The short version
CloseRead reads a page only when you ask it to highlight that page. It doesn’t track the sites you visit, and for the pages you highlight it records only the site’s host name.
The page text is processed by Anthropic’s Claude, or by OpenAI if Claude is unavailable, to produce the highlights. CloseRead doesn’t store the text. For public articles only, it keeps the highlights for up to 7 days so the same article loads instantly. Never for emails or other pages.
We store your account, your workspace and billing records, and usage counts such as words and credits. Never the text.
No ads, no tracking cookies, no selling or sharing of your data for advertising.
Who we are
CloseRead is a Chrome extension that marks the sentences worth reading in emails, articles and other pages, together with CloseRead Cloud, the website and service at this address where you sign in, manage your workspace and pay for credits. CloseRead is a product of Obdal, LLC, 4301 S Flamingo Rd, Suite 106 #558, Davie, FL 33330 (“Obdal”, “we”, “us”), which operates both and is responsible for your data. For anything about this policy, write to support@obdal.com.

What we collect
Your account
When you sign up we store your name, email address and a hashed password. If you turn them on, we also store your two-factor authentication secret and recovery codes (encrypted) and the public keys of your passkeys. We record when you verified your email.

Your workspace and billing
We store your workspaces (teams): their names, members and roles, invitations including the invited email address, per-member credit limits and paused access. For billing we keep your plan, subscription periods, invoices, credit balance and credit transactions. Card payments are handled by Stripe. We keep only the Stripe customer and payment-method identifiers needed to charge renewals, never your full card number.

The page you ask CloseRead to highlight
The first time you open the extension, it lists what it collects and asks you to agree before anything is sent. If what we collect changes, it asks again.

Nothing is sent while you browse. Only when you click Highlight this page or press the CloseRead keyboard shortcut does the extension read the tab you are on. It extracts the main text, splits it into sentences and sends CloseRead Cloud:

the sentences and headings of the main text,
the page title and the site’s host name,
the page type, for example an email or an article, and your chosen detail level.
CloseRead Cloud passes the text to an AI provider to label the sentences, returns the labels to your browser and then discards the text and the title. They are never written to our database or logs. For public articles we keep the resulting highlights for up to 7 days, as described under How long we keep it.

Pages and emails can contain other people’s personal data, such as the name of an email’s sender. We process it only to produce your highlights, and we never keep highlights of emails.

Usage records
For every highlight we record a usage entry so we can charge credits and show you and your workspace admins how CloseRead is used. It contains the time, the workspace and user, the site’s host name, the page type, the number of sentences, total and highlighted words, the estimated reading time saved and the credits used, plus technical details: the AI provider and model, token counts, cost, processing time, whether the result came from our cache and whether the request failed. It contains no page text and no page title.

Connected browsers
When you connect the extension we issue it an access token. We store a hashed copy of the token, a device name such as “Chrome on macOS”, when it was last used and when it expires.

Bug reports and feedback
If you report a bug from the extension we store your description, the extension version, your browser and, only if you choose to include it, the address of the page without its query string or fragment. Reports sent while signed in are linked to your account. If you tell us why you uninstalled the extension, we store the reason and your optional comment, not linked to any account.

Website sessions, logs and cookies
When you use the website we keep a session record that includes your IP address and browser user agent, and our servers keep logs for security and troubleshooting. To limit sign-in and sign-up attempts we briefly keep counters keyed by your email address and IP address. We use only cookies the site needs to work: the session cookie, a security (XSRF) token and preference cookies that remember your appearance and sidebar settings. There are no analytics, advertising or third-party tracking cookies.

What the extension keeps in your browser
The extension stores your access token, a copy of your account summary (name, email, workspace, role, plan and credits) and your settings in chrome.storage.local. The state of highlights on open tabs, including the page address and short excerpts of the marked sentences, and your most recent highlights, so the same page isn’t sent twice, are kept in chrome.storage.session and cleared when the browser closes. The token is used only by the extension’s background worker to call CloseRead Cloud. It is never exposed to the pages you visit. Signing out revokes the token on our side and removes it from your browser, and removing the extension deletes everything it stored.

The extension asks Chrome for these permissions:

activeTab and scripting, to read and highlight the tab you ask it to highlight, and only that tab.
storage, for your token, account summary and settings.
identity, to open the CloseRead sign-in window.
Access to the CloseRead Cloud address only, to send the highlighting requests. It can’t read other sites in the background.
How we use it
To produce highlights for the pages you choose.
To run your account and workspaces: sign-in, teams, credit limits, plans, invoices and payments.
To show you and your workspace owners and admins usage analytics such as credits used and time saved.
To send emails you need, such as email verification, password resets and team invitations.
To keep CloseRead secure and reliable, prevent abuse and fix problems.
We don’t sell your data, show ads, build advertising profiles or use the pages you highlight to train AI models.

