Privacy policy

What Trace stores, and where

When you copy text on a web page, Trace records the passage you copied, the time you copied it, and publicly available information about the page (its title, author, publication date, URL, and similar metadata the page publishes about itself). It also stores the projects you create and your settings.

All of this is written to your browser's local extension storage on your own computer. It is not transmitted anywhere. We cannot see it, retrieve it, or recover it for you.

What Trace never does

• It does not send your captures, browsing history, or page content to any server.
• It does not create an account or ask for your name, email, or anything that identifies you.
• It does not include analytics, telemetry, crash reporting, or advertising.
• It does not use your bandwidth or your device for any purpose other than your own captures.
• It does not sell, share, or transfer data to third parties, because it holds none to transfer.

The two times Trace uses the network

When you press Verify on a captured quote, Trace fetches that single page again to check whether the quote is still there. The request goes directly from your browser to that website, exactly as if you had visited it yourself. Nothing is sent to us, and no other page is requested. This never happens automatically — only when you press the button.

When you activate a licence key, Trace sends two things to tracecite.app: the key, and a device ID. The device ID is a random string generated on your computer the first time Trace runs — it contains nothing about you, your computer or your browsing. We use it only to let each key work on up to three devices, so a key can't be shared widely. This happens once per device; after that, Trace never contacts us again. If you never buy a key, it never happens.

What we keep is the key, the device IDs it has been activated on, and the date of each activation. Nothing else.

Permissions, and why they're needed

• Access to all websites — Trace must be able to notice a copy event and read the page's citation metadata wherever you happen to be reading. This processing happens entirely inside your browser. You can exclude any site permanently in Settings.
• Storage — to keep your captures on your device between sessions.
• Active tab and scripting — used only when you press "Cite page", to read the current page's metadata.

Payment

Trace is free to try and costs a one-off A$12 to unlock. If you buy a licence, the payment is handled by our payment provider, Polar, who collects the information they need to process it (such as your email address and payment details). We never see your card details. Your key is activated as described above; the activation record is not linked to your name, email or payment.

Children

Trace is suitable for students and is used in schools. Because it collects no personal information and transmits nothing, it holds no data about any user, including children.

Deleting your data

Delete individual captures or entire projects from the Trace workspace at any time, or use "Delete all captures" in Settings. Removing the extension from your browser deletes everything it has stored. We recommend exporting a backup first, since we cannot restore anything for you.

Changes to this policy

If Trace ever changes in a way that affects this policy, the policy will be updated here and the change described in the extension's release notes before the new version ships.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or anything else: admin@authero.app.