Effective date: 2026-08-22 Last updated: 2026-08-22
Gloss ("we", "us", "our") operates the Gloss browser extension and the web application at https://gloss.space (collectively, the "Service"). This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have.
If you have questions, contact us at gloss@agucova.dev.
1. Summary
- Gloss lets you highlight text on webpages, save bookmarks, and optionally share those highlights with friends you add inside the Service.
- We collect only what the Service needs to function: your account details, the highlights and bookmarks you create, and the URLs of pages you choose to highlight or bookmark.
- We do not sell your personal data, show you ads, or use your data to train machine-learning models.
- We do not track your general browsing history. The extension only records the URL and context of pages where you explicitly create a highlight, bookmark, or comment.
2. Who we are
Gloss is an independent project operated by Agustín Covarrubias, an individual based in Chile, as a personal project. There is no separate legal entity behind the Service at this time. For data-protection purposes, the operator acts as the data controller of the information described below.
Contact: gloss@agucova.dev.
3. Information we collect
We collect the following categories of information. We do not collect information beyond what is listed here.
3.1 Account information
When you create an account, we collect:
- Name, email address, and (if you provide them) profile image, username, bio, website, and social handles (X/Twitter and GitHub).
- Authentication material handled by our auth provider
(Better-Auth). Gloss does not offer
email-and-password sign-in, so we never hold a password for your account.
We store only what your chosen sign-in method requires:
- Magic link — a one-time sign-in link is emailed to your address and expires after 10 minutes.
- Passkey — the public key and credential identifier of each passkey you register. The private key never leaves your device.
- Sign in with Google / Sign in with Apple — the account identifier the provider returns, plus the name, email address, and profile image it releases to us. These providers are offered only on deployments configured with the corresponding credentials; they are not enabled on gloss.space today, where magic link and passkey are the available methods.
- Session records: an opaque session token, its expiry, and the IP address and browser user-agent recorded when the session was created. These let you stay signed in and let us spot suspicious sign-ins.
- Email verification status and related verification tokens.
3.2 Content you create
- Highlights: the URL of the page, the highlighted text, position data
(W3C Web Annotation selectors — range, text-position, text-quote — used to
re-locate the highlight when you revisit the page), and your chosen
visibility (
private,friends, orpublic). - Bookmarks: the URL, title, description, favicon, Open Graph image, and site name of pages you save.
- Comments: markdown text you write on highlights, including any @-mentions of other users.
- Tags: names and colors of tags you create to organize bookmarks.
3.3 Social graph
- Friendships: the user IDs of people you send, accept, or reject friend requests to/from, and the status of those requests.
3.4 Preferences
- Display and privacy settings: theme preference (light/dark/system), highlight display filter, comment display mode, and default visibility settings for your profile, highlights, and bookmarks.
3.5 Programmatic access
- API keys you create for the Gloss CLI / MCP server. We store a
cryptographic hash of each key (not the key itself), along with its
name, prefix, scope (
readorwrite), and last-used timestamp.
3.6 Optional integrations
- Curius: only if you choose to connect a Curius account. The extension signs you in to Curius directly from your browser and hands the resulting access token to Gloss, where we store it together with your Curius user ID, username, and display name so we can fetch your library on your behalf. Imported links and highlights become ordinary Gloss highlights and bookmarks, tagged with their import source. We also keep the Curius user IDs, usernames, and display names of the Curius accounts that appear in your library, so imported items can be attributed, and we cache the Curius activity feed we fetch for you for a short period so the dashboard does not re-request it on every load. You can disconnect Curius from your account at any time, which deletes the stored token.
3.7 Automatically collected
- Timestamps associated with each record (creation, update, last-used).
- Technical logs generated by our hosting providers (see §6), including IP addresses and request metadata, for security, debugging, and abuse prevention. These logs are not combined with your content.
3.8 What we do not collect
- We do not record pages you visit unless you highlight, bookmark, or comment on them.
- We do not collect keystrokes, mouse movements, form contents, or page contents beyond the specific text you highlight.
- We do not use analytics, advertising, or cross-site tracking SDKs.
- We do not collect precise location data.
4. Browser extension permissions
The Gloss extension requests the following Chrome permissions. We use each one only for the purpose described:
| Permission | Why we need it |
|---|---|
<all_urls> (host permission) | Required to inject the content script that lets you highlight text on any webpage you visit. We only read and store content you explicitly highlight. |
storage | Store local settings and your signed-in session in the browser. |
offscreen | Open a hidden document that runs window.matchMedia("(prefers-color-scheme: dark)") so the toolbar icon matches your system theme. A service worker has no DOM and cannot answer that on its own. |
That is the complete permission list. The extension does not request
cookies, tabs, history, bookmarks, webRequest, or any other
permission.
The extension does not read the full content of pages you visit, modify pages without your action, or send any information to our servers unless you explicitly create a highlight, bookmark, or comment, or are signed in and viewing a page where friends' shared highlights should be overlaid.
5. How we use your information
We use the information above to:
- Provide core Service functionality: create, store, display, search, and synchronize your highlights, bookmarks, comments, and tags across your devices.