Legal bases
Where the EU or UK GDPR applies, we rely on these legal bases:

Performing our contract with you: your account, workspaces, highlighting the pages you choose, credits, billing and the emails the service needs.
Our legitimate interests: keeping CloseRead secure and preventing abuse (sessions, logs, rate limits), fixing problems you report, caching public article highlights to answer faster and at lower cost, and giving workspace owners and admins the usage information they need to manage their seats and credits.
Legal obligations: keeping invoices for tax and accounting.
You must give us your name, email address and a password to create an account. Without them we can’t provide the service. We don’t make decisions about you based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects.

Your right to object
You can object at any time to processing we base on our legitimate interests, for reasons relating to your situation. Write to support@obdal.com and we will stop unless we have compelling legitimate grounds or need the data to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

Who processes it for us
We share data only with the services we need to run CloseRead:

Anthropic receives the text of pages you highlight to label the sentences. It doesn’t use API data to train its models and keeps it only for a limited period under its privacy policy and commercial API terms.
OpenAI receives the same text only when Claude is unavailable. We turn off OpenAI’s storage of our requests, though OpenAI may keep them for a limited period for abuse monitoring under its privacy policy and API terms.
Stripe processes card payments and stores your card details. To create the customer record it receives the workspace name and the workspace owner’s email address. Stripe acts under its privacy policy.
A cloud hosting provider in the United States hosts CloseRead Cloud and its database.
An email delivery provider sends our account emails, such as verification links and workspace invitations.
Owners and admins of a workspace you belong to can see your name, email, role, credit limit and usage in that workspace, including the site host name and time of each page you highlighted there. We may also disclose data when the law requires it, to protect against fraud or abuse, or as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, in which case we will ask for your consent first.

Chrome Web Store Limited Use
The use of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. In practice:

We use page content only to provide CloseRead’s single purpose: highlighting the sentences worth reading on the page you choose.
We transfer it only to the AI providers above to provide that purpose, to comply with the law, to protect against malware, spam, phishing, fraud or abuse, or in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets after obtaining your explicit consent.
No person reads your page content, unless you explicitly ask us to for support, it is needed for security such as investigating abuse, or the law requires it. Because we don’t store the text, this is rarely possible at all.
We never use or transfer your data for personalized ads, sell it to data brokers or other resellers, or use it to determine creditworthiness or for lending.
How long we keep it
Page text and titles: not stored. They exist only in memory while a highlight is being produced.
Highlights of public articles (pages the publisher marks as an article and allows search engines to index): up to 7 days, so anyone who highlights the same article with the same settings gets them instantly. We keep only the highlights, filed under a fingerprint of the article, not the article text itself. Highlights of emails and other pages are never kept.
Account data: until you delete your account. Accounts that are never verified or used are deleted after 30 days.
Access tokens: until you sign out, remove the browser in your settings, delete your account, or the token expires (90 days by default). Expired tokens are deleted within two days.
Usage records and credit history: 24 months. If you delete your account, entries in workspaces you don’t own stay until then but are no longer linked to you.
Deleted workspaces: permanently removed 30 days after deletion, together with their usage records and credit history.
Invoices: 7 years, as tax and accounting law requires. When a workspace is permanently removed, its invoices are no longer linked to it.
Bug reports and uninstall feedback: 12 months.
Server logs: deleted after 14 days.
Your choices and rights
Update your name, email and password in your account settings.
See and disconnect connected browsers in your settings, or sign out from the extension popup.
Delete your account from your settings at any time. This removes your profile and sign-in methods, signs out every connected browser, ends the subscriptions of workspaces only you belong to, deletes their saved payment details at Stripe and removes those workspaces permanently within 30 days. If you own a workspace with other members, remove them or delete it first.
Uninstall the extension to remove everything it stored.
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export or delete your data, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to complain to your data protection authority. To use any of these rights, write to support@obdal.com. We answer within one month. We haven’t appointed a data protection officer; the same address reaches the people responsible for privacy at Obdal.

Security
All traffic uses HTTPS. Passwords and access tokens are stored hashed, two-factor authentication and passkeys are available, administrator access requires two-factor authentication, and the extension signs in with PKCE so the token is never shown in a URL. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your data and will tell you about a breach that affects you as the law requires.

International transfers
Obdal is based in the United States, and CloseRead Cloud, Anthropic, OpenAI and Stripe process your data there. Where EU or UK law requires a safeguard for a provider, we rely on its certification under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and its UK extension, or otherwise on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses and the UK addendum. Write to support@obdal.com for a copy of the safeguards that apply.

Children
CloseRead isn’t meant for children under 13, or under the age of digital consent where you live, and we don’t knowingly collect their data.

Changes to this policy
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top. If the change is significant, we will tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect. The Terms of Service explain the rest of the rules for using CloseRead.

Contact
Obdal, LLC
4301 S Flamingo Rd, Suite 106 #558, Davie, FL 33330
support@obdal.com