Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible for your data?

Certain is operated by:

Certain Technologies Limited
Registered office: 167-169 Great Portland Street, 5th Floor, London, W1W 5PF
Website: certainchecker.com
Email: support@certainchecker.com

Certain Technologies Limited is responsible for determining how and why your personal data is processed by Certain.

2. What Certain does

Certain allows you to select text on a webpage and request that it be checked.

The Chrome extension is designed to process only the text that you explicitly select and submit for verification. Although the extension requires broad website access (<all_urls>) to allow the selection-and-verification functionality to work across websites, Certain does not use this permission to monitor your browsing activity, record the websites you visit, or collect webpage content generally.

Certain does not track your browsing history.

The web application provides a dashboard where you can manage your account and subscription, view usage information, and view previously checked claims.

3. Information we collect

3.1 Account information

When you create or use a Certain account, we may collect:

• Your name;
• Your email address;
• Your Clerk user ID;
• Account creation and update timestamps.

This information is used to authenticate you, maintain your account, associate your activity with your account, and provide the Certain service.

Authentication is provided by Clerk.

3.2 Verification information

When you submit a claim for verification, we collect and store:

• The text that you selected and submitted;
• The verification verdict;
• The confidence associated with the verification;
• The explanation provided by the verification system;
• Sources returned or used during verification;
• Claim type;
• Model version;
• Prompt version;
• Processing latency;
• The date and time of the verification;
• Your Clerk user ID.

The selected text is particularly important from a privacy perspective.

Because Certain allows users to select text from arbitrary webpages, the selected text may contain personal, confidential, or sensitive information. For example, a user could unintentionally select someone’s name, contact details, health information, financial information, private communications, or other sensitive material.

You should therefore only submit text to Certain that you are authorised to submit and that you are comfortable having processed by Certain and its service providers.

We do not intentionally request sensitive personal information. However, because users choose the text they submit, Certain cannot guarantee that submitted text will never contain sensitive information.

Verification records are currently retained indefinitely to allow us to maintain the verification history and improve Certain’s accuracy and functionality.

3.3 Feedback

If you rate a verification as correct or incorrect, we collect:

• Your feedback;
• The verification to which the feedback relates;
• Your user ID.

We use this information to evaluate and improve Certain’s verification accuracy and the quality of its sources.

3.4 Shared claim cache

Certain may maintain a shared cache of previously verified claims.

The cache may contain:

• Claim text;
• Verification verdicts;
• Other information associated with the verification.

Cached claims are not linked to a particular user’s account and may be returned to another user who submits the same or sufficiently similar claim.

Because cached claims are not linked to an individual account, deleting your Certain account does not necessarily remove a copy of the same claim from the shared cache.

You should therefore avoid submitting text containing confidential or sensitive information that you do not want to be retained or potentially returned to another Certain user.

3.5 Billing and subscription information

Certain uses Stripe to process payments and subscriptions.

Certain stores information such as:

• Stripe customer ID;
• Stripe subscription ID;
• Stripe price ID;
• Subscription status;
• Subscription period dates.

Certain does not store your full payment card details.

Stripe may process information necessary to provide payment services, which may include your name, email address, billing information and payment details.

Payment processing is subject to Stripe’s own privacy practices.

3.6 Technical information

Certain may temporarily process IP addresses for purposes such as rate limiting, security, abuse prevention, and maintaining the availability of the service.

IP addresses used for rate limiting are not intended to be retained as a permanent user profile.

4. How we use your information

We use information collected through Certain to:

• Provide the verification service;
• Authenticate users;
• Process subscriptions and payments;
• Display verification history;
• Maintain usage information;
• Prevent abuse and excessive or automated use;
• Secure and maintain the service;
• Diagnose technical problems;
• Improve verification accuracy;
• Evaluate user feedback;
• Improve source selection and verification quality;
• Maintain and improve our infrastructure;
• Comply with applicable legal obligations.

