Privacy Policy
Last updated: 16 August 2026
Link Auto Cleaner collects nothing, sends nothing, and stores nothing outside your own browser.
What is collected
Nothing. There is no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no accounts, no ads, no identifiers, and no remote configuration.
Network requests
By default the extension makes zero network requests. It contains no server, no API, and no remote rule updates. The rule database ships inside the extension and only changes when you install an update.
There is one exception, and it is off until you turn it on:
Resolve short links (Settings → Behaviour → How thorough). Shorteners like bit.ly, amzn.to and vm.tiktok.com hide their destination behind an HTTP redirect. The only way to see where one goes is to ask. With this setting on, the extension sends a HEAD request to the shortener domain you are cleaning, with credentials omitted and no referrer, follows the redirect, and cleans the result.
- It contacts only the shortener domain in the link you are cleaning.
- It sends no cookies and no referrer.
- It is labelled "uses the network" everywhere it appears in the interface.
- With it off,
fetchis never called.
You can verify this: search the source for fetch(. There is one call, in src/background/service-worker.js, inside resolveShortLink(), behind a check on this setting.
What is stored on your device
Using chrome.storage.local:
- Your settings.
- Your paused-site list and any custom rules you add.
- Two counters: how many links were cleaned and how many parameters were removed.
- An optional activity log of cleaned links, capped at 50 entries.
storage.local is deliberate. The alternative, storage.sync, would upload your paused-site list — effectively a list of sites you visit — to Google's or Mozilla's sync servers. This extension does not do that.
The activity log stores the URLs you cleaned. It never leaves your device, you can turn it off in Settings → Data & privacy, and you can clear it there at any time. If you would rather keep no record, turn it off — new entries stop immediately.
Uninstalling the extension removes all of it.
Page access
The extension runs a content script on web pages to watch for copy, paste and right-click events. It reads the text you are copying or pasting so it can clean URLs in it. That text is processed in memory and never stored or transmitted — the only thing that persists is what the activity log records, and only when the log is on.
The extension does not read page content otherwise, does not track browsing, and does not inject anything into pages beyond the small notification that appears when a link is cleaned.
Permissions, and why each is needed
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
storage | Save your settings on this device. |
contextMenus | Add "Copy clean link" to the right-click menu. |
declarativeNetRequest | Strip tracking parameters from addresses during top-level navigation. Rules are declarative — the extension does not see your browsing. |
activeTab | Read the current tab's address when you open the popup or use the keyboard shortcut. |
host_permissions (http/https) | Run the copy/paste interception on the pages where you copy links. |
Third parties
There are none. No SDKs, no libraries, no CDNs, no fonts loaded from elsewhere. The extension has zero dependencies.
Changes
Any change to this policy will appear in CHANGELOG.md and in the version history. If a future version ever adds a network request, it will be opt-in, labelled, and called out in the changelog.
Contact
Open an issue on the project repository.