Privacy Policy

WatchDawg is a passive, 100% local privacy informer for Chrome. The short version: WatchDawg collects nothing, stores no browsing history, and sends nothing anywhere.

What WatchDawg observes (on your device only)

To tell you about privacy exposure on the page you are viewing, WatchDawg reads, in the browser's memory only:

• Subresource requests the page makes (hostnames), via the standard PerformanceObserver API, to detect third-party trackers.
• Presence counts of first-party cookies and localStorage / sessionStorage keys on the current page. WatchDawg does not read cookie or storage values, and cannot see third-party or HttpOnly cookies.
• Fingerprinting API calls (canvas, WebGL, audio, font enumeration) on the page — only if you turn this optional, best-effort feature on. It is off by default.
• Your installed extensions' declared permissions, via chrome.management.getAll(), to show you what each extension is capable of accessing. This is read-only metadata; WatchDawg never enables, disables, or removes any extension, and never asserts what an extension is actually doing.

What WatchDawg does NOT do

• No transmission. WatchDawg makes no network requests at runtime. There is no server, no analytics, no telemetry, and no remote logging.
• No persistence. WatchDawg does not use chrome.storage, cookies, IndexedDB, or any on-disk storage. Its analysis lives only in the service worker's memory.
• No browsing history. State is a per-tab snapshot that is reset on every page navigation and discarded when the tab is closed.
• No selling or sharing. Because nothing leaves your device, there is nothing to sell or share with anyone.
• No blocking or modification. WatchDawg is passive; it never blocks, redirects, or alters page requests.

Permissions and why

• management — to read installed extensions' declared capabilities for the capability risk view. Read-only.
• Host access (<all_urls>) — to run the passive page observer on the sites you visit. WatchDawg makes no cross-origin requests and reads no cookie values.

Bundled data

WatchDawg ships three open tracker datasets (EasyPrivacy, DuckDuckGo Tracker Radar, Disconnect) inside the extension package. They are used locally for matching and are credited in the extension's "Credits & Licenses" view. The only network access in the entire project is a manual developer script (tools/update-lists.sh) used to refresh those bundled lists between releases; it is never run by the extension itself.

Children

WatchDawg is a general-audience utility and does not knowingly process any personal information from anyone, including children.

Changes

If this policy ever changes, the "Last updated" date above will change and the new version will ship with the extension.

Contact

Questions about privacy: karim@ngmilabs.com