Privacy Policy
Last updated: 2026-07-14
Summary
Vidsieve is a YouTube feed-cleaning extension. The free tier runs entirely on your device and makes zero network requests. The optional Pro upgrade needs to contact a small license server to verify your purchase — this policy explains exactly what that involves, since it's the only case where the extension talks to the network at all.
Free tier: fully local, zero network calls
If you never activate a Pro license, Vidsieve never makes a single network request. All filtering runs against the YouTube page already loaded in your browser. Nothing is collected, transmitted, sold, or shared.
Pro tier: what gets sent, and why
Activating a Pro license sends exactly two pieces of data to Vidsieve's license server:
- The license key you paste in
- A randomly generated device ID (created locally on install, not derived from any personal information)
This happens when you activate a key, roughly once every 24 hours in the background to confirm the license is still valid, and once if you deactivate a device. The license server is a small proxy that forwards this exact request to Creem, our payment and license processor, to check whether the key is valid — it does not store your browsing activity.
What is never sent, under any circumstance: browsing history, video titles or IDs, channel names, watch time, filter settings, or any other data about your YouTube usage.
The license server also briefly rate-limits requests by IP address to block abuse (e.g. someone hammering the activate endpoint with random keys). Your IP is kept only long enough to count requests in a short window — at most about 11 minutes — then it expires automatically. It is never linked to your license key, stored alongside your browsing activity, or shared with Creem.
If you purchase Pro, Creem (as the merchant of record) separately collects your email and payment details to process the transaction — that exchange happens on Creem's own checkout page, not inside the extension. See Creem's privacy policy for how they handle that.
Data stored locally
The extension uses chrome.storage.local to persist your
settings and filtering state. This data never leaves your browser
(except the two Pro license fields described above):
- Filter preferences (toggles, keyword lists, blocked/whitelisted channels, duration/views/age thresholds)
- Watched-video IDs (auto-expires after 90 days) — used only to hide videos you've already seen
- Per-channel daily impression counts — used only by the "daily channel limit" feature
- UI cleanup toggles
- Pro license state (key, device ID, last validation time) — only if you've activated a Pro license
You can export, delete, or reset this data at any time via the extension's options page. Exported backups exclude your Pro license key and device ID on purpose — that pair is already in your purchase confirmation email, and leaving it out of a file you might share (e.g. when asking for troubleshooting help) avoids handing out what's needed to deactivate your own license.
Permissions
| Permission | Why it is needed |
|---|---|
storage |
Save your settings locally |
contextMenus |
Add "Block channel" / "Mark watched" to the right-click menu on YouTube |
alarms |
Schedule the ~24h Pro license re-check described above — not used for anything else |
host_permissions: youtube.com |
Apply filters to the YouTube interface — no other site is touched |
host_permissions: license proxy |
Only used by the Pro license flow (activate/validate/deactivate); never contacted by the free tier |
The extension does not request <all_urls>,
webRequest, cookies, tabs, or any
permission that would allow tracking or remote access — only the five
listed above.
Third parties
- Creem — payment processing and license verification, only if/when you purchase Pro. They act as merchant of record for the transaction.
- Cloudflare — hosts the license proxy (Workers) and the short-lived IP rate-limit counter (KV) described above, and serves this website. Only involved if/when you use the Pro license flow. See Cloudflare's privacy policy.
- No analytics, no error-reporting SDKs, no ad networks, no affiliate links.
No remote code
All extension code is bundled in the installed package. The license server returns plain data (license status), never executable code — the extension does not download or evaluate remote scripts.
Data retention & deletion
- Local settings: cleared anytime via "Reset" in the options page, or automatically removed when you uninstall the extension.
- Pro license: click "Deactivate" in the options page before uninstalling to free up that device's activation slot. If you uninstall without doing that, Chrome opens a page where you can free it up afterward — no extension code runs during uninstall itself, so this can't happen automatically.
Changes
Material changes to this policy will be reflected here and in the extension's store listing.
Contact
Vidsieve is the entity responsible for the data practices described in this policy. Questions about this policy, or requests about your data (Pro license state, deletion, etc.): [email protected].