Privacy policy and terms

Choice is built to collect as little personal data as possible. You do not need an account to use the website or extension.

What Choice never sees

Choice works without knowing who you are. There is no account, no login and no profile, and the values you choose never reach our servers.

The extension makes no request and reads no site domain until you explicitly allow domain checks in its first-run screen. Declining keeps every network feature off. You can withdraw that choice later by disabling or uninstalling the extension. Disabling stops every request; uninstalling also removes its stored data, including cached company lookups.

• Only the bare domain. The extension sends the domain by itself — amazon.com — and nothing more. Never the full URL, the page path, what you searched for, what is on the page or anything you type into it. The server rejects any request carrying more than a bare domain.
• No account, no login, no identifier. A lookup carries no account, no sign-in, no device ID and no tracking cookie. There is nothing in it that points back to you.
• Lookups are never logged against you. The domain is not written to an access log, a history or a per-person record. Choice stores company research, not who looked at what — so there is no browsing history here to leak, sell or hand over.
• Your values stay on your device. The issues you choose to be warned about are saved in your own browser and never leave your device. Choice cannot see what you selected, because Choice never receives it.
• The matching happens on your device. Your browser compares the company’s evidence against your issues locally. Choice sends the company record out; your side of the comparison never comes back.
• No tracking in the extension. The extension sends no analytics, usage events, advertising identifiers or error reports. After you allow domain checks, it can ask Choice for the current site’s company record; it also requests aggregate issue-coverage counts, searches when you type in its search box and sends a report when you rate a finding up or down. These operational requests carry no account, device ID or analytics cookie.

When Choice has no record for a domain it returns “unknown” and adds the bare domain to its research queue: the domain, a count of how often it has been asked for and when it was last asked — no address, identifier or page. The most-requested companies are researched next, which is how the directory grows with where people actually go. Cloudflare processes the bare-domain request in transit as Choice’s network and security provider; Choice’s origin does not write the domain to an access log.

Extension permissions

The browser shows broad permission names. Here is what Choice actually uses them for:

• All-sites access (http://*/*, https://*/*): Lets the extension read the current site’s domain and show a company warning when a page loads. Choice does not read the page’s text, searches, forms or personal information.
• Storage: Saves the issues you chose, your settings and any picks still awaiting review on your device. This data is not sent to Choice.
• ActiveTab: Lets the popup access the current tab after you open the extension.

Information Choice handles

• Domain-check consent: Before reading or sending a site domain, the extension explains the automatic transfer and waits for you to agree — at the end of setup, or on the popup if you open that first. Declining or withdrawing consent prevents requests and erases cached lookup results.
• Company Lookups: After consent, the extension sends a bare domain without an identifier. Choice returns an existing company record and does not write the lookup to its logs; a miss adds the bare domain to the research queue, as described above.
• Warning Matching: Conflicts, non-conflicts and unknowns are calculated in the extension. Choice does not receive a political label or inferred profile — the only thing that ever names a finding is a report you choose to send.
• Finding Reports: If you rate a finding or a suggested alternative up or down, Choice stores which company and which finding you marked, and — on a thumbs-down — the reason you picked from the list and your optional note. Nothing is attached to it — no account, device ID, session or cookie — so reports cannot be linked to each other or back to you. Because the findings you see depend on the issues you chose, a report can imply one of those issues. Nothing is sent unless you press the button.
• Website usage: The Choice website uses the analytics described below. This does not cover other sites you visit.
• Browser Waitlist Email: If you ask to hear when a browser version is ready, Choice stores your email, requested browser and signup date.
• Anonymous Feedback: If you use the Feedback page, Choice stores the feedback type, title, what you wrote and, for a company-information report, the company, exact record item and problem type you selected. It also stores the request’s review status and submission date. The form does not ask for or store your name or email address.
• Legacy Company Alert Rows: Choice no longer accepts company-alert subscriptions. An older row may contain an email, company slug and signup date until the normal 12-month purge or an earlier deletion request removes it.
• Tag Requests: If you suggest a tag, Choice stores the text and date without your name, email or another identifier.

Browser waitlist and anonymous feedback

The optional browser waitlist is the only current form where Choice stores contact details. The Feedback form is anonymous, and the unfinished company-alert form has been removed.

