Privacy policy — Lit Salon — Add to Shelf

Effective date: 27 July 2026
Applies to: the Chrome extension Lit Salon — Add to Shelf, version 1.0.0 and later
Published by: samthedataman
Contact: open an issue

This policy covers the browser extension only. Your use of the lit.salon website is covered by lit.salon's own privacy policy.

The short version

The extension reads the book on the page you are looking at, matches it to a catalogue entry, and adds it to your lit.salon shelf when you ask it to.

We operate no servers of our own and receive no data from the extension.
There is no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no advertising and no tracking of any kind.
Nothing is ever sold, rented, or shared with anyone.
Your lit.salon sign-in session is held in memory only. It is never written to disk and never sent anywhere except lit.salon and Google's Firebase token service, which issued it.
The addresses of the pages you visit are never transmitted.

1. What the extension reads

1.1 Book information from the page you are on

On the book sites listed in the extension's permissions, and on any other site only if you have explicitly granted access from the options page, the extension reads book details from the page in your browser. Depending on what the page publishes, that can include: title and subtitle, authors, ISBN, Amazon ASIN, publisher, publication year, cover image address, description, page count, language, subject categories, series name, format, and the site's own star rating.

It also reads the address of the page itself. This is used only inside your browser — to tell one book page from another so the same book is not looked up twice, and to notice when a single-page site navigates to a different book. The page address is never transmitted to anyone.

The extension only ever reports a book when the page identifies itself as a book page. It does not read, record or transmit anything else on the page: not the page's text, not form fields, not cookies, not your browsing history.

1.2 Your lit.salon sign-in session

When you click Connect, lit.salon opens in a tab and you sign in there as normal. The extension never displays a password field, never handles your password, and never performs a sign-in on your behalf.

Once you are signed in, a small script running on the lit.salon domain reads the session record lit.salon has already stored for itself in that site's own browser storage. That record contains your lit.salon user id, a short-lived access token, a refresh token, the token's expiry time, lit.salon's public Firebase API key, and — as lit.salon stores them — your display name, email address and profile photo address. Your display name and photo are shown in the extension's popup so you can see which account is connected.

The script that reads this runs only on lit.salon and auth.lit.salon. It reads; it never writes to or modifies lit.salon's storage.

2. What leaves your browser, and where it goes

The extension contacts exactly three destinations. There is no fourth, and there is no server belonging to the extension's developer.

2.1 OpenLibrary (`openlibrary.org`, `covers.openlibrary.org`)

Sent: a book's ISBN, or its title and author. Nothing else. Why: lit.salon files every book under an OpenLibrary work identifier, so the book found on the page has to be matched to one before it can be shelved. Not sent: any identifier for you, any credential, any cookie, or the address of the page you are on. These requests are made with credentials explicitly omitted.

Cover thumbnails shown in the extension are loaded from covers.openlibrary.org. As with loading any image from any website, this makes your IP address visible to OpenLibrary. OpenLibrary is operated by the Internet Archive and has its own privacy policy.

2.2 lit.salon (`lit.salon`, `www.lit.salon`, `auth.lit.salon`, and lit.salon's

Google Cloud Functions host)

Sent when you add or remove a book: the catalogue identifier of the book, the identifiers of any lists you chose, and your lit.salon access token so lit.salon knows the request is yours. Sent when reading: your lit.salon user id, to fetch your own shelf and lists; and a book's catalogue identifier, to fetch that book's public community counts.

The community counts request needs no sign-in and includes no identifier for you, which is why the count appears on book pages before you have connected an account.

Not sent, ever: the address or contents of the page you were on, the site the book came from, your browsing history, or your list of previously added books. lit.salon learns which books you shelved — which is the point of shelving them — and nothing about how you got there.

2.3 Google Firebase token service (`securetoken.googleapis.com`)

Sent: the refresh token lit.salon issued to you, and lit.salon's public Firebase API key. Why: lit.salon sign-in sessions expire after about an hour. Exchanging the refresh token for a fresh access token is what stops the extension asking you to sign in again every hour. This renews an existing session; it never creates one. Not sent: anything about books, pages, or your activity.

2.4 A note on the fallback path

If your session cannot be read directly, and only then, the extension can ask an open lit.salon tab to make a request to lit.salon's own backend on its behalf. This path is hard-limited in code to lit.salon's Cloud Functions host and will refuse any other address. It changes where a request originates, not what is sent or who receives it.

3. What is stored, where, and for how long

What	Where	Lifetime
Your lit.salon session tokens	`chrome.storage.session` — browser memory	Cleared when you quit the browser, when you disconnect, or when lit.salon ends the session. Never written to disk.
The book detected on each open tab	`chrome.storage.session` — browser memory	Cleared when the tab closes or the browser quits. Deliberately not stored on disk, because it would amount to a record of book pages you visited.
Your settings	`chrome.storage.local` — this browser	Until you change them or remove the extension
Your recently added books (the last 50: title, authors, cover identifier, which site it came from, and when)	`chrome.storage.local` — this browser	Until you clear it on the options page or remove the extension

All of it stays in your browser. None of it is transmitted, backed up, or synchronised. If you use Chrome profile sync, Chrome may sync chrome.storage.local between your own devices under Google's terms; session storage is never synced.

4. What we do not do

We do not operate a server, a database, or an account system. There is nothing for us to collect data into.
We do not use analytics, telemetry, crash reporting, error reporting, session replay, heatmaps, fingerprinting or advertising software. None is present in the package.
We do not sell, rent, trade or share your information with anyone.
We do not use or transfer your information for any purpose other than adding books to your lit.salon shelf.
We do not use or transfer your information to determine creditworthiness or for lending purposes.
We do not track you across websites or build a profile of you.
We do not read, store or transmit the contents of pages beyond the book details described in section 1.1.
We do not load or execute any code from a remote server. Everything the extension runs ships inside the package.

5. Your controls

Disconnect your account — options page → Connection. This deletes the stored session immediately.
Clear your added-books list — options page → History.
Turn off the in-page button, the community chip, or notifications — options page → Behaviour.
Turn off any source site individually — options page → Sources.
Withdraw access to sites beyond the built-in list — options page → Sources → "Every other website". Chrome permissions can also be reviewed and revoked at chrome://extensions.
Remove everything — uninstalling the extension deletes all of its stored data from your browser.

Books already added to your lit.salon shelf live on lit.salon, not in the extension. Remove them from your shelf on lit.salon, or through the extension's popup, which can take a book back off your shelf.

6. Children

The extension is not directed at children under 13 and is not designed for them. It collects nothing, so it collects nothing from children.

7. Third parties named in this policy

lit.salon — your account provider and the destination for books you shelve. Governed by lit.salon's own privacy policy.
Google Firebase (securetoken.googleapis.com) — the identity service lit.salon uses. Governed by Google's privacy policy.
OpenLibrary / Internet Archive — the book catalogue used for matching and cover images. Governed by the Internet Archive's privacy policy.

We have no commercial relationship with any of them beyond being a client of their public interfaces.

8. Changes to this policy

If the extension starts sending, storing or receiving something not described here, this policy will be updated before that version is published, and the effective date at the top will change. Material changes will be noted in the extension's Chrome Web Store release notes.

9. Contact

Questions, or a request about data: open an issue.