Friction Gate — Privacy Policy

Last updated 5 August 2026

Friction Gate puts a short pause in front of Reddit, X and YouTube. It exists to test one question: whether a pause you have to type through beats a pause you only have to wait through. Everything below follows from that — the extension collects what is needed to answer that question and deliberately nothing else.

What never leaves your device

• The URLs you visit. No addresses, paths, query strings or page titles are ever transmitted. When an event refers to a site, the only value sent is one of exactly three fixed words: reddit, x or youtube.
• What you type into the pause screen. The reason you write for opening a site stays in the browser tab and is never stored or sent. Only three numbers derived from it are: whether you typed anything at all, how many characters, and how many seconds passed before you continued.
• Your browsing history, page contents, cookies, form data, and anything on sites other than the three listed above. The extension does not request the browser permissions that would make this possible.

What is collected

A random identifier is generated when you install the extension — a string like 3f2504e0-4f89-41d3-9a0c-0305e82c3301. It is not derived from anything about you or your device, and it is the only thing tying one event to another. Alongside it, each event carries the extension version, a timestamp, which of the two test groups you were randomly assigned to, and:

• that the extension was installed;
• that a pause screen was shown, and for which of the three sites;
• what you chose — continued, backed out, or left without choosing;
• for the typing group: whether you typed, the character count, and the seconds taken;
• a thumbs up or thumbs down, if you give one;
• once a day, how many times the extension stepped in since the previous day and how long it has been installed;
• that the extension was uninstalled. Your browser opens a page on our server when you remove it, which carries the random identifier and nothing else.

Your IP address

As with any web request, the server sees the IP address the event came from. It is used to rate-limit abuse and is not stored alongside your events — no column in the database holds it, and it is not used to locate or identify you.

Where it goes and who sees it

Events are sent to a server run on Cloudflare Workers and stored in a Cloudflare D1 database. Nobody else receives this data. It is not sold, not shared, not used for advertising, not used to build a profile of you, and not used for creditworthiness or lending decisions. There are no third-party analytics, trackers or ad networks in this extension.

How long it is kept

This is a short study. Event data is retained while it runs and for the analysis that follows, and no longer than 12 months from collection, after which it is deleted.

Removing your data

Uninstalling the extension stops all collection immediately.

Because nothing here is linked to a name, email or account, we cannot look up "your" records from an email address — that limitation is a consequence of the design, not an evasion. If you want data already collected removed, send the random identifier and it will be deleted. You can read it off the address bar of the page your browser opens when you uninstall.

Children

This extension is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect data from them.

Changes

If what is collected changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top is updated.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or a request to delete data already collected: joshuaw2211@gmail.com