• Retention: Browser-waitlist entries, legacy alert rows and anonymous feedback are deleted automatically 12 months after submission. Rate-limit records expire within 48 hours. The deletion job runs every day.
• Use: Choice does not sell or rent this information. A browser-waitlist email is used only for the requested browser-release notice. Anonymous feedback is used only to decide what Choice should add, research or correct.
• Abuse prevention: Choice rate-limits anonymous submissions so the free service cannot be flooded. The origin converts the incoming network address into a secret-keyed code that is different for each route and time window. It stores that code and a request count for no more than 48 hours—not the address, user agent, cookie or a persistent visitor ID. The code is not attached to a submission and cannot be used to recover the address.
• Personal information: Do not put personal contact information in a request. The forms do not need it.
• Backups: A deleted row can remain in encrypted disaster-recovery backups for up to 90 days. Backups are access-restricted and are used only to restore the service after data loss.
• Early deletion: You can have the address erased sooner by emailing privacy@youneedchoice.com. Every matching row will be deleted.

Website

If you press Accept, Choice loads PostHog for pages viewed, clicks, referral and campaign links, device/browser type and masked session replays. All text inputs and passwords are masked. Before you accept—or after you decline—PostHog is not loaded and no website analytics event is sent.

Website analytics events discard the IP address, and Choice does not derive a location from it. With consent, some events can be sent by the server so broken searches or signup forms are visible. Those events never include what you typed, your email or an extension lookup domain.

Extension

The extension sends no analytics of any kind—no usage events, error reports, advertising identifiers or analytics cookies. Before you allow domain checks it makes no operational request. After consent, its request types are a company lookup for the current bare domain, aggregate coverage counts by issue, a search when you type in its search box and a report when you rate a finding. None carries an account, device ID or session.

Consent and advertising

Choice does not load advertising or conversion-measurement tags.

• Every visitor: PostHog is off and its script is not requested until you press Accept. Pressing Decline keeps it off.
• The consent answer is stored in your browser. Clearing site data shows the banner again.

Choice does not sell, trade or rent personal information.

• PostHog: Website analytics and masked session replay.
• Sentry: If enabled, production error monitoring receives a report only when the website fails; performance tracing is off by default. Request bodies, cookies, query strings, IP headers, emails, visited domains and stack-frame local variables are scrubbed before a report leaves the server.
• Cloudflare: DNS, TLS termination, traffic filtering and the encrypted tunnel to Choice’s origin. Cloudflare processes network metadata such as an IP address and, for extension lookups, the bare-domain request in transit to deliver and protect the service. Choice’s origin access log omits IP addresses, query strings, referrers, user agents and request bodies; operational logs are deleted after 14 days.

The site and extension use HTTPS. Choice does not promise that electronic storage is perfectly secure or claim protections it cannot verify.

Choice’s use of information received from Chrome APIs adheres to the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Choice uses that information only to provide or improve the extension’s disclosed company-research features; it is not used for advertising, profiling or sale.

• Clear local data: Clear the extension’s stored data or reinstall it to remove your saved issues and settings.
• Decline in the first place: The setup screen asks before Choice checks a single site. Choose Not now and no domain is ever sent.
• Withdraw extension consent: Disable or uninstall Choice from your browser’s extension page. Disabling stops every request; uninstalling also removes the extension’s stored data, including cached company lookups.
• Delete Your Waitlist Email: Browser-waitlist and any legacy company-alert rows are deleted automatically after 12 months. To remove yours sooner, email privacy@youneedchoice.com.
• Withdraw analytics consent: Clear this site’s stored data and choose Decline when the worldwide consent banner returns.

By using the Choice website or extension, you agree to these terms.

Using Choice

Use the service lawfully and through the interfaces Choice provides. Do not interfere with the service or try to bypass its security.

Information and ownership

Company findings and alternatives are provided for information, not as legal, financial or professional advice. Choice works to keep them accurate but cannot guarantee that every record is complete or current. The Choice name, logo and original site content belong to Choice and its licensors.

Liability

To the maximum extent allowed by law, Choice and its affiliates, officers, employees and agents are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, lost profits or revenue, or loss of data, use, goodwill or other intangible losses caused by access to, use of, or inability to use the service.