In short
- The adjustments run on your device. The engine that changes fonts, colours, contrast and spacing ships inside the extension. Turning any of it on sends nothing anywhere.
- We do not collect your browsing history. No list of the sites you visit is built, stored on our servers, or shared.
- No advertising, no tracking, no data sales. The extension contains no analytics or advertising SDKs, and we never sell or rent personal data.
- The AI features are the exception, and only when you start one. Asking a question, summarising a page, listening to it read aloud or speaking to it sends that content to us for processing — described in full in section 5.
1Who we are
Readabler is a product of PE Merkulov ("Readabler", "we", "us"). We are the controller of the personal data described in this policy. You can reach us at any time at [email protected].
This policy explains what the Readabler browser extension does with your data, and applies from the effective date shown above. By installing or using the extension you agree to the practices described here.
2What this policy covers
This page covers the Readabler browser extension and the website at firefox.readabler.com. Other parts of Readabler have their own policies:
- Your Readabler account — signing up, signing in, billing and the account dashboard.
- The Readabler widget that website owners install on their own sites for their visitors.
- Readabler Assistant, covered by the Assistant privacy policy.
The extension and the website plan are separate products, billed separately. Buying one does not include the other.
3What stays on your device
Almost everything the extension does happens locally. The adjustment engine ships inside the extension — Mozilla's add-on policies forbid loading executable code from a server — so applying a profile, changing a font, dimming a page or turning on a reading mask involves no network request at all.
The extension keeps the following in your browser's own extension storage (browser.storage.local), on the device where you set it:
- Your adjustments — text size, spacing, fonts, colours, contrast, orientation aids and distraction controls, plus the profile you selected.
- Per-site settings — where you switched a site to "Only this site", the hostname of that site and the settings you chose for it.
- Panel preferences — the panel's language and light/dark choice.
- The result of the last subscription check and the time it was made, so the extension keeps working when your connection drops.
This data is not transmitted to us and is not synchronised between your devices. Removing the extension removes it; the panel's Reset control clears it on demand.
4What reaches your Readabler account
To know whether your subscription is active, the extension's background service worker makes a request to your Readabler account, using the session cookie your browser already holds for that domain. It reads back one thing: whether your extension subscription is active.
That request carries nothing about the pages you are on. It contains no URL, no page content and no list of sites. It is repeated periodically and when your account sign-in state changes. If your account cannot be reached, the last confirmed answer keeps the extension working for a short grace period — so a dropped connection does not take away the tools you rely on to read.
The extension also fetches the panel's translation files from the same account domain, which involves nothing but the language code.
5The AI features
The AI features are the only part of the extension that sends content off your device, and each one runs only when you start it. Nothing is captured in the background, and nothing is sent while the AI card is idle.
| When you | What is sent |
|---|---|
| Summarise a page | The readable text of the page you are on. |
| Ask a question | Your question, together with the text of the page it is about. |
| Have a page read aloud | The text to be spoken, returned to you as audio. |
| Speak to the assistant | Audio recorded from your microphone, only while the extension is listening, and only after your browser has asked your permission. |
Along with these requests the extension sends the address of the page you are on, which we use to attribute usage against your plan's allowance and to show you the usage meter in the panel.
These requests go to your Readabler account, which passes them to the AI providers we use — currently OpenAI for text generation and Microsoft Azure for speech. They process the content to produce your answer, summary, transcript or audio, and are contractually bound to use it for nothing else. We do not use your content to train models, and we do not build advertising or marketing profiles from it.
Microphone access is requested by your browser at the moment you start a voice conversation, and can be withdrawn at any time in your browser's site and extension settings. If you never use the AI features, the extension sends no page content anywhere.
