ClearWater — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 29 May 2026

ClearWater is a browser extension that rates whether web text holds up — it flags manipulation, filler, incoherence and internal contradictions in text you choose, and returns a trust score. This policy explains, in plain language, what data ClearWater handles, where that data goes, how long it is kept, and the choices you have. It is written to be accurate to how the product actually works — not a generic template.

If a sentence here ever contradicts how ClearWater behaves, treat the behaviour as the bug and tell us (see Contact below).

1. Summary in one paragraph

The first time you use ClearWater, it shows you a disclosure screen and asks you to agree before it sends anything anywhere; until you agree, ClearWater sends no data to any server. After you agree: when you ask ClearWater to check a piece of text, that text and the address of the page it came from are sent to the ClearWater server, which passes the text to an AI language-model provider to score it (and, if you have fact-checking turned on, also runs a web search on it). The score comes back to your browser. The text is processed to produce the score and is not stored and not logged by the ClearWater server on its normal public deployment. ClearWater does not sell your data, does not show ads, and contains no advertising or analytics trackers.

2. Your consent comes first

ClearWater will not collect or transmit any data until you have seen a plain-language disclosure of what is sent and have given your affirmative consent on ClearWater's first-run screen. Inside the extension, every call to the ClearWater server is held behind this consent: if you have not agreed, nothing is sent — not a check, not a community-trust read, not anything. If you choose "Not now", ClearWater stays inactive and transmits nothing. You can use ClearWater offline-of-server in the sense that, until you opt in, it simply does nothing that leaves your browser.

3. What data ClearWater handles

a) Text you choose to check. ClearWater only ever processes text you explicitly hand it — by clicking the extension on a page, selecting a passage, using the in-page block picker, or pasting text into the extension. ClearWater does not read page content in the background, does not follow you across the web, and has no standing access to the content of the sites you visit. It reads a page's text only at the moment you invoke a check on that page.

b) The page address (URL) — only on your action. The address (URL), domain, and title of a web page are used in exactly two situations, both triggered by you: (i) when you run a check on text from that page (so the result can be attached to the page), and (ii) when you open the ClearWater popup on a page and it fetches that one page's community trust score. ClearWater does not send the addresses of pages you visit automatically in the background. Your past results are shown to you inside the ClearWater popup. (You may optionally turn on a page-load badge that shows your own past result on any page — see Section 6; it requires granting all-sites access and sends nothing.)

c) Your ClearWater account key. The first time you use ClearWater after agreeing, the extension asks the ClearWater server to issue your browser one account key. This is a random, server-generated key. Creating it requires no email, no password, no name — no registration of any kind. The key is stored locally in your browser (chrome.storage.local) and serves three purposes: it identifies your account, it carries your check balance (free daily checks and any credit packs you buy), and it is the contributor identity used if you opt in to the trust index. You can view, copy, and restore this key from the extension's "Access key" section — keep a copy if you want to move your balance to another browser.

d) Your settings. Your extension settings (how thorough a check is, your fact-check preference, your privacy choices, and similar) are stored locally in your browser. They are not personal data and are not sent anywhere except as part of the check request that needs them.

e) Payment data, only if you buy a credit pack. See Section 8.

ClearWater does not collect: your name, your email address, your location, your browsing history as a profile, your contacts, your IP address as a stored profile, or any advertising identifier.

4. Where your text goes, and what happens to it

To score text, ClearWater must process it on a server — it cannot do this entirely inside your browser. After you have consented, here is the actual path:

1. Your browser → the ClearWater server. The text you chose is sent over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection to the ClearWater scoring server.
2. The ClearWater server → an AI language-model provider. To produce the trust score, the server sends the text on to an AI language-model provider, which analyses it. This happens on every check — it is how the scoring works.
3. A web search (only when fact-checking is on). ClearWater's fact-check option is on by default and can be turned off (a "logic only" mode in the extension). When fact-check is on, the text is also used to run a web search, so the language model can corroborate factual claims. When you turn fact-check off, no web search is run; only the structure of the reasoning is judged.
4. The score → your browser. The trust score, the marked weak spots, and a short summary are returned to your browser and shown to you.

