Privacy Policy

Contact: a support address will be published here together with the Chrome Web Store listing.

Effective date: October 17, 2026

This policy is published at: https://channelfinder.app/privacy.html

This policy covers the Chrome extension "Channel Finder" (the "extension"). It is written for users in the United States.

The extension is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by YouTube or Google. "YouTube" is a trademark of Google LLC.

What the extension does

On a YouTube channel page or video page, or when you paste a channel link or @handle, the extension finds YouTube channels that are similar to that channel. It shows them in Chrome's side panel with public metrics, a short AI-written "why similar" line, a Saved list and CSV export. It is free, needs no account, and works in English only.

Summary

• We do not collect your name, email, account, YouTube login, cookies or browsing history.
• The extension reads public YouTube pages in your browser, signed out.
• To rank channels and write the "why similar" lines, it sends public channel text (names, descriptions, keywords, recent video titles) to our backend, which passes it to two AI service providers.
• Your Saved list and last search stay in your browser.
• We run no analytics and no ads, and we do not sell data.

What stays in your browser

• Public YouTube reads. The extension requests public channel pages, Videos tabs, About panels and search results from YouTube directly from your browser. These requests are made signed out: no cookies and no credentials are sent, and no YouTube account is used. YouTube receives these requests like any web request (including your IP address) and handles them under its own terms and privacy policy.
• Current tab. The extension reads the address of your current tab only when it is on www.youtube.com, so it can offer "Find channels like <channel>". It does not read other sites and does not keep a history of tabs.
• Stored on your device (chrome.storage). Your last search and its results, your Saved list, your settings, and an installation ID (see below). The extension does not inject any script into web pages.
• Deleting it. The panel has a "Delete all local data" button. It removes the last search, the Saved list and settings, and keeps only the installation ID. Uninstalling the extension removes everything, including the installation ID.
• CSV export. A CSV file is created in your browser and saved to your computer. We never receive it.

What is sent to our backend

To find and explain similar channels, the extension sends the following to our backend over HTTPS:

1. Public channel text of the channel you started from and of candidate channels: channel names, descriptions, keywords, and up to 30 recent video titles for the starting channel and up to 12 for each candidate. This text was published by creators on YouTube.

2. A random anonymous installation ID, created on your device the first time you use the extension. It is not linked to your name, email, Google account or YouTube account. We use it to count your free daily searches.

3. A random search ID that groups the requests of one search.

We do not send your YouTube cookies, browsing history, tab address, Saved list, or any personal information about you.

Email addresses, web links and phone numbers appearing in this text are removed by our backend as soon as a request arrives, before anything is cached or passed to Anthropic or TypeSafe.

Who processes it

• Anthropic (Claude Haiku model) writes the search queries and the "why similar" lines. Anthropic receives only the public channel text described above. Anthropic's commercial terms state that it does not train models on customer content from its services. Anthropic's own terms and privacy policy govern how it handles data: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/commercial-terms and https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy.
• TypeSafe (Jev model) scores how similar channels are. TypeSafe receives only the public channel text described above. TypeSafe's legal terms apply to its handling of data: https://typesafe.ai/legal.
• Cloudflare hosts our backend. As the hosting provider, it handles network requests to the backend, which include IP addresses, as part of serving them. Cloudflare's terms and privacy policy apply: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/.

We do not use YouTube cookies or any information about you with these providers. We do not use the data for advertising, and we do not sell or rent it.

What our backend keeps

• Cache of model answers, stored under a hash of the public channel text. Kept for 7 days, then deleted automatically.
• Counters per installation ID: your number of searches for the day. Kept for up to 2 days, then deleted automatically.
• Search IDs, used to tie follow-up requests to a counted search. Kept for 2 hours.
• A daily spend counter for the service as a whole (not tied to a person). Kept for up to 2 days.
• Request logs contain one line per request: the route, status, response time, cost and whether the answer came from the cache. They contain no channel text, no installation ID and no search ID.

We do not build profiles of users and do not use IP addresses for profiling.

Free daily limit

Each installation has a daily limit of free searches (currently 20 per day; we may change it). When the limit or our daily budget is reached, the extension shows a message, and what was already found stays in the panel.

Emails and creators

Emails, links and countries shown next to a channel are what creators put in their own public channel description or links. The extension does not verify them and does not obtain the hidden business email that YouTube keeps behind its own button. You are responsible for using this information lawfully, including anti-spam and marketing laws. The "why similar" lines are produced by AI, may be wrong, and are not statements by YouTube or by the channel.

If you are a creator and want to ask about data that relates to you, write to the contact address above (published together with the Chrome Web Store listing). Channel information on YouTube itself can be changed only by you on YouTube. We keep copies of public channel text only in the 7-day cache described above, as a hash-keyed cache that is not searchable by channel.

What we do not do

• No analytics, tracking pixels or advertising.
• No sale or sharing of data for advertising.
• No remote code: the extension runs only code packaged in it. Model output is shown as plain text only and is never executed.
• No use of Chrome Web Store user data for anything other than the single purpose described above.

Security

Requests to our backend use HTTPS. The backend accepts requests only from this extension's origin and validates every request.

Children

The extension is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

Your choices and rights

You can delete local data at any time with "Delete all local data" or by uninstalling. Because we hold no account or identifying information about you, we cannot look up data by name or email; for anything else, contact us. Residents of some US states have privacy rights (access, deletion, correction). We do not sell or share personal information as those laws define them. Contact us to make a request.

Changes

If our data practices change, we will update this policy and its effective date, and the extension's store listing, before the change takes effect.

Limited Use

The use of information received through this extension adheres to the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Contact

A support address will be published here together with the Chrome Web Store listing.