Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 9 September 2026

Swift Search works without an account, and the text you highlight stays on your device. Three things are different: if you choose to sign in, we store your email address; if you use an AI feature, the text you selected is sent to be answered; and anonymous usage counts are sent to Google Analytics so we can see which features are used. All three are explained in full below.

Who we are

Swift Search is a Chrome extension published by Sinope, based in the United Kingdom. For the purposes of UK data protection law, Sinope is the data controller for the limited personal data described in this policy. You can reach us at swiftsearch@outlook.com.

What Swift Search does

Swift Search lets you highlight text on any webpage and act on it — search it across your chosen websites, define it, translate it, summarize it, save it for later, highlight it, or ask a question about it. Your websites and settings are stored on your device using Chrome’s built-in storage.

What stays on your device

The following never leaves your computer. It is held in Chrome’s extension storage and is not uploaded to us or to anyone else:

Your list of saved websites, their order, and any site groups you create
Your preferences — theme, dark mode, display mode, open-in-current-tab, search suggestions, keyboard shortcut numbers, and the rest
Your search history — the queries typed into the Swift Search bar, kept locally to power the suggestions dropdown. Individual items can be deleted from within the extension at any time.
Your usage stats — total searches, searches today, daily streak, personal best, searches per site, last site used. These are kept on your device to draw the numbers in the popup. Anonymous counts derived from the same activity are also sent to Google Analytics — see Analytics below.
Saved passages from “Save for Later” — the highlighted text, source URL, text-fragment link, timestamp, word count, and any notes you add
Web highlights and PDF annotations you create, including their colors and positions
Whether you have seen the onboarding

If Chrome Sync is switched on for your Google account, Chrome may sync some of this between your own devices. That is handled entirely by Google; Swift Search has no involvement in it and no access to the synced copy.

Accounts and signing in

An account is optional. Every search, highlight, save and setting works without one. You only need an account to use the AI features, because those run on a server and the allowance has to be counted against someone.

You can sign in with Google, or with an email address and password.

What we store when you have an account

Your email address
An account identifier supplied by Google, if you signed in with Google
Which method you signed in with, and whether the email has been verified
If you signed in with a password: a one-way hash of that password, never the password itself
Your monthly AI credit count and when it resets
Subscription status, if you ever hold a paid plan

We do not receive your Google password, your contacts, your Google Drive, or anything else from your Google account. The permissions requested are your email address and basic profile only.

AI features — what is sent, and where

When you use an AI feature — Define, summarize, translate, rewrite, ask a question, or the AI-assisted find-in-page — the following is sent to the Swift Search backend at swift-search-backend.onrender.com:

The text you highlighted
Where the feature needs it, surrounding text from the page for context
Your question or instruction, and the chosen tone or target language
Earlier messages in that conversation, so follow-up questions make sense
Any image you attach to a question
Which AI model you chose

Our server forwards that request to the AI provider you selected, and returns the answer to you. The providers are:

Google Gemini — generativelanguage.googleapis.com
xAI Grok — api.x.ai
Z.ai GLM — api.z.ai

Their handling of that data is governed by their own privacy policies and terms.

What we do not do with it. The Swift Search backend does not log, store or retain the text of your requests or the answers returned. It is held in memory only for as long as the request takes, and is not written to our database. What we do record is a count of how many credits you have used, and — for diagnostics — which AI model served a request. Not what you asked it.

The practical consequence is worth stating plainly: do not put information into an AI feature that you would not be comfortable sending to a third-party AI provider. That is true of every AI tool, ours included.

Other network requests

Swift Search makes these requests as part of ordinary use. None of them carry your identity:

Google Favicon Service and DuckDuckGo Favicon Service (icons.duckduckgo.com) — to fetch the icons shown in the menu. Only the website’s domain name is sent.
Dictionary API (api.dictionaryapi.dev) — the word you are defining is sent to retrieve its definition.
Datamuse (api.datamuse.com) — the word is sent to retrieve synonyms.
Google Search Suggestions (suggestqueries.google.com) — only if you switch search suggestions on in Settings. It is off by default. What you type in the search bar is sent to retrieve autocomplete suggestions.
Website homepages — when you add a new website, Swift Search may fetch its homepage to work out how to search it.
Search results and Google Translate — these open in a new tab with your query in the URL. That is ordinary web browsing, governed by the privacy policy of whichever site you are visiting.

Analytics

Swift Search sends anonymous usage events to Google Analytics 4 (google-analytics.com/mp/collect) so we can see which features are actually being used and where the extension is failing. That is the only tracking in the product. There is no advertising, no profiling, and we do not sell your data or pass it to anyone for a purpose unrelated to running Swift Search.

The events recorded are: opening the floating menu, closing it, running a search, clicking a site, searching the same text on a second site, using a feature, reaching a search milestone, starting a session, and an error occurring.

Each event carries counts and identifiers only. Specifically: the length in characters of a selection or a query, a word count, which site was used (its id and name), how long the menu was open, and whether dark mode is switched on. The text you highlight and the queries you type are never sent to Google Analytics. The single exception is the error event, which includes the browser’s own error message, truncated to 150 characters, so that we can identify the fault.

Events are tagged with a random identifier generated when Swift Search is installed and stored on your device. It is not derived from you or from your browser, and it is not linked to your email address or your account. The same identifier is sent with AI requests, so that the backend can count your monthly credits against one install rather than issuing a second identifier for the purpose. Uninstalling the extension destroys it; reinstalling creates a new one.

Google’s handling of this data is governed by Google’s privacy policy. There is currently no in-extension switch to turn analytics off; uninstalling Swift Search stops it entirely.

How long we keep things

On your device — until you delete it, or until you remove the extension.
Your account record — until you delete your account.
AI request content — not retained at all, as described above.

Your rights, and how to use them

Under UK GDPR you have the right to access the personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it erased, to restrict or object to its processing, and to receive it in a portable form. In practice, for Swift Search:

To see what we hold — it is your email address, sign-in method, and credit count. You can view this in the extension under Settings → Membership.
To delete everything — Settings → Membership → Delete account. This removes your account record from our database immediately and permanently. Anything stored on your device is removed by uninstalling the extension, or cleared from within the extension itself.
Anything else — email us at swiftsearch@outlook.com.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Legal basis for processing

Where we process personal data, we rely on: performance of a contract — holding your email and credit count is necessary to give you the account and the AI allowance you asked for; and legitimate interests — keeping the service secure and working, and preventing abuse of the free allowance.

Permissions Swift Search requests

storage — to save your websites, preferences and settings on your device
tabs — to open results in a new tab and identify the active tab for the keyboard shortcut
scripting — to place the floating menu on the page
alarms — to keep the background service worker responsive so searches feel instant
offscreen — to use the microphone for voice input, when you start it
identity — to sign in with Google, only when you choose to
host permissions (<all_urls>) — so the menu can appear on any page you visit. Swift Search reads the page only when you select text and ask it to do something.

Children

Swift Search is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. The extension can be used entirely without an account, in which case no personal data is collected at all. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be published at this address and the “Last updated” date revised. Where a change is significant — new data collected, or a new recipient of it — we will say so in the extension’s release notes rather than relying on you to re-read this page.

Contact

If you have a question about this policy, or about anything Swift Search does with your data, please email us at swiftsearch@outlook.com.