Privacy policy
In short: when you are signed in, the extension saves the searches you make in YouTube's search box to your account so you can look back at them, and so we can count your monthly allowance. We don't sell your data or show ads. The website counts visits with our own analytics; the extension doesn't. Signed out, the extension sends us nothing. You can have everything deleted by writing to [email protected].
Who we are
Search Like a Native is the browser extension “Search Like a Native for YouTube” and the website searchlikeanative.com, including its API at api.searchlikeanative.com (together, “the service”). It is run by Marko Vujanic, a private individual in Switzerland, who is responsible for your personal data (the controller). “We” and “us” in this policy mean him.
Contact for anything about privacy: [email protected].
We process personal data under the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and, where it applies to you, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
What we collect
Your account
You sign in with Google, through our sign-in provider Clerk. Google shares your name, email address, profile picture and Google account identifier. Clerk stores these to run your account. Our own database stores only your Clerk user ID, your plan and when your account was created (and, if you buy Premium, the payment details below). We never see your Google password, and we ask Google for nothing beyond your basic profile and email address.
Your search history
While you are signed in to the extension, it saves every search you make in
YouTube's search box to your account, including searches made with translation
off or with the ! prefix. For each search we store:
- what you typed, and its language;
- what was sent to YouTube (the translation, or your own words when nothing was translated), and its language;
- when you searched, whether it was translated, and when our server received it.
From this we count your translated searches for the month, for the free plan's allowance. We do not collect anything else you do on YouTube: not the videos you watch, not your YouTube account, not other pages you visit.
Signed out, the extension saves nothing to our servers and sends us nothing. Versions of the extension without sign-in send us nothing at all.
In your browser
The extension keeps your settings (mode, languages) and, when signed in, your account status and searches not yet uploaded in your browser's storage. That data stays in your browser.
Technical data
Like any website, every request to searchlikeanative.com and api.searchlikeanative.com carries your IP address, browser type, the address requested and the time; the extension also sends its version number. Our network provider and our server use this to deliver the service, keep it secure and fix problems. It is kept in short-lived technical logs and not used to build profiles.
Website analytics
The website (not the extension) counts visits with tixbee, an analytics service we run
ourselves on our own server. For each page you open it records the address, the page you
came from, your screen size, your browser, operating system and device type, and your
approximate location (country, region and city), looked up from your IP address. The IP
address itself is not stored. It also counts clicks on a few buttons, such as choosing
the lifetime plan, to see which options people want, and completed account signups. Clerk
notifies our analytics server when an account is created. We retain the account and event
identifiers to count each signup once, its time, and the originating visit when available;
the analytics integration does not retain your name, email address or Clerk profile.
These signup records remain until the analytics site is deleted. During sign-in or signup,
browser session storage carries a visit snapshot through redirects and passes it to Clerk
as signup metadata. Clerk keeps that metadata with your account until it is removed or
the account is deleted; its storage does not expire with the browser snapshot. We clear
the local snapshot after sign-in and stop reusing it after 24 hours.
Three cookies tie your page views together: tixbee_vid recognises your browser
on later visits (1 year); tixbee_sid identifies the visit (30 minutes); and
tixbee_src remembers its source (30 minutes). The session storage key
tixbee.signup.v1:<site> carries the signup snapshot described above. We use
this to see how many people visit and sign up and which pages and links bring them.
We do not sell this data or use it for advertising.
In the EU, EEA and UK, or when your country is unknown, analytics only starts after you accept. Elsewhere it starts unless you switch it off. Global Privacy Control switches it off everywhere by default. A choice you save in our Cookies panel takes precedence over these defaults. If you refuse or have not yet accepted where required, your signup is left out of analytics.
Cookies
The website uses necessary cookies for sign-in (Clerk), your language, and your analytics
choice (consent, kept for 180 days when you accept and 400 days when you refuse,
about 6 to 13 months). We renew an older refusal when you return. The three analytics
cookies above are set only when analytics is allowed. There are no advertising cookies.
Our fonts are self-hosted. Pressing play on the landing page loads a video from YouTube.
