Privacy Policy
TL;DR. On the free and Pro tiers, translation happens entirely inside your browser — your text is not collected, transmitted, or stored. The optional Cloud tier is the exception: when you use it, the text you translate is sent to our server (and our model provider) to produce the translation, then discarded. Either way, we run no ads or analytics and never sell your data.
1. Who we are
"PaneTrans" is operated as an individual project by the developer registered at hi@julineshang.win. This policy describes how we treat the information you provide when you install, use, or purchase the PaneTrans extension.
2. What runs locally vs. on a server
On the free and Pro tiers, the core translation pipeline — text extraction, model inference, OCR (optical character recognition for video frames), and rendering of the translation popup — runs entirely inside your browser using Transformers.js and ONNX models. On these tiers, the text you translate never leaves your device. The optional Cloud tier is the one exception — it sends the text you translate to our server (see §3.4).
3. Network requests we do make
- Model downloads. When you select a translation model for the first time, the extension downloads its weight files from Hugging Face's CDN (huggingface.co / hf.co) and caches them in your browser's storage for offline use. Hugging Face may log your IP address as part of the standard HTTP request.
- OCR worker. When falling back to OCR for image/video content, the extension downloads Tesseract.js language data from
tessdata.projectnaptha.comand a small WASM binary fromcdn.jsdelivr.net. These are static asset CDNs. - License validation (paid users only). When you paste a license key into the popup, the extension sends the key (and only the key) to our license server. The server returns whether the key is valid and what plan it belongs to. We do not log the IP address of these requests for longer than 7 days; we do log the license-key ID and timestamp for fraud detection.
- Cloud translation (Cloud subscribers only). When you use the Cloud model, the extension sends the text you selected — together with your license key — to our translation server (a Cloudflare Worker), which forwards it to our model provider to generate the translation and streams the result back. We use this only to produce your translation and to meter your monthly usage; we do not store the translated text once the request completes. This happens only on the Cloud tier and only for text you actively translate — never on the free or Pro tiers. Do not translate text you are not permitted to share with a third-party processor.
4. What we do NOT collect
- The text you select for translation, on the free and Pro on-device tiers. (The optional Cloud tier necessarily processes that text on our server to translate it — see §3.4 — but does not store it.)
- The pages you visit.
- Your browsing history.
- Any analytics or telemetry. There is no Google Analytics, no Sentry, no PostHog inside the extension.
- Form data, passwords, cookies, or any DOM content outside of the rectangle you explicitly drag.
5. Payment data
If you purchase a paid plan, payment is processed by Dodo Payments Inc., our Merchant of Record. Dodo handles your card details, billing address, and tax information directly — we never see or store your card. Dodo is GDPR- and CCPA-compliant. See Dodo's privacy policy.
We receive from Dodo: your email address, license-key identifier, plan, and purchase date. We use this only to (a) deliver and validate your license key, (b) provide refunds and support, (c) keep tax records as required by law.
6. Storage on your device
The extension stores in chrome.storage.local (your browser, your machine):
- Your UI preferences (selected language, model, font size).
- Your license key, if you've activated one, and the cached "last validated at" timestamp (used for offline grace).
- The download progress / readiness state of each translation model.
You can clear this at any time by uninstalling the extension or clearing the extension's storage from chrome://extensions.
7. Permissions and why we ask
<all_urls>: required so the region-translate feature works on any website you choose. The extension does not auto-read any page; it only acts on regions you explicitly drag.storage: to remember your settings and license between sessions.activeTab+scripting: to inject the region-select overlay when you click the extension button.contextMenus: to add the "Translate Region" right-click menu item.offscreen: required by Chrome MV3 to run AI inference outside the service worker (which has memory limits incompatible with model files).
8. Children
PaneTrans is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children.
9. Your rights (GDPR / CCPA)
If you are an EU/UK resident, you have the right to access, rectify, delete, and export the personal data we hold about you (essentially: your email and license key). California residents have analogous rights under the CCPA. Email hi@julineshang.win with your purchase email to exercise these rights.
10. Changes
We will post any updated version of this policy on this page and update the "Last updated" date. If a change materially affects your rights, we will notify active license-holders by email.
11. Contact
Privacy or data-protection questions: hi@julineshang.win.