Privacy
Focal is a Chrome extension that explains and fact-checks text you select while reading. There are no accounts, no sign-up, and no analytics or advertising trackers. We never store the pages you read.
The short version
- No account, no email, no password, no profile.
- We do not store, log, or sample the content of pages you read.
- Your reading history stays in your own browser and is never uploaded.
- We do not use analytics, advertising, or third-party trackers.
- We do not sell or share data with anyone.
Two ways Focal can run
What touches our servers depends on which one you use, so they are described separately.
1. With your own OpenAI API key
Your key is stored only in your browser’s local extension storage. When you ask Focal something, your browser sends the page text and your question directly to OpenAI.
Nothing reaches us at all. We operate no server on this path, cannot see your key, your pages, or your questions, and have no record that you used Focal.
2. On the free trial, before you add a key
So you can try Focal without an OpenAI account, the first requests go through a small service we run, which adds our own OpenAI key and forwards the request. On this path, the page text passes through our server on its way to OpenAI.
The trial covers a fixed number of requests, with fact-checking (Validate) metered separately and more tightly because each one also runs a web search. When either allowance runs out, that feature asks you to add your own key; the rest keep working.
It passes through and is discarded. Page text is never written to a database or a log, and nothing of it is kept once the request finishes. Our request logs record only the items listed below.
What we do keep, for metering and abuse prevention:
- A random identifier generated by your browser. It is not derived from you, your device, or your Google account, and it tells us nothing about who you are.
- How many requests that identifier has used, counted separately for general use and for fact-checks.
- Which feature was used (explain, validate, summarize, or worth-reading) and when.
- Token counts and an estimated cost, so we can keep our own spending in check.
- A one-way hash of your IP address, to spot automated abuse. We do not keep the address itself and cannot recover it from the hash.
None of that can be tied back to you, and none of it records what you were reading — no URLs, no page titles, no selected text, no answers.
Adding your own key in Options switches you permanently to path 1.
Your reading history stays on your machine
Focal saves each answer you ask for — the page, the text you selected, and the answer — so you can search back through what you have read. This is stored in your browser (IndexedDB), scoped to that browser profile.
It is never uploaded, synced, or sent to us. You can delete any entry, or clear all of it, from the extension’s Options page. Uninstalling Focal removes it.
Only answers you explicitly ask for are saved. Pages you merely visit are never recorded.
OpenAI
On both paths, the page text and your question are sent to OpenAI to produce an answer. Their handling of that data is governed by their own policies: OpenAI Privacy Policy and API data usage policies. At the time of writing, OpenAI states that API data is not used to train their models by default.
The Validate feature also uses OpenAI’s built-in web search, which means the claim you selected is used as a search query.
Permissions, and why Focal asks for them
- Access to websites you visit — Focal explains text on whatever page you are reading, so it cannot know in advance which sites you will need it on. It reads page content only when you explicitly ask, by selecting text and clicking Explain or Validate, or choosing Summarize from the right-click menu. It does nothing on pages you simply browse.
- Storage — your API key, your settings, and your local reading history. Focal asks for unlimited storage so a long reading history is not silently truncated; it is all held in your browser.
- Access to local files — only if you turn on “Allow access to file URLs” yourself, so Focal can read PDFs you open from your own disk. It is off unless you enable it.
- Tabs and scripting — to read the text of the page you asked about.
- Context menus and side panel — the right-click entries and the chat panel.
How long we keep things
Page content is never stored, so there is nothing to retain or delete. Free-trial metering records — the identifier, its request count, and the per-request rows above — are kept while the free trial runs, so we can enforce the allowance and watch our own spending.
You can have them removed at any time by sending us the identifier, which the extension shows on its Options page. Because the identifier is random and holds nothing about you, we have no other way to find your records.
Children
Focal is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect information from them.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what we collect, we will update the date at the top and note the change in the extension’s release notes.
Contact
Questions about this policy: privacy@focalread.app.