We do not sell your personal information.

We do not use information obtained through the Chrome extension for behavioural advertising, personalised advertising, or advertising profiling.

We do not use your browsing history for advertising.

5. AI processing

Certain uses artificial-intelligence systems to assist with the verification of submitted claims.

The text you submit for verification may be sent to Anthropic and processed using Anthropic’s Claude services.

Certain may also send search queries derived from submitted claims to a web search service used as part of the verification process.

These services are used to provide the core verification functionality of Certain.

Certain’s verification results are generated with the assistance of AI and can be wrong, incomplete, outdated, or misleading.

Certain is not a guarantee that a claim is true or false.

Users should exercise their own judgement and review the underlying sources, particularly where the information is important or consequential.

Certain is designed to indicate when it does not have sufficient confidence or information to verify a claim, but errors can still occur.

6. Chrome extension permissions

The Certain Chrome extension requests access to websites using the <all_urls> host permission and uses the Chrome context-menu functionality.

The broad website permission is necessary to allow Certain to provide its core functionality across webpages.

The extension is designed to process the text that you explicitly select and submit for verification.

Certain does not use the <all_urls> permission to monitor your browsing history or continuously collect webpage content.

Certain does not intentionally collect:

• A record of the websites you visit;
• Your browsing history;
• Webpage content that you have not selected for verification;
• Cookies from websites you visit;
• Form inputs that you have not selected for verification.

The Chrome extension’s handling of user data is limited to providing and improving Certain’s verification functionality and related operational purposes.

7. Service providers

Certain uses third-party service providers to operate the service.

These include:

• Clerk — authentication and account management.
• Stripe — payment processing and subscription management.
• Anthropic — AI processing used to classify and verify submitted claims.
• Web search provider — searches derived from submitted claims may be processed through the web search functionality used to support verification.
• Neon — database hosting.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) — backend and infrastructure hosting.
• Vercel — web hosting and related infrastructure.

These providers may process information on our behalf where necessary to provide their services to Certain.

We do not sell your information to these providers or permit them to use Certain user data for unrelated advertising purposes.

8. International data transfers

Certain and its service providers may process information in countries outside the country in which you live, including the United Kingdom, European Economic Area, United States, and potentially other jurisdictions where our service providers operate.

Where applicable data-protection law requires safeguards for international transfers, we intend to use appropriate legal mechanisms for those transfers, such as adequacy decisions or appropriate contractual safeguards.

Because Certain relies on third-party infrastructure providers, the exact location in which particular information is processed may vary depending on the provider and service involved.

9. Legal bases for processing

Where UK GDPR or EU GDPR applies, we rely on different lawful bases depending on the processing activity.

These may include:

Performance of a contract

We process information where it is necessary to provide the Certain service you have requested, including:

• Creating and maintaining your account;
• Authenticating you;
• Performing claim verification;
• Maintaining your verification history;
• Providing subscription functionality.

Legitimate interests

We may process information where reasonably necessary for our legitimate interests, including:

• Maintaining and improving Certain;
• Preventing abuse;
• Protecting the security of our systems;
• Diagnosing technical problems;
• Improving verification accuracy;
• Maintaining service reliability.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we consider the impact of the processing on users and seek to ensure that our interests do not override users’ rights and interests.

Legal obligations

We may process information where necessary to comply with applicable legal, regulatory, accounting, tax, or law-enforcement requirements.

10. Sensitive personal information

Certain does not intentionally request sensitive personal information.

However, because users select the content submitted for verification, submitted text may inadvertently contain information that qualifies as sensitive or “special category” personal data under applicable data-protection laws.

Users should therefore avoid submitting sensitive personal information unless they have a lawful basis and appropriate authority to do so.

If you believe that sensitive personal information has been submitted to Certain and you would like it removed, contact us at support@certainchecker.com.

We will assess the request in accordance with applicable law.