Payments
When you buy Premium, you pay on the checkout page of our payment provider, Stripe. Stripe collects your card details, email address, name and billing country (and, where tax requires it, your billing address) to take the payment and renewals. We never see or store your full card number. Our database stores your Stripe customer ID and, for each subscription, its status, billing period, currency and renewal date. Stripe keeps your invoices, which you can see under “Manage subscription” on the Plan page. Stripe also uses payment data for its own legal obligations, such as fraud prevention, as described in its own privacy policy.
Why we use it
- To provide the service you signed up for: keep your search history, show it on the website and in the extension, and count your allowance. (GDPR legal basis: performance of a contract, Art. 6(1)(b).)
- To keep the service secure and working: prevent abuse, investigate errors. (Legitimate interests, Art. 6(1)(f).)
- To understand how the website is used: count visits and see which pages and links bring people, with our own analytics. (Consent, Art. 6(1)(a), in the EU, EEA and UK; legitimate interests, Art. 6(1)(f), with a right to object elsewhere.)
- To take payment for Premium, if you buy it. (Performance of a contract, Art. 6(1)(b).)
- To meet legal obligations, for example keeping accounting records of payments. (Art. 6(1)(c).)
We do not sell your data, use it for advertising, profile you, or use it to train AI models.
Google user data
Search Like a Native's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We use your name, email address and profile picture from Google only to sign you in and to show you which account you are signed in with. We do not use them for advertising, do not sell them, do not transfer them to others except the service providers below as needed to run the service, and do not let anyone read them except with your consent, for security, or to comply with the law.
Who processes it for us
We share data only with the providers that run the service for us, under contracts that limit them to doing so:
- Clerk, Inc. (USA): sign-in and account management. Holds your name, email address and profile picture, and sets the sign-in cookies. Clerk's privacy policy.
- Google: “Sign in with Google” and YouTube videos when you press play. Google's privacy policy.
- Cloudflare, Inc. (USA): DNS, HTTPS and network delivery for searchlikeanative.com. All traffic to the website and API passes through Cloudflare. Cloudflare's privacy policy.
- Stripe (Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd., Ireland, with Stripe, Inc., USA): payments for Premium. Holds your card details, email address, name, billing country and invoices. Stripe's privacy policy.
- Hetzner Online GmbH (Germany): the server and the database that hold your search history, located in Germany. Hetzner's privacy policy.
Your searches also go to YouTube, as any YouTube search does. That happens between your browser and YouTube under Google's privacy policy; we don't send YouTube anything.
International transfers
Your history is stored in Germany, which Switzerland and the EU recognise as providing adequate protection. Clerk, Cloudflare and Stripe, Inc. are based in the USA. Transfers to them rely on the Swiss-US and EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, and on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (with the Swiss amendments) otherwise.
How long we keep it
- Account and search history: until you delete your account.
- After you ask us to delete your account: removed from Clerk and from our database within 30 days, and from backups within 90 days.
- Payment records (invoices, and what was paid when): 10 years, as Swiss accounting law requires, at Stripe and in our accounts, even after you delete your account.
- Technical logs: only as long as needed for security and fixing problems, then deleted.
- Website analytics: as long as the visit statistics are useful to us, then deleted. They hold no name, email address or IP address.
- Data in the extension: until you sign out or uninstall it, or clear your browser data.
Your rights and choices
You can ask us at any time to:
- tell you what data we hold about you and give you a copy, in a portable format;
- correct it;
- delete your account and all your search history;
- restrict or object to how we use it.
Write to [email protected] from the email address of your account, so we know the request is yours. We answer within 30 days.
You can also stop collection at any time: sign out of the extension (nothing is saved while signed out), or uninstall it. To stop the website's analytics, choose Cookies at the bottom of any page and Reject. Withdrawing deletes the analytics cookies and the local signup snapshot from your browser. The website works without analytics.
If you think we handle your data unlawfully, you can complain to the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) or, in the EU, to the data protection authority where you live. We'd appreciate the chance to fix it first.
Security
All connections use HTTPS. The server accepts no direct connections from the internet; traffic reaches it only through Cloudflare's encrypted tunnel. Every request for account data must carry a valid, short-lived sign-in token, and each account can only read its own history. Only Marko has access to the server and database.
Children
The service is not meant for children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has an account, write to us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
When we change this policy we update the date at the top. If a change affects how we use data you have already given us, we will tell signed-in users on the website or by email before it takes effect.