Accountability Chrome Extension Privacy

Accountability Chrome Extension (Productivity Dashboard for Chrome)

Effective 2026-05-20.

Building The Machine, Inc. ("we", "us") makes the Accountability Chrome Extension, a Chrome extension that replaces the new tab page and offers a toolbar panel of YouTube focus toggles. This policy explains what the extension does with information.

We tried to write this the way a careful user would want to read it. The short version: we store your tasks, stats, and preferences on your device. The only information that leaves your device is anonymous, aggregate usage events (so we can tell whether features are working), and image requests to Unsplash so backgrounds can load. You can switch analytics off in settings at any time.

1. What the extension stores on your device

The following live in your browser's local storage on the computer where the extension is installed. None of this is sent to us.

  • Your todo list items.
  • Your daily and weekly statistics (number of tasks completed, focus minutes accumulated).
  • Your timer preferences (custom Focus, Break, and Short durations).
  • The visibility state of your task list.
  • A randomly generated anonymous identifier (used to count unique installs in our analytics, see Section 3).
  • Your analytics opt-in or opt-out preference.

We do not have a copy of any of this.

2. What the extension stores in your Chrome account sync

The YouTube focus toggles (Hide comments, Hide sidebar recommendations, Hide homepage feed, Hide Shorts shelf) are stored using Chrome's built-in storage.sync API so they follow you between Chromes you are signed into. These values are stored by Google as part of your Chrome profile. We do not see them. We do not have a copy of them.

3. Anonymous usage analytics

To help us understand which features are useful, the extension sends a small set of named events to PostHog, an analytics service. The events are:

  • task_added (a task was added to the todo list)
  • task_completed (a task was checked off)
  • focus_started (a focus session began, with the chosen duration in minutes)
  • focus_completed (a focus session ran to the end, with the duration in minutes)
  • background_refreshed (a new background was chosen)

Each event includes only the event name, the duration (where relevant), an app identifier (so events from this extension can be told apart from other apps in the same PostHog project), and a randomly generated anonymous identifier. No browsing history, no page content, no personal information, no IP address that we store, no URL of the page you are on, and no information about other websites you visit is included.

You can switch analytics off at any time. Open the new tab dashboard, click the settings gear in the lower right, and click "Analytics: On" to set it to "Analytics: Off". When analytics is off, no events are sent.

PostHog's own privacy policy is at https://posthog.com/privacy.

4. Background photos

Backgrounds are 100 photographs that ship with the extension. Their image files are loaded on demand from Unsplash's content delivery network at images.unsplash.com. Unsplash, like any web image host, can see the network request for the image (your IP address, the User Agent, and the image you requested). Unsplash's privacy policy is at https://unsplash.com/privacy.

The extension does not use the Unsplash API at runtime. There is no Unsplash API key in the shipped extension, and no API request is made on your behalf.

5. What the extension does on YouTube

The extension declares a host permission for *://*.youtube.com/*. This is required by Chrome before any extension code can run on a YouTube page.

When you visit youtube.com, a small content script reads your toggle preferences from chrome.storage.sync and adds CSS class names to the page (for example, pd-hide-comments). A bundled stylesheet uses those class names to hide the elements you have asked to hide. The content script does not read the video you are watching, the comments, the recommendations, your account information, or anything else on the page. It does not send any data anywhere.

You can confirm this by inspecting js/content-youtube.js and youtube-overrides.css in the extension package.

6. What we do not collect

We do not collect:

  • Personal information of any kind (name, email, phone, address).
  • Authentication information or passwords.
  • Financial information.
  • Health information.
  • The content of pages you visit.
  • Your browsing history.
  • Information about which YouTube videos you watch.
  • The text of your todo list items.
  • Your IP address (PostHog may briefly process IP for routing, but we do not store or use it).

7. Your choices

  • Turn analytics off. Settings, "Analytics: On" toggle. Takes effect immediately.
  • Export everything. Settings, "Export Data". You get a JSON file with your todos, stats, and preferences.
  • Delete everything. Open chrome://extensions/, find Accountability Chrome Extension, click "Remove". Your local data is removed with the extension. (You can also clear it through Chrome's site data tools without removing the extension.)
  • Disable a feature. Every YouTube focus toggle and the new tab override can be turned off independently. The extension can be paused entirely through chrome://extensions/.

8. Children

This extension is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect any information from children under 13. If you believe a child has interacted with our analytics, contact us and we will delete the relevant random identifier from PostHog.

9. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a way that materially affects how information is handled, we will update the effective date at the top of this page and call the change out in the new version's listing notes on the Chrome Web Store.

10. Contact

If you have questions about this policy or about how the extension handles information, write to support@buildingthemachine.com.

Building The Machine, Inc.