6Permissions, explained
Firefox shows a list of permissions when you install an extension, and lets you grant or withdraw website access at any time from the extensions button in the toolbar. Here is what each permission is for in Readabler, and what it is not used for.
| Permission | Why Readabler asks for it |
|---|---|
tabs | To apply your settings to the tab you are looking at, and to update a tab that is already open when you change something. No history of your tabs is recorded or transmitted. |
storage | To keep your adjustments on your device, as described in section 3. |
cookies | To read the session cookie for your Readabler account domain only, so the subscription check can be made as you. Cookies belonging to the sites you visit are never read. |
alarms | To schedule the periodic subscription check, instead of keeping a process running. |
| Access to the pages you visit | The adjustments have to reach the page to change it. The script that runs there applies your settings and does nothing else: it does not read forms, passwords, or page content, and it reports nothing back — unless you start one of the AI features in section 5. |
| Access to your Readabler account domain | The one host the extension contacts. It is used to ask whether your subscription is active, and to carry your question to the AI when you type one into the panel. In Firefox this permission is optional: you may decline it at install and withdraw it later, and the extension is built to say so plainly rather than fail — the panel simply stays locked and offers the permission back. |
| A different Readabler installation | Requested only if you point the extension at another Readabler installation from the panel footer, and only at the moment you do it. |
7This website
firefox.readabler.com is a static site. It sets no advertising or tracking cookies and runs no third-party analytics. Your language choice is stored in your browser's own local storage so the site remembers it on your next visit; you can clear it through your browser at any time.
The site loads the Roboto typeface from Google Fonts, which means your browser contacts Google's font servers and Google receives your IP address as part of that request. Everything else the page needs is served from our own domain.
Like any web server, ours records standard request logs (IP address, timestamp, requested page, browser user agent) for security and troubleshooting. These are kept for a limited period and are not used to profile you.
8Payments
Subscriptions are sold and processed by Paddle, which acts as the merchant of record. Paddle collects the payment details and billing information needed to take payment and issue an invoice, under its own privacy policy. We never see or store your full card number. We receive the subscription status, the plan, and the billing details shown on your invoice.
10How long we keep it
Data stored on your device stays until you clear it or uninstall the extension. Account and billing records are kept for as long as your account exists and for as long afterwards as tax and accounting law requires. AI request records are kept only as long as needed to produce the answer, meter your usage and prevent abuse, after which they are deleted or anonymised. Server logs are kept for a short period.
11Your rights
Depending on where you live, you have some or all of the following rights over the personal data we hold about you:
- Access — a copy of the data we hold about you.
- Correction — to have inaccurate or incomplete data put right.
- Deletion — to have your data erased, subject to legal exceptions.
- Portability — a copy in a structured, machine-readable format.
- Objection and restriction — to object to, or limit, certain processing.
- Withdrawing consent — where processing rests on your consent, at any time, without affecting what came before.
Write to [email protected] to exercise any of them; we will respond within the period the applicable law allows. Under the GDPR you also have the right to complain to your local supervisory authority. If you are a California resident, we confirm that we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are used in the CCPA/CPRA, and we will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights.
12International transfers
Readabler is operated from Ukraine and our providers operate in the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States. Your data may therefore be processed outside the country you live in. Where data leaves the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we rely on the appropriate safeguards permitted by law — most often the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses in our agreements with those providers.
13Security
Traffic between the extension, our servers and our providers is encrypted in transit. Access to account data is restricted to those who need it to operate the service, and the extension is designed so that the least possible data leaves your device in the first place. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security — but if a breach ever affects your data, we will notify you and the relevant authority as the law requires.
14Children
Readabler is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. In the European Economic Area, that age is 16 where local law sets it there. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, write to us and we will delete it.
15Mozilla Add-on Policies
Readabler is distributed through addons.mozilla.org and complies with the Mozilla Add-on Policies, including their data-collection and privacy requirements.
The extension declares in its manifest that it collects no data, which is why Firefox tells you so on the install screen. That declaration binds us: we use the information described in this policy only to provide and improve the user-facing features of the extension; we do not transfer it to third parties except as set out in section 9, do not use it for advertising, and do not allow humans to read it except with your consent, for security purposes, to comply with the law, or where the data has been aggregated and anonymised. Adding any data collection would require changing that declaration and putting the change through Mozilla’s review before it could reach you.
No remote code is loaded or executed. Everything the extension runs ships inside the reviewed package.
16Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as the extension changes. The effective date at the top always reflects the current version. If a change materially affects how your data is handled, we will tell you by email or in the extension before it takes effect.
17Contact us
Questions about this policy, or about anything the extension does with your data, are welcome — including the awkward ones.
Write to [email protected] and a person will answer.
Email us