Paper Highlighter Privacy Policy

Paper Highlighter is a Chrome extension that opens a research paper PDF in its own viewer and marks the sentences that carry what the paper claims, what backs that up, and where the authors say it stops. This policy explains what data it handles and where that data goes.

1. We Run No Servers

Paper Highlighter does not collect, store, or transmit your data to us. There is no Paper Highlighter account, no Paper Highlighter server, and nothing is ever sent to KGP Talkie. Everything happens either on your own device or between your browser and the AI provider you chose.

2. The Paper You Ask It To Analyse

When you press Analyze, sentences taken from the paper go directly from your browser to the AI provider you configured: a local Ollama instance, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, or a custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint. That is the only place they go, and once they arrive they are subject to that provider's own privacy policy. If you point the extension at Ollama running on your own machine, the sentences never leave your computer at all.

The whole PDF is not uploaded. What is sent is the extracted text of candidate sentences, chosen by a filter that runs entirely on your device. In the default "Quickly" mode that is a shortlist of sentences carrying the usual signals; in "Every sentence" mode it is every sentence the paper contains. Afterwards, the sentences that were selected are sent once more so the provider can write the overview. Images, figures and the file itself are never sent.

3. Nothing Is Analysed Unless You Ask

Opening a paper in the viewer sends nothing anywhere. Analysis is a separate, explicit press of the Analyze button, and there is a setting (off by default) if you would rather it ran as soon as a paper opens. A paper you open and simply read never reaches any AI provider.

4. What Is Stored On Your Device

For each paper you have marked up, Paper Highlighter keeps a record in Chrome's local extension storage on the device where you made it. That record holds the highlights you made by hand, the highlights you dismissed, anything you drew on the page with the pen, the analysis the model returned, and the paper's file name.

Records are keyed by a SHA-256 hash of the PDF's own bytes, computed on your device, rather than by its web address. That is what lets the same paper downloaded twice from two places come back with your highlights on it. The hash is never sent anywhere; it is only ever a key in your own browser's storage.

None of this is ever synced. Paper Highlighter does not use Chrome's sync storage for anything, so nothing crosses between your devices and nothing enters your Google account. Settings, then Data lists every paper it has kept, with its size, and lets you forget one of them or all of them at any time.

5. API Keys and Settings

Your API key is stored only on the device where you entered it, in Chrome's local extension storage. It is never synced and never sent to us. It is only ever sent to the provider you chose, on the requests that provider requires it on. Your other settings (provider, model, colours, budgets, which sites open here) are stored the same way and stay on that device.

6. The PDF Itself

To show you a paper, the extension fetches that PDF from wherever it already lives, which is the same server your browser would have fetched it from anyway. Nothing is proxied through us. When you press Save, the marked-up copy is built in your browser and handed straight to Chrome's downloader; it is never uploaded.

7. Permissions, and Why They Are Needed

The extension asks for access to all sites because research PDFs are hosted on an unbounded set of domains and it has to be able to read the bytes of whichever one you opened. In practice it uses that access for two things: reading the address of the tab you are on, so the toolbar button can say whether there is anything here to open, and fetching a PDF you asked it to open. It does not read, monitor, or inject anything into ordinary web pages, and it keeps no record of the pages you visit.

While one of its own viewer tabs is open, the extension keeps a note of what that tab is showing (the file name, the page count, how many highlights it found) in Chrome's session storage, so the toolbar popup can report it without asking the page. That note is discarded when the tab closes and never leaves your device.

8. Analytics and Tracking

Paper Highlighter has no analytics, no tracking, no telemetry, no crash reporting and no ads. It makes no network request at all except to fetch a PDF you asked for and to reach the AI provider you configured.

9. Children

Paper Highlighter is a research reading tool and is not directed at children under 13. It collects no personal information from anyone, of any age.

10. Changes To This Policy

If what the extension does with data changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the top is updated. Material changes will also be described in the extension's release notes.

11. Contact

Questions about this policy can be sent to info@kgptalkie.com.