11. Data retention

We retain information for different periods depending on its purpose.

Account information

Account information is retained while your Certain account remains active.

Verification history

Verification records, including submitted claim text, are currently retained indefinitely to support verification history, service improvement, and development of Certain.

Feedback

Feedback associated with verification records is currently retained as part of the service’s historical verification and improvement data.

Shared claim cache

Claims in the shared cache may be retained indefinitely because the cache is not associated with individual user accounts.

Technical data

IP addresses used for temporary rate limiting are retained only as necessary for that operational purpose.

Billing data

Billing and subscription records may be retained for as long as necessary to administer subscriptions and satisfy legal, accounting, tax, and financial-record requirements.

We may update our retention periods as Certain develops. If we materially change our retention practices, we will update this Privacy Policy.

12. Account deletion

You may request deletion of your Certain account.

When an account is deleted, information associated with that account, including the user’s historical verification records and other account-linked information, is deleted from our database, subject to any information we are legally required to retain.

Because the shared claim cache is not user-linked, deleting an account does not necessarily remove a claim that has been stored in the shared cache.

If you want to request account deletion, contact support@certainchecker.com.

13. Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live and which data-protection laws apply to you, you may have rights including:

• The right to know what personal information we process;
• The right to request access to your personal information;
• The right to request correction of inaccurate information;
• The right to request deletion of your personal information;
• The right to request restriction of processing;
• The right to object to certain processing;
• The right to data portability in applicable circumstances;
• The right to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.

These rights are subject to applicable legal limitations and exceptions.

To exercise a privacy right, contact support@certainchecker.com.

We may need to verify your identity before completing certain requests.

14. Complaints

If you are in the United Kingdom and believe that your data-protection rights have been infringed, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

You can find information about making a complaint on the ICO’s website.

If you are located in the European Economic Area, you may also have the right to lodge a complaint with the data-protection authority in the country where you live, work, or believe that an infringement occurred.

15. Security

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect information processed through Certain against unauthorised access, loss, misuse, alteration, or disclosure.

Data transmitted between the extension, website, backend, and relevant service providers is transmitted using secure connections where supported.

No internet-based service can guarantee absolute security, and we cannot guarantee that information will never be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed through a security incident.

16. Data sharing and disclosure

We do not sell personal information.

We do not share user information with third parties for behavioural advertising or personalised advertising.

We may disclose information to service providers that process information on our behalf where necessary to provide Certain, including authentication, payment processing, AI verification, database hosting, infrastructure, and web hosting providers.

We may also disclose information:

• Where required by law;
• To respond to valid legal requests;
• To protect the rights, property, or security of Certain, our users, or others;
• To investigate fraud, abuse, security incidents, or other unlawful activity;
• In connection with a merger, acquisition, restructuring, or sale of some or all of the business, subject to applicable law.

17. Children’s privacy

Certain is intended for general use and is not specifically directed at children.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children where prohibited by applicable law.

If you believe that a child has provided personal information to Certain in circumstances where this is not permitted, please contact us at support@certainchecker.com.

18. Cookies and similar technologies

Certain may use cookies or similar technologies where necessary to operate the website, authenticate users, maintain sessions, or provide requested functionality.

If Certain introduces non-essential analytics, advertising, or other tracking technologies, we will provide appropriate information and obtain consent where required by applicable law.

19. Third-party websites

Certain may return links to external websites as sources supporting a verification.

We are not responsible for the privacy practices, content, or security of external websites.

You should review the privacy policies of websites you visit through links provided by Certain.

20. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes to Certain, our data-processing practices, legal requirements, or our service providers.

The “Last updated” date at the top of this policy indicates when the policy was most recently updated.

Where required by applicable law, we will provide additional notice of material changes.

21. Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, Certain’s data practices, or your personal information, contact:

Certain Technologies Limited
Email: support@certainchecker.com
Website: certainchecker.com