Privacy Policy

Effective 11/15/2019

This privacy policy applies to this browser extension, Unskew My Search, provided by Freedom Fries d/b/a Freespoke.

What we do
When you search for anything news- or information-related, your search engine is editing results to influence your next click. Unskew My Search shows how your results are different from what you’d see if the search engine didn’t know who you are.

We highlight search results ranked higher or lower for you than for others. We then give you a dropdown pane showing search results that would be seen by others, but are hidden from your Page 1.

Information we collect
By default, we collect the following information anonymously:
Search terms searched that are on our keyword list of terms
Time, date and general location of the search
Unaffiliated results associated with any particular search term on our keyword list by time, date and location of the search
Installations of the extension
Uninstallations of the extension

In other words, we can see that someone in Milwaukee searched for a word on our keyword list at 2:34 pm EST on Tuesday, October 5th, 2019 but we don’t know who that someone is or anything else about them, nor can we tie any of their searches together. If two people in Milwaukee are searching at the same time, we would not be able to know if they were one person or two people or whether they are sitting next to each other or on opposite sides of the Milwaukee metro area.

If you opt in by checking the “Anonymously share your results with us” checkbox to share your searches with us, we collect the following types of information in an anonymized way. Keep reading below to see how we anonymize this information.
Search terms searched, whether or not they are on our keyword list
Date, time and general location of your search
A list of your first page of search results
A list of the unaffiliated search results we conduct on your behalf
Your location, which we collect via the Browser Geolocation API
Your browser type and the version of our extension you are using

In other words, we know someone we have listed as “anonymous user 3942” searched for a word on our keyword list, and that they did so on November 5, 2019 at 10:02am in Clay County, Florida. For anonymous user 3942’s search, we can see the results Google returned on page 1 as well as the results we pulled up on page 1 in our unaffiliated search, and the version of browser and of our extension they were using at the time. If anonymous user 3942 searched for a word not on our keyword list, we can only see what Google returned as results on page 1. However, we don’t know anything else about anonymous user 3942, or any other anonymous user.

Information we do not collect
Through our browser extension we do not collect your name, email address, physical address, phone number, IP address, or any other directly identifiable information about you, even if you opt in to allow us to collect information about your searches.

How we anonymize this information
We anonymize all of the information we collect when you opt in to share your searches. We do this by attaching a randomly generated unique identifier to any information associated with your searches and not collecting data that can identify you personally (directly or indirectly in combination with any other data).

What we do with this information
We use this information to do the following things:
Search terms on our keyword list: To understand the popularity of certain search terms and whether the anonymous results we showed you were relevant
Search terms not on our keyword list: To understand the popularity of certain search terms and to add additional search terms to the keyword list in the future
A list of your first page of search results: To further improve the accuracy of our comparison algorithm that shows you the difference between your search results and our unaffiliated search
A list of the unaffiliated search we ran on your behalf: To further improve the accuracy of our comparison algorithm that shows you the difference between your search results and our unaffiliated search
Location information: To tailor the unaffiliated search results to results near you and provide a more “apples to apples” comparison with your Google search; and to understand where customers who are using our product are located so we can make our product better

We do not share any information with marketers or advertising platforms. We do not sell any information.

When we collect this information
Whether or not you have opted in, we only collect the information stated above when you install or uninstall the browser extension and/or when you search. If you have not opted in, we only collect information when you search for a term on our keyword list. If you have opted in, we collect all of your search terms in order to add to our keyword list. We do not collect any other information while you are doing other things on your browser.

How you can control this information
By default, we only collect anonymous information as explained above. Therefore, if you have not opted in to share your searches with us, we have not collected any personally identifiable information about you.

If you opt in, we collect information about your searches as described above. If you have opted in and later decide that you do not want us to collect information about your searches any longer, you can opt out by unchecking the “Share My Searches” check box on the browser extension. Because your search results are fully anonymized, we do not have a way to delete your past searches because we cannot connect them to you in anyway.

Third Parties we work with and what we share with them
We use Netlify for our serverless backend; Netlify uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its secure hosting capabilities. We use Fauna to host our database, where anonymized results are stored. We also use HERE Global B.V.’s Geocoder API to help identify the general region you are in (not specifically enough to identify you).

In order to show you unaffiliated search results, we expose your search term and general location to the Netlify server, which exposes it to AWS. Your IP address is collected in order to send the unaffiliated search results back to the right browser, but is not used for any other purpose. No other information is shared. For information on how Netlify handles data, please click here. Any information stored on Fauna is anonymized with a randomly generated unique identifier and no personally identifiable information is stored. For information about Fauna’s privacy policies, please check here. We share data from the Browser Geolocation API with HERE in order to translate that information into a general region. This regional location data is part of how we show you relevant search results. For information on how HERE handles data please click here for its general privacy policy and here for the supplement applicable to its location applications (please note we do not receive any information from the Geocoder API other than the general regional information described above).

Other sharing of your information
We may be required by law to respond to subpoenas and other types of legal requests. However, since your information is anonymized, we have nothing to share so we anticipate few requests for this information. All information we store on our servers are anonymized and aggregated and cannot be personally identified.

If Freespoke is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, we will give users who have the browser extension installed at the time of execution of such merger, acquisition or sale of assets, (or as soon thereafter as legally allowed) notice before their information becomes subject to a different privacy policy and the opportunity to stop sharing your searches with us prior to any other privacy policy going into effect. If you have uninstalled the browser extension at some point prior to the execution of such merger, acquisition or sale of assets, we cannot give you notice as we don’t know who you are. Your data will continue to be anonymized as long as it is stored.

This browser extension does not utilize cookies, web beacons or any other devices to identify or track you, your browser or your device.

Application of this privacy policy
This Privacy Policy applies to the services provided by Freespoke in our browser extension Unskew My Search.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to:

The information practices of other companies and organizations that advertise our services;
Services offered by other companies or individuals that are displayed to you in search results on our web or mobile applications;
Our website; and/or
Any other product we may offer now or in the future

Changes to this privacy policy
We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. We always indicate the date the last changes were published and we offer access to archived versions for your review. When we make changes to this privacy policy, we will post the changes in red font and post a notice on the extension store where you downloaded the Unskew My Search that the privacy policy has been updated and the date at which those updates went or will go into effect. That notice will remain visible for a period of 30 days after the effective date.

Contact information
If you have questions about, or issues with, this privacy policy, please contact us as follows:

By email at:
privacy@unskewmysearch.com.

By mail at: _
Freedom Fries, LLC
PO Box 0613
Chicago, IL 60606