuQ/viewform?hl=en (a Google Form the owner controls; no email address is published).

Last updated: 21 September 2026.