Retention — what is and is not kept. On ClearWater's normal public deployment, the scoring server operates in a zero-retention mode: the text you submit and the verdict produced for it are not written to disk and not logged. The server keeps only non-text operational metadata — for example a timestamp, the length of the text, and the number of flagged blocks — so the operator can see traffic volume without ever being able to read your content. "Zero-retention" means your text is not stored and not logged — it does not mean the text is never seen: as this section states plainly, the text does transit the ClearWater server and the AI language-model provider in order to be scored.

(For transparency: ClearWater is also runnable as a private local server by a developer on their own machine. In that local-only mode the operator's own local audit log does record their own checks. That mode is for a developer running ClearWater for themselves; the public extension talks to the normal public server, which is zero-retention as described above.)

Third-party providers. The AI language-model provider and the web-search provider are independent services with their own privacy and data-handling policies, and processing your text on their systems is subject to those policies. ClearWater sends them the text needed to perform the check and no account or identity information about you.

A local cache in your browser. To avoid re-checking identical text, ClearWater keeps a small local cache of recent results inside your own browser. This never leaves your device and clears itself over time; you can also clear it by removing the extension's data.

5. Community trust — reading and contributing

ClearWater can pool verdicts so the tool gets sharper as more people use it. There are two separate sides to this, and they are different:

Reading community trust. When you open the ClearWater popup on a page, ClearWater sends that one page's address (URL) to the server to retrieve the community's aggregate trust score for it, and shows it to you. This is a read triggered by your action (opening the popup); it sends the page address, never your page text. ClearWater does not perform this read automatically as you browse.

Contributing your own verdict — optional, off unless you opt in. Sharing your verdicts into the community index is optional. If you do not turn it on, nothing is contributed. When you opt in, after a check ClearWater sends the following to the trust index — and only the following:

• A one-way fingerprint (hash) of the text. This is a SHA-256 hash of the normalised text. A hash cannot be reversed back into the text; it only lets two identical pieces of text be recognised as the same.
• The trust score the check produced.
• The page address — the URL, domain, and title of the page the text came from (this lets the index attach a verdict to a page).
• Your account identifier — the non-secret account id (not your secret account key), so verdicts can be weighed by contributor reputation.
• Which scoring engine was used.

Your text itself is never sent to the trust index, and is never stored there. The index keeps the hash, not the text — there is no text body in it to expose. When you contribute a verdict on text you pasted (rather than a web page), no page address exists, so a pasted-text verdict is shared without one. You can turn contributing off at any time in the extension's settings.

6. Permissions ClearWater requests, and why

ClearWater requests the narrowest set of permissions its features need — notably it does not request broad "all sites" host access — and each permission is used only for the purpose described here:

• activeTab and scripting — so that, only when you invoke ClearWater on a page (by clicking it or pressing its shortcut), it can read the specific text you asked it to check and show the result in place. ClearWater does not use these to read tabs in the background.
• storage — to keep, locally in your browser, your settings, your account key, and a small cache of recent results. Nothing in local storage is sent anywhere except as part of a request you trigger.
• No broad host access by default. ClearWater does not request standing access to all sites. It reads a page only at the moment you invoke a check on that page, using Chrome's activeTab permission (granted for the current tab when you click ClearWater or use its keyboard shortcut).
• Optional all-sites access (<all_urls>) — only if you turn on the page-load badge. The badge shows your own past result on a page as it loads, so it must run on every page; enabling it asks Chrome for all-sites access through Chrome's own permission prompt. It is off by default, you grant it explicitly, you can revoke it any time in Chrome's settings, and the badge reads only your locally-stored results and sends nothing.

7. The account key — what identifies you

ClearWater has no usernames, no passwords, and no email-based accounts. Your identity to ClearWater is the single random account key described in Section 3(c). It is not linked to your real identity. If you lose it and have no copy, you lose access to the balance attached to it; if you keep a copy, you can restore the same account in another browser.

8. Payments

ClearWater is free to use up to a daily allowance of checks. Beyond that, you can optionally buy a credit pack to top up your check balance. Buying is entirely optional — the extension is fully usable on the free daily allowance.

