Privacy

What the extension never reads

The sponsor bar runs on the pages you visit, so it is worth being exact about what that does and does not mean. The extension does not read the address of the page, its title, its content, anything you type, or your browsing history. The only thing it reads from a page is whether the address begins with http or https, which it uses to decide whether it can run there at all.

None of that information is collected, so none of it can be sold, shared with advertisers, or handed over on request. This is a property of how the extension is built rather than a promise about how we behave.

How we know an advert was seen

While the bar is on screen the extension sends a short signal every fifteen seconds meaning, in effect, “this is still being shown”. That signal contains a campaign identifier and a random session identifier. It does not say where you are or what you are looking at.

Whether you have used the browser recently is measured on your own device — mouse movement, key presses and scrolling are watched locally to keep a single timestamp. Those events are never uploaded. Nothing about them leaves the machine; only whether the bar was eligible to earn at that moment.

What we store

• A random identifier for each browser you install on, created on your device.
• The country your connection appears to be in, worked out from your IP address by our hosting provider at the moment a sponsor is requested. Sponsors can choose which countries their campaign runs in, so this is used to decide whether a campaign is eligible and is then discarded — there is no column for it in our database, and we keep no record of where you connected from.
• The interests you type in, if any. These are the only thing used to match sponsors to you.
• A record of each completed attention-minute and each click, and the earnings from them.
• Your email address, only if you choose to sign in.
• Payout details, only if you set up payouts — these are held by Stripe, not by us.

What advertisers receive

Advertisers see how many verified attention-minutes their campaign received and how many people clicked through. They do not receive identities, email addresses, locations, or any record of an individual person’s activity. They choose an audience by interest, and interests are only ever the ones people typed in themselves.

Why the extension asks for access to every site

The bar has to be able to appear on the pages you actually visit, and the browser has no narrower permission for that. It is used to draw the bar and for nothing else. The extension also stores settings and your install identifier locally, which is the only other permission it requests.

Turning it off

The switch in the extension menu stops the bar and stops earning immediately. Removing the extension removes the local identifier with it. If you have signed in and want your account and its records deleted, write to hello@myscreenspace.com.

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