GATE GUIDE · Updated 5 October 2026

Privacy policy

Gate Guide helps you complete music download gates using your existing browser sessions. This policy describes its local data and optional reports sent to the Gate Guide developer. You can use the extension without sharing diagnostics or downloaded-track details.

Gate settings and browser sessions

Your first name, gate email and comment are saved in extension-local storage. The extension enters them into participating gates or account pages when the flow requires them. Those services process submissions under their own policies; submitting your email to a gate does not subscribe you to Gate Guide messages. These saved settings are not included in automatic reports to the developer.

Chrome supplies existing account sessions. Gate Guide does not extract passwords, cookies or OAuth tokens. It reads the current gate and account pages participating in that flow to identify controls and confirmations. Run checkpoints, gate URLs and a short activity log are stored in browser session storage. It does not collect unrelated browsing history or inspect the content of audio files.

Local download history

Local history starts enabled and can be disabled in History & privacy. A history entry is created only after a download associated with a Gate Guide run reports complete in Chrome. It contains the public track title and artist when supplied by the page, the portal, completion date and a local entry identifier. Metadata may be incomplete; a page title is labeled as such in exports. Email-delivery handoffs and unlocked gates are not recorded as downloaded files. No file path or signed download URL is stored in history.

Optional reliability diagnostics

This setting starts off. If enabled, new runs share their outcome, portal, failure stage/category, duration range, retry count, count of observed CAPTCHA/login intervention types, action count, extension version, Chrome major version and OS family. Reports exclude names, gate emails, comments, track titles, browsing URLs, page HTML, screenshots, credentials and local file paths. The purpose is to measure and improve the performance and reliability of gate completion.

Optional downloaded-track details

This separate setting starts off. If enabled, new runs share the public track title and artist, portal, metadata source, download day, extension/browser versions, OS family and a hash derived from the gate's URL without query parameters or fragments. The hash is a track identifier; it is not an installation ID and does not make the music choices anonymous. These reports can reveal which music was downloaded. They are used to support track-specific download troubleshooting and improve Gate Guide's download functionality. The developer dashboard shows track information only in aggregate groups of at least three completed-download reports. It does not provide individual users' music histories.

Problem reports and feature requests

You choose whether to submit a report, preview its exact contents, and explicitly agree that the developer may read it for support. You can optionally attach a sanitized diagnostic summary, a public gate link, and a reply email. The gate link identifies a track; query parameters and fragments are removed. Free-text descriptions may contain whatever you enter, so avoid private or sensitive information. Contact emails are used only to respond to that report and are not added to a marketing list.

Storage, transport and retention

Optional reports are sent over HTTPS to the Gate Guide reporting service on the developer's VPS hosted by Hetzner. Report bodies are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. The service is accessed directly; no third-party analytics SDK or advertising service receives these reports. Administrators manage the infrastructure and read expressly submitted support reports; automatic reports are processed into aggregate internal statistics.

Local history is limited to 500 entries and 30 days. Unsent reports are limited to 200 and expire after 30 days. Up to 20 sent feedback previews are retained locally for 30 days. Uploaded report bodies and per-report deletion credentials expire 30 days after receipt. Expiry is enforced when the service handles a request or at hourly cleanup, and locally on data access or periodic maintenance. Anonymous daily reliability counts, containing no track names or user identifiers, are retained for up to one year. Automatic reporting does not use a persistent installation ID. Random report identifiers and secret deletion tokens support duplicate prevention and deletion.

The service temporarily uses an IP-derived hash in memory for rate limiting for ten minutes. Network providers necessarily handle connection addresses. Gate Guide does not write IP addresses to its report database or request logs. No automatic database backups are configured for the reporting service.

Your controls

History & privacy lets you disable history or either sharing setting, clear local history, export local history/reports, and delete saved local data and uploaded report bodies. Disabling sharing stops new collection for that category and cancels its queued reports; already uploaded reports remain until deletion or expiry. Enabling sharing applies to future runs and does not upload earlier history.

Delete saved data stops the current flow, clears gate settings and local reports, disables history and sharing, and uses locally retained deletion tokens to request removal of uploaded report bodies. Anonymous daily reliability counts remain. If offline, deletion requests retry while the extension remains installed. Uninstalling or clearing extension storage removes the deletion tokens, so request deletion before uninstalling and wait for pending deletions to finish. Uploaded bodies still expire automatically. After deleting saved data, automatic flows stay paused until you manually start a gate. Clearing local history alone does not delete reports already shared.

Limited Use and contact

Gate Guide's use of user data adheres to the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Data is used only to provide, maintain, secure and improve the extension's disclosed functionality. It is not sold, used for advertising, or used to build unrelated music or browsing profiles.

For support or privacy questions, open Gate Guide's History & privacy screen and submit a reviewed problem report. Include a reply email if you want the developer to respond. Material changes to these practices will be described in the extension and this policy.