GradeGuard Privacy Policy
Effective July 20, 2026 · applies to GradeGuard v0.10 and later. This page is the canonical published policy; it changes only together with a version bump of the extension.
The short version
- All review analysis happens locally in your browser.
- Nothing is transmitted anywhere until you explicitly enable community grades on the first-run choice screen (or the popup toggle). Until then — and always, if you decline — the extension makes no contact with our server.
- When enabled, only anonymous product-level grade records travel. Never review text, never reviewer names, never your identity, never your Amazon account.
- We do not sell data, run analytics, use ads, or create accounts.
What the extension does locally
On Amazon product pages you visit, GradeGuard collects the page's
written reviews inside your own session, scores them for fake-review
patterns, audits reviewer accounts, and stores the resulting grade in
chrome.storage.local on your device. Network requests in this
mode go only to the Amazon site you are already on. Stored locally: grade
records (grade, ratings, warnings, short excerpts of flagged reviews —
content already public on Amazon), rate-limiter counters, and a settings
object. No browsing history, no search queries, no purchase data, no
personal information. Uninstalling the extension deletes everything it
stored.
Community grades (only after you say yes)
A one-time first-run screen explains this feature and waits for an explicit choice. A fresh install is “undecided” and behaves exactly like local-only mode — zero server contact — until you enable sharing. You can change the choice anytime via the toolbar popup.
When enabled, finished full scans upload a record containing exactly:
marketplace, product ID (ASIN),
grade, reviewer rating, listed
rating, a 16-bit warning bitmask, engine
version, and a timestamp — about 70 bytes. The
extension also looks up records for products you view so grades appear
instantly.
What the server necessarily sees, stated honestly: any upload or lookup reveals your IP address and the fact that someone at that IP interacted with that product at that time. Our commitments: no accounts, no persistent client identifiers, IP addresses are used only for transient abuse rate-limiting in memory and are never stored alongside records, and request logs are not retained beyond operational necessity (days, not months).
A shared record never contains: review text, reviewer display names, your identity, email, Amazon account, search queries, browsing history, purchase data, or any identifier tying records from the same person together. Reading individual reviews always requires a local scan on your own device.
What we never do
- Sell or share data with third parties, advertisers, or data brokers.
- Use collected data for any purpose unrelated to fake-review detection (including any form of personalized advertising).
- Use it to determine creditworthiness or for lending.
- Run remote code, telemetry, analytics, or error reporting.
Local-only, verifiably
With community grades off — or the choice simply never made — the extension makes no contact with our server on any code path, and every analysis feature still works. Structurally, the sharing gate is enforced in the extension and re-checked independently by its service worker — the only component able to reach the network — and the unpacked code of any installed extension can be inspected in the browser.
Changes
Any change to this posture requires a version bump, an update to this policy and the repository copy together, and — for anything that widens data flow — a prominent in-product notice before it takes effect.
Contact
Questions or requests: use the support link on the extension's Chrome Web Store listing.
GradeGuard is an independent project — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Amazon. “Amazon” is a trademark of Amazon.com, Inc., used here only to describe compatibility.