Privacy Policy for Headlines Monitor

Last Updated: March 29, 2026

Headlines Monitor is committed to protecting your privacy. This policy explains how the extension handles data and your rights as a user.

1. Local-First Philosophy

The extension is designed to operate locally on your browser.

No Accounts: You do not need to create an account to use this extension.
Local Storage: All your data—including your "Watch List" (URLs and XPaths), "Link History," "Translation Cache," and "Keywords"—is stored exclusively on your device using the browser.storage.local API.
No Tracking: We do not collect, store, or transmit your browsing history, personal information, or usage analytics to any remote servers.

2. Information We Process

The extension processes the following information to provide its core features:

Scraped Content: The extension fetches text content from the URLs you specify to display headlines in your dashboard. This stays in your browser.
Images & Favicons: To enhance the UI, the extension fetches favicons and article images. These are cached as Blobs in your local storage.

3. Third-Party Services (Optional Features)

The extension only communicates with external services when you enable specific features:

Translation: If you choose to translate headlines, the text is sent to third-party APIs (such as MyMemory or custom translation backends) to perform the translation.
Linguistic Expansion: If you use keyword highlighting with language translation, the extension may query dictionaryapi.dev or datamuse.com to find word variants.
Favicons: The extension may use Google's favicon service (s2/favicons) to retrieve website icons.

Note: When these services are called, your IP address may be visible to the provider as part of the standard HTTP request, but no other identifying data is sent.

4. Permissions Disclosure

To function correctly, the extension requires the following permissions:

scripting & host permissions: Used to extract text from the specific websites you choose to monitor.
declarativeNetRequest: Necessary for the "Grid View" feature to allow site previews by safely removing headers that prevent embedding (like X-Frame-Options).
cookies: Used to ensure that site previews in your dashboard maintain your preferred session settings and language.
alarms: Used to schedule background refreshes of your monitored headlines.

5. Data Control

Export/Import: You can export your entire configuration to a JSON file at any time.
Deletion: Removing a URL from your Watch List automatically triggers a cleanup process that deletes the associated link history, cached images, and specific translation entries from your local storage.
Full Reset: Uninstalling the extension or clearing your browser data will permanently delete all stored settings.

6. Security

We implement sanitization practices (such as input sanitization and secure URL parsing) to protect you against Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and other common vulnerabilities.

7. Changes to This Policy

This policy may be updated to reflect changes in functionality or browser requirements. The "Last Updated" date at the top will indicate when the most recent changes were made.

8. Contact

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please write to info@cybermon.info.