True Cost respects your privacy. This page describes exactly what the extension stores and which network requests it makes. The short version: your settings and every calculation stay in your browser, and the extension only ever downloads public data files from its own GitHub repository.
- Your settings (hourly wage, wage source, workday hours, display mode, language, currency, and any manual price selectors you saved) live in
chrome.storage.sync. If you are signed in to Chrome with Chrome Sync enabled, Chrome itself may sync these values between your own browsers under your Google account and Chrome's sync settings; the extension has no access to that channel beyond writing the values. - Caches (the suggested-wage dataset, the site-selector database, and the "update available" flag) live in
chrome.storage.localand never leave your browser. - There is no True Cost account. No price, page content, or browsing history is stored beyond the caches above, and nothing is sent anywhere by the extension itself.
The extension contacts only raw.githubusercontent.com, to download public files from the True Cost repository:
| File | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
data/wage-dataset.json |
On install/update, then weekly | Suggests a default hourly wage (e.g. the statutory minimum wage) |
data/sites.csv |
On install, and when you click "Update now" in Settings | The collaborative site-selector database used to detect prices |
data/sites-meta.json |
On install, on browser startup, then weekly | A tiny version file, so Settings can tell you when newer selectors exist |
Every one of these has a bundled copy inside the extension package as a fallback, so a failed request (offline, blocked network, timeout) never breaks anything: the extension simply uses the bundled copy. These plain GET requests carry no credentials and contain nothing but the request itself.
Two more network-touching actions exist, both only ever triggered by you:
- "Suggest this site" in the manual price picker opens a
github.com"new issue" page in a browser tab. The page URL, the selector you picked, the currency, and the element's sample text travel as parameters of that page's URL so the form is pre-filled. Nothing is published unless you then submit the issue yourself on GitHub. - Links in the popup and Settings (repository, supported-sites list, contribution links) open GitHub pages when you click them, like any normal link.
Content scripts make no network requests at all; price conversion runs entirely on your device.
- No analytics or tracking scripts
- No cookies
- No personal data collection
- No advertising
- No third-party services beyond the GitHub file downloads above
This extension is fully open source. You can audit the code at any time at github.com/alirezach/TrueCost.