WroteByMe privacy policy
The short version
WroteByMe reads the revision history of a Google Doc only when you click the WroteByMe button on that document. The reading and all analysis happen inside your browser. Nothing leaves your browser until you have chosen what to share and pressed Share link. Before that, the report screen lets you open the full preview and the exact list of what will be sent.
What the extension does on your computer
- Reads the document's revision history from Google Docs, using the Google session already open in your browser tab. WroteByMe does not read, store, or transmit your Google cookies or password. No Google data is sent to WroteByMe's servers at this stage.
- Rebuilds the document text from that history, computes statistics, and builds the preview.
- Keeps the raw history in memory only. It is dropped when you publish, discard, or close the panel.
- Stores in extension storage: links you published while signed out, with their private manage keys (forgotten once a link joins an account), a random install salt, and, if you signed in, your session token, Google name and Google email. Nothing about your documents.
What is sent when you publish
The "What's shared" section on the report screen lists the exact items. Open it before you press Share link.
| Item | When |
|---|---|
| Report summary: session times, revision counts, paste statistics, whether the rebuilt text matched the document | Always |
| A salted hash of the Google Doc ID, so your own re-runs can be grouped. The ID itself is never sent | Always |
| The final text split by paragraph, with per-paragraph history | Only if you switch on passage provenance |
| A replay of the document being written. Text you later deleted is masked unless you choose to show it | Only if you switch on replay |
Never sent: the raw revision history, the Google Doc ID or link, names or emails of collaborators. Collaborators appear only as anonymous author slots.
Your account
You don't need an account to share a report link. An account is only for Your reports (view counts, revoke, delete) and for having WroteByMe email your link, and the only way to sign in is Google. When you sign in, we receive and store your Google name, email address and Google account ID. We never see your Google password or anything else in your Google account. If you made links on this browser before signing in, Your reports asks whether to add them to your account, using the manage keys the extension kept; it adds them only if you agree. Emailing a link from WroteByMe also adds that link to your account. Once a link is in an account, its manage key stops working and the extension forgets it.
Bot check before sharing
Before a link is created, the panel shows Cloudflare Turnstile in a small frame served from wrotebyme.com. Cloudflare looks at signals from your browser to tell people from automated scripts, under Cloudflare's own privacy policy. WroteByMe receives only whether the check passed. It runs only when you press Share, never while you analyze a document. To limit abuse we count requests per IP address (per /64 network for IPv6); the address is stored only as a keyed hash in a counter that expires within a day.
Report pages and the people who view them
Report pages are unlisted, carry an unguessable address, ask search engines not to index them, send no referrer, and load no third-party scripts or trackers. For each report we keep two anonymous counters: how many times it was viewed and how many times its replay was played. We do not store IP addresses or any identifier of the viewer.
Your controls
- Revoke: takes effect at once. The report content and replay are deleted; the address shows a "withdrawn" notice.
- Delete: removes the report, its replay, and its view counts entirely.
- Expiry: 7, 30, or 90 days, or none. Expired reports are permanently deleted by a daily job.
- Delete account: removes your account and every report, replay, and event.
If you are signed in and ask us to, we email your report link and your note to the recipient you name. The email shows your Google name and email address as the sender, and replies go to your Google email. We use the recipient's address to send the one email and do not store it. If you are signed in, we send one follow-up to your Google email seven days after a publish asking what the recipient decided. Its link stops working after 30 days. Your answer is stored with the report and used to measure whether WroteByMe helps.
Service providers and logs
- Cloudflare hosts the WroteByMe server, its database and the stored replays, and runs the bot check.
- Resend sends WroteByMe's emails. For each email it receives the recipient's address, your Google name and email, your note and the report link, and keeps delivery records for a limited time under its own policy. WroteByMe itself does not store the recipient's address.
- The server logs errors without document content, email addresses or report links. Per-request logs, which would record page addresses, are switched off.
- Backups of the database may keep deleted data for a limited time before it is gone for good.