- Render friends' highlights on pages you visit, when they have shared them with you.
- Authenticate you and secure your account.
- Email you a sign-in link when you ask for one, and contact you about your account when something needs your attention (service or security notices).
- Prevent abuse, debug issues, and enforce our Terms of Service.
- Comply with legal obligations.
We do not use your content to train machine-learning or AI models, and we do not use it for advertising.
Limited use of the data the extension handles
- We do not sell your data to third parties.
- We do not use or transfer your data for any purpose unrelated to the Service's single purpose — letting you highlight webpages, save bookmarks, and share those with friends you add.
- We do not use or transfer your data to determine creditworthiness or for lending purposes.
The use of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
6. Who we share it with
We share information only with service providers we rely on to run the Service, and only to the extent needed. Current subprocessors:
| Provider | Purpose | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Convex (convex.dev) | Backend, database, and serverless functions. Authentication runs here too, as a self-hosted Better-Auth component. | United States |
| Cloudflare | Web hosting (Workers) and DNS for gloss.space | Global edge network |
| Resend | Sending magic-link sign-in emails. Receives your email address and the link. | United States |
| Curius (curius.app) | Only if you connect a Curius account: we call the Curius API with your token to read your library. | United States |
Two further providers apply only if the deployment you use has them enabled
and you choose that sign-in method. Neither is enabled on gloss.space
today:
| Provider | Purpose | Location |
|---|---|---|
| "Sign in with Google" OAuth, if you choose it | United States | |
| Apple | "Sign in with Apple" OAuth, if you choose it | United States |
Fonts, icons, and every other asset ship inside the extension and the web app themselves. Neither contacts a third-party CDN, font host, analytics endpoint, or advertising network.
If our list of subprocessors changes, we will update this page. We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information, and we do not transfer it to anyone for purposes unrelated to running the Service.
We may disclose information if required by law, to respond to valid legal process, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Gloss, our users, or the public.
7. Visibility controls
Every highlight and bookmark has an explicit visibility setting that you control:
- Private — visible only to you.
- Friends — visible to users whose friend requests you have accepted.
- Public — visible to anyone with a Gloss account, and potentially to unauthenticated visitors on public profile pages.
You can change a highlight's or bookmark's visibility at any time. Changing visibility to "private" removes it from friends' and public views going forward, but cached copies in other users' browsers may persist briefly until their next sync.
8. Data retention
- We keep your account and content for as long as your account is active.
- Deleting a highlight, bookmark, or tag erases the record, and any comments and @-mentions attached to that highlight, from the database.
- Deleting a comment marks it deleted and drops its @-mentions, so it stops being served to anyone. The comment row itself stays in the database until the parent highlight is deleted or you close your account.
- To close your account, email gloss@agucova.dev from the address on the account. Within 30 days we erase your profile, highlights (and the comments on them), bookmarks, tags, friendships, API keys, and Curius credentials. Comments you left on other people's highlights are marked deleted and stop being served, so the surrounding thread stays readable; they are erased when that highlight is deleted.
- Backups and operational logs may retain residual data for up to 90 days before being overwritten.
9. Security
- All traffic between your browser and our servers is encrypted in transit with TLS.
- API keys are stored as cryptographic hashes; we cannot recover a lost key.
- There are no passwords to steal: Gloss authenticates with magic links, passkeys, and (where enabled) Google or Apple sign-in only.
- Sensitive actions — sign-in emails, friend requests, comments, highlight creation, username changes, and CLI authorization — are rate-limited.
- Access to production systems is limited to the people who need it.
No system is perfectly secure. If we become aware of a security breach that affects your personal data, we will notify you as required by applicable law.
10. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights over your personal data, including the right to:
- Access the data we hold about you.
- Correct inaccurate data.
- Delete your data (the "right to be forgotten").
- Export your data in a portable format.
- Object to or restrict certain processing.
- Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.
- Lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority.
You can exercise several of these yourself: your profile, visibility
settings, tags, highlights, and bookmarks are editable and deletable from
your account settings, and the Gloss CLI will dump your highlights,
bookmarks, and tags as JSON, CSV, or Markdown using a read-scoped API key.
Account closure and full-account exports are handled by request — email
gloss@agucova.dev and we will respond within 30 days.
California residents (CCPA/CPRA)
We do not sell or "share" personal information as those terms are defined under California law.
EEA / UK residents (GDPR / UK GDPR)
Our legal bases for processing are: performance of a contract (providing the Service you signed up for), legitimate interests (security, abuse prevention, product improvement), consent (optional integrations like Google/Apple sign-in and Curius import), and legal obligations.
If you are in the EEA or UK, our international transfers to US-based subprocessors rely on Standard Contractual Clauses and equivalent safeguards where required by applicable law.
11. Children
Gloss is not directed to children under 13 (or the equivalent minimum age in your jurisdiction). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date above and, for material changes, notify you by email or in-product before the change takes effect.
13. Contact
Questions, privacy requests, or security reports: gloss@agucova.dev.