Refind Privacy Policy

Last updated: April 8, 2026

    Summary: Refind sends zero personal data to our servers. All your data stays on your device. Our backend only serves public article content — it never receives your profile, browsing history, or API keys.
  

What Refind Does

Refind is a Chrome extension that learns your content preferences and discovers articles from public news sources. It uses AI (via your chosen provider and your own API key) to build a taste profile and generate matching keywords. These keywords are used locally in your browser to find relevant topics — no user data is sent to our servers in this process.

Data Stored on Your Device

All of the following data is stored locally in your browser using Chrome's storage API:

API keys — Your AI provider credentials, stored only on your device
Taste profile — AI-generated description of your interests, tagline, matching keywords
Browsing signals — Page URLs and titles with dwell time (last 200 signals, used for profile building). Incognito (private) tabs are never tracked.
Blocked tags — Tags from articles you disliked, permanently excluded from your feed
Favorited articles — Articles you saved for later (up to 1,000)
Liked/dismissed articles — Your explicit ratings (auto-expire after 7 days)
Cached articles — Recently fetched articles for offline display (up to 500)
Settings — Language preference, provider selection, model choice

What Our Backend Does (and Doesn't Do)

Our backend server (entropy.fengdeagents.site) crawls public news sources 24/7 and tags articles by topic. Your browser makes two types of read-only requests to our backend:

Fetch tag list — GET /api/tags returns the public list of all topic tags. No user data is sent.
Fetch articles by tags — POST /api/tags/articles sends a list of matched tag names to retrieve articles. These tags are derived locally from your keywords — our server does not know which user is making the request or why those tags were selected.

    Our backend never receives or stores:
    Your browsing history or visited URLs
Your taste profile, interests, or matching keywords
Your favorited, liked, or disliked articles
Your API keys
Any personally identifiable information (name, email, IP address logging, etc.)
Any data from incognito (private) browsing sessions

  

Third-Party AI Providers

Refind sends requests directly from your browser to the AI provider you choose (e.g., Google Gemini, Groq, Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, SiliconFlow, OpenRouter) using your own API key. These requests do not pass through our servers. The data sent to your AI provider includes:

Your current taste profile description (for profile evolution)
Recent browsing signal summaries — page titles, dwell times, and ratings (for profile updates)
Favorites summary — topic counts and recent titles (for better profile accuracy)

Each provider has its own privacy policy. We recommend reviewing the privacy policy of your chosen provider. Many providers offer free tiers and do not use API data for training.

Browsing Observation

Refind observes your browsing to learn your interests. It does not inject scripts into web pages or read page content. It only uses Chrome's built-in tabs API to track:

Page URL and title — from the Chrome tabs API (not from page content)
Dwell time — how long you stay on a page (recorded only when you spend 90+ seconds)

    Incognito protection: Refind explicitly checks for incognito tabs and skips them entirely. Your private browsing is completely invisible to Refind.
  

This data stays on your device and is used solely to improve your taste profile via your own AI provider. It is never sent to our servers.

How Content Matching Works

Refind's content matching is designed to be privacy-preserving:

Your AI generates matching keywords — based on your taste profile, your AI provider generates 50-100 short keywords (e.g., "AI", "distributed systems", "geopolitics")
Local tag matching — your browser fetches the public tag list from our backend, then locally matches tags against your keywords. This matching happens entirely in your browser.
Article fetch — your browser sends the matched tag names (not your keywords or profile) to our backend to retrieve articles.

This means our backend only sees generic topic tags — it cannot reconstruct your interests, profile, or browsing behavior from these requests.

Permissions Explained

storage — Store your settings, profile, and cached articles locally
sidePanel — Display the Refind interface in Chrome's side panel
alarms — Daily automatic profile refresh (once per day at midnight)
tabs — Read open tab titles during onboarding and observe browsing for taste learning
activeTab — Detect when you click the extension icon to open the side panel
bookmarks — Read recent bookmarks during first-time setup only
Host permissions — Connect to AI provider APIs (using your key) and our backend for public article data

Data Retention

Browsing signals: last 200 entries (older ones automatically removed)
Cached articles: up to 500, refreshed on each visit
Liked/dismissed items: 7 days (auto-expire)
Blocked tags: permanent (until manually removed by you)
Favorited articles: no expiry (max 1,000, oldest removed at limit)
Taste profile: persists until you reset or rebuild

Your Control

View your profile: See exactly what your AI thinks about you in the Profile tab
Edit your profile: Modify interests, description, and blocked tags at any time
Reset all data: Settings → "Reset All Data" removes everything instantly
Switch providers: Change your AI provider at any time in Settings

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy as features evolve. The "last updated" date at the top will reflect changes.

Contact

Questions about this privacy policy? Contact us at support@fengdeagents.site.