ClearWater offers several ways to pay:

• Cryptocurrency. ClearWater accepts USDT (on the TRON network), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC), and Monero (XMR). You send the pack amount to ClearWater's receiving address from your own wallet; ClearWater verifies the payment on the relevant blockchain and credits the pack. ClearWater stores the payment reference (so a payment can only be redeemed once) and the resulting credit balance against your account key. ClearWater does not control or store your wallet credentials. A note on traceability: transactions on the TRON, Ethereum and Bitcoin networks are recorded on a public ledger — pseudonymous, but publicly visible to anyone. Monero is different — it is a privacy-focused network, and Monero transactions are not publicly traceable by design. Which network you pay on is your choice.
• PayPal. ClearWater creates a PayPal order for the pack you chose and you approve it in PayPal's own window. ClearWater handles the PayPal order identifier and the pack amount in order to confirm the payment and credit your account. Your PayPal login, your card numbers, and your PayPal account details are handled by PayPal, under PayPal's own privacy policy — ClearWater does not receive or store them.

ClearWater stores only what it needs to credit your purchase: the payment reference (a transaction id or order id), the pack purchased, and your credit balance — all keyed to your account key. No credit-card numbers and no wallet credentials are ever collected or stored by ClearWater; those are handled entirely by PayPal or by the blockchain you choose.

9. Data sharing and selling

• ClearWater does not sell your data, your text, or any verdict — to anyone, for any purpose.
• ClearWater does not share your data with advertisers, data brokers, or marketing partners.
• ClearWater does not use or transfer your data for personalized advertising, and does not use or transfer it to determine creditworthiness or for lending purposes.
• ClearWater contains no advertising trackers and no third-party analytics or behavioural-tracking code.
• The only third parties that receive any data are: the AI language-model provider and the web-search provider (the text needed to perform a check, per Section 4), and your chosen payment processor (per Section 8). Each acts under its own privacy policy.

10. Limited Use

ClearWater's collection and use of user data adheres to the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Specifically: ClearWater uses the data it receives only to provide and improve its single purpose — scoring whether the text and pages you choose hold up; it transfers user data only as necessary to provide that purpose (to the AI and web-search providers to perform a check, and to a payment processor you choose), to comply with applicable law, or to protect against fraud or abuse; it does not allow humans to read your text except as you direct or as required for security or law; and it does not sell user data or use or transfer it for advertising or to determine creditworthiness.

11. Data retention

• Text you check: not stored and not logged by ClearWater's public server (zero-retention, Section 4).
• Operational metadata: non-text counters such as a timestamp and the length of a request may be recorded so the operator can see traffic volume; this contains no chunk of your text.
• Trust-index entries (only if you opt in to contributing): the text hash, score, page address, engine, and account identifier are kept so the shared index can function; the text body is never among them.
• Payment records: a payment reference, the pack bought, and your balance are retained for as long as your account exists, so your credits remain valid.
• Local data in your browser (settings, account key, result cache, your consent choice): kept in your browser until you clear it or remove the extension.

12. Your choices and controls

• Consent first — ClearWater sends nothing until you agree on the first-run screen; declining keeps it inactive.
• What gets checked is always your choice — ClearWater only processes text you explicitly select, pick, paste, or invoke it on.
• Fact-checking can be turned off ("logic only"), which stops any web search on your text.
• The page-load badge is off by default; turning it on asks for all-sites access (Chrome's prompt) and shows only your own locally-stored results — it sends nothing, and you can revoke the access in Chrome any time.
• Contributing to the community trust index is off unless you opt in, and can be turned off again at any time.
• The whole extension can be switched off from the popup's power toggle, which stops every page-touching action.
• Your account key and balance can be viewed, copied, and restored from the extension.
• All local data — settings, account key, cached results, consent choice — is removed when you uninstall the extension or clear its storage in your browser.

13. Children

ClearWater is a general-purpose reading tool and is not directed at children. It does not knowingly collect data from children.

14. Security

Text and other data in transit between your browser and the ClearWater server are sent over an encrypted HTTPS connection, and the text is not retained afterward on the public deployment (Section 4). The account key is a high-entropy random value and is the only credential; keep your copy of it private, as anyone holding it can use the balance attached to it.

15. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date at the top will change. Material changes to what data is handled or where it goes will be reflected here before they take effect in the product, and — where the change expands what is collected — ClearWater will ask for your consent again.

16. Contact

Questions about this policy, or a request concerning your data, can be sent to:

privacy@wecleantheinternet.com