Winnow Privacy Policy
Last updated: 20 September 2026

Winnow has no account, no analytics, no telemetry and no tracking of any kind.
It collects no personal data, and the add-on declares this to Firefox in its
manifest as data_collection_permissions: none.

The full policy, kept in the public repository, is at:
https://github.com/Cristians68/Winnow/blob/main/PRIVACY.md

WHAT WINNOW READS

When you open an Amazon product page, Winnow reads content your browser has
already rendered: the product's rating, the rating breakdown, and the reviews
visible on the page.

That content is scored in memory, on your device, and produces the grade you
see. It is not written to disk, not transmitted, and not retained after you
close the page. The analysis makes no network requests at all.

Winnow never crawls Amazon using your session. It reads only what your browser
already loaded for a page you chose to visit. Automated scraping through a
logged-in session can put YOUR Amazon account at risk of suspension, and no
future version will do it.

WHAT WINNOW STORES, ON YOUR DEVICE

1. Your settings — whether the panel is enabled, whether the breakdown starts
   expanded, the theme, and whether sponsorship is shown.
2. Grades you marked as wrong. If you click "Too harsh" or "Too lenient",
   Winnow saves the grade, the trust score, how many reviews were visible, and
   which checks drove the result. It does NOT store the product's name, URL or
   ASIN — the listing is identified by a one-way hash, and the entry carries a
   date rather than a times
3. Grades already computed — the product identifier, letter grade, score,
   engine version and date, so the same grade can be shown beside that product
   on Amazon search pages. Capped at 500 entries and expired after 90 days.

None of this is ever uploaded. There is no "send feedback" button and no code
path capable of transmitting it. You can export or erase all of it from the
add-on's options page at any time. Uninstalling the add-on removes it.

PERMISSIONS

Winnow requests "storage" plus the Amazon storefront domains it runs on, and
nothing else. It cannot read your logins, your passwords, or any site that is
not Amazon. You can verify this in about:addons before or after installing.

SPONSORSHIP

Winnow can show one sponsored message inside its own two windows — the toolbar
popup and the settings page. It never appears on an Amazon page, never appears
beside a grade, and never appears in the analysis panel. It is labelled, and
you can switch it off in Settings.

NO SPONSOR IS CONFIGURED IN THIS VERSION, so nothing sponsored is shown and no
advertising request is made at all. This section describes what happens if one
ever is, written in advance rather than after the fact.

What a sponsor would be told: that a Winnow window opened. The request carries
a schema version, which of the two windows is asking, and the formats that
window can draw. It carries no product, no page address, no search terms, no
grade and no identifier of any kind — there is no field in it that could hold
one. Two different installations send byte-identical requests, so nothing
inside the request distinguishes you from anyone else. It is sent with no
cookies, no credentials and no referrer.

Because a sponsor is never told what you are looking at, a sponsor cannot buy
placement against a particular product, listing or seller. The information
needed to do that never leaves your machine.

What a sponsor can see anyway: the connection itself. Any request shows the
receiving server an IP address, and approximate location follows from that.
This is a property of makin

HOW WINNOW IS PAID FOR

Winnow carries no affiliate links, no referral tags, no commissions and no
merchant relationships. Winnow does not and will not accept payment, in any
form, from any seller, brand, marketplace or advertiser to influence, alter,
suppress or promote any rating, grade or result it produces.

This is a binding commitment, not a description of current practice. A tool
that earns a commission when you buy cannot credibly tell you not to buy. The
scoring engine is open source so that this claim can be verified rather than
merely trusted.

WHAT WINNOW DOES NOT DO

• Sell, rent or share data with third parties
• Run analytics, telemetry, crash reporting or fingerprinting
• Set cookies
• Send anything about the product you are viewing to an advertiser
• Read any site other than the Amazon domains listed in its manifest
• Ask for personal information

AUTOMATED DECISION-MAKING

Winnow's grades are produced by statistical analysis, not human review. They
are estimates about products, not decisions about people, and have no legal or
similarly significant effect on anyone within the meaning of GDPR Article 22.
The reasoning behind every grade is shown so you can judge it yourself, and
Winnow states plainly when its confidence is low.

CHILDREN

grade and no identifier of any kind — there is no field in it that could hold
one. Two different installations send byte-identical requests, so nothing
inside the request distinguishes you from anyone else. It is sent with no
cookies, no credentials and no referrer.

Because a sponsor is never told what you are looking at, a sponsor cannot buy
placement against a particular product, listing or seller. The information
needed to do that never leaves your machine.

What a sponsor can see anyway: the connection itself. Any request shows the
receiving server an IP address, and approximate location follows from that.
This is a property of making a request at all rather than of what Winnow puts
inside one, and it is stated here rather than left for you to discover. It is
also why switching sponsorship off prevents the request being made rather than
discarding the response — a request sent from your address and then thrown
away would already have shown that address.

Grades are computed locally, before any sponsorship request is made. No part
of a sponsored message reaches the scoring code.

HOW WINNOW IS PAID FOR

Winnow carries no affiliate links, no referral tags, no commissions and no
merchant relationships. Winnow does not and will not accept payment, in any
form, from any seller, brand, marketplace or advertiser to influence, alter,
suppress or promote any rating, grade or result it produces.

This is a binding commitment, not a description of current practice. A tool
that earns a commission when you buy cannot credibly tell you not to buy. The
scoring engine is open source so that this claim can be verified rather than
merely trusted.

WHAT WINNOW DOES NOT DO

• Sell, rent or share data with third parties
• Run analytics, telemetry, crash reporting or fingerprinting
• Set cookies
• Send anything about the product you are viewing to an advertiser
• Read any site other than the Amazon domains listed in its manifest
• Ask for personal information

AUTOMATED DECISION-MAKING

Winnow's grades are produced by statistical analysis, not human review. They
are estimates about products, not decisions about people, and have no legal or
similarly significant effect on anyone within the meaning of GDPR Article 22.
The reasoning behind every grade is shown so you can judge it yourself, and
Winnow states plainly when its confidence is low.

CHILDREN

Winnow is not directed at children and collects no data from anyone, including
children under 13.

CHANGES

Material changes are noted in the add-on's changelog and reflected in the date
above. If the no-affiliate commitment changes, it will be announced prominently
before taking effect, never altered quietly.

CONTACT

https://github.com/Cristians68/Winnow/issues