1. Scope of this policy
This policy explains how Tab Seal 1.0.0 handles information when you create, monitor, update, restore, or remove a seal. It covers the packaged Chrome extension code, including the popup, service worker, and the page agent that is injected after a user action.
Tab Seal is designed as a local checkpoint tool. It does not operate a website, cloud account, synchronization service, analytics endpoint, advertising system, or remote database. The extension code in this package is the complete behavior relevant to the data practices described here.
Websites that you visit have their own privacy practices. Tab Seal does not control those websites, and this policy does not replace the policies of the pages whose state you choose to seal.
2. What a seal contains
When you choose “Seal this tab,” Tab Seal creates a snapshot of the current page state needed to restore the checkpoint. The snapshot contains the page URL, page title, horizontal and vertical scroll position, the time of capture, and selected text when a non-empty selection is present.
The snapshot also contains supported form state from ordinary input, textarea, and select elements. For a supported control, Tab Seal stores a compact element fingerprint and the value necessary to restore that control. Checkbox and radio controls are represented by their checked state.
Tab Seal stores fingerprints so it can find the same control again after a restore. A fingerprint may contain the element tag, input type, id, name, accessible label, placeholder, nearby label text, and an index fallback.
- Selected text is limited to the first 500 characters.
- Password inputs are excluded.
- File inputs are excluded.
- Hidden inputs are excluded.
- Tab Seal does not capture screenshots or the full HTML document.
3. Information deliberately excluded
Tab Seal is not intended to copy credentials, uploaded files, hidden form payloads, cookies, authentication tokens, browser history, or an entire webpage. Its capture routine explicitly skips password, file, and hidden input types.
The extension does not read Chrome password storage, browsing-history databases, bookmarks, downloads, payment methods, or account credentials. It also does not request clipboard, cookies, history, downloads, identity, geolocation, microphone, or camera permissions.
If a website places sensitive information in an ordinary visible text field, that field may be captured because Tab Seal cannot reliably infer the semantic sensitivity of every custom form. Users should break or update a seal if they do not want an ordinary field value retained locally.
4. When page access occurs
Tab Seal does not request persistent host permissions. Page access begins when the user invokes the extension and Chrome grants temporary activeTab access to that page.
After sealing, the packaged page agent remains in the loaded document until that document is unloaded. It listens for form input, change events, and meaningful scroll movement so the extension can mark the seal as disturbed. It does not scan unrelated tabs in the background.
If a restore navigates the same sealed tab back to its sealed URL, the service worker injects the packaged page agent again after the page finishes loading so the checkpoint can be restored.
5. How change detection works
Change detection is intentionally narrow. A supported form input or change event marks the seal as disturbed. A scroll movement that differs meaningfully from the last observed position also marks the seal as disturbed. Navigation away from the sealed URL is tracked for that sealed tab.
The page agent sends only a small status message to the extension service worker when a change is detected. The message indicates that the page changed and includes a short reason such as “Form value changed” or “Scroll position changed.”
Tab Seal does not continuously transmit the page contents to the service worker. It also does not create a detailed history of every keystroke or every scroll coordinate.
6. Restore behavior
When you request a restore, Tab Seal first checks whether the sealed tab is still at the sealed URL. If the tab navigated elsewhere, the extension returns that same tab to the sealed URL and waits for the page to finish loading before applying the snapshot.
For each stored form control, Tab Seal attempts to locate the corresponding control by strong identifiers first and weaker fallbacks later. It restores values using native browser setters and dispatches ordinary input and change events so modern web applications can observe the change.
The extension restores the saved scroll position and attempts to recreate the saved text selection when the exact selected text can be found in a single page text node. If a control or selection cannot be located, it is skipped rather than guessed.
7. No automatic submission or destructive action
Tab Seal does not submit a form, click a save button, trigger a purchase, send a message, or invoke a website action as part of capture or restore. Restoring an input value may cause the website’s own input/change listeners to run because that is necessary for state synchronization.
The extension does not attempt to bypass site permissions, authentication, paywalls, security controls, or browser restrictions. Browser-internal pages and other non-scriptable surfaces may reject page injection; in that case Tab Seal reports that the page cannot be sealed.
Users remain responsible for reviewing restored form values before submitting them to a website.
8. Local storage
Tab Seal stores its seal records in chrome.storage.local. That storage belongs to the extension profile on the user’s device and is managed by Chrome.
There is no Tab Seal server and no synchronization account. The packaged code does not call fetch, XMLHttpRequest, WebSocket, or a remote SDK to upload seal records.
Chrome or the operating system may back up a browser profile according to the user’s own platform settings. Such platform-level backup behavior is outside Tab Seal’s code and control.
9. Retention and tab lifecycle
A seal normally remains until the user breaks the seal or closes the associated browser tab. When Chrome reports that a sealed tab has been removed, Tab Seal deletes that tab’s seal record from extension storage.
On browser startup, tab identifiers may differ from the previous session. Tab Seal removes stale associations unless an old seal can be reattached unambiguously to exactly one currently open tab with the same sealed URL.
This reattachment logic is deliberately conservative. If multiple open tabs match the same sealed URL, the old seal is discarded rather than attached to a potentially wrong tab.
10. User controls and deletion
Users can remove a seal at any time with “Break seal.” Removing the seal deletes the stored checkpoint for that tab and clears the action badge for that tab.
Users can choose “Update seal” to replace the stored snapshot with the current page state while preserving the original seal creation time. This is an explicit action; Tab Seal does not silently redefine a checkpoint after changes.
Users can also remove all Tab Seal data by clearing extension storage through Chrome or uninstalling the extension. Uninstallation removes the extension’s locally managed storage according to Chrome’s normal behavior.
- Seal this tab — creates a checkpoint.
- Restore sealed state — applies the stored checkpoint.
- Update seal — replaces the checkpoint with the current state.
- Break seal — deletes the checkpoint for that tab.
11. Chrome permissions
Tab Seal requests activeTab, scripting, storage, and tabs. Each permission supports the single purpose of creating, tracking, or restoring a checkpoint for a tab the user has deliberately sealed.
activeTab provides temporary page access after the user invokes the extension. scripting is used to inject only the packaged page agent. storage retains local seal records. tabs is used to track navigation/lifecycle of sealed tabs, return a sealed tab to its saved URL, and remove records when a tab closes.
Tab Seal does not request host_permissions or the
12. Network behavior
Tab Seal makes no extension-initiated network requests. It contains no remote JavaScript, remote CSS, remotely hosted fonts, analytics beacons, telemetry collectors, advertising libraries, or third-party SDKs.
When a restore returns a tab to a normal website URL, the website may perform its usual network activity. That traffic belongs to the website and browser navigation, not to a Tab Seal backend.
The absence of extension network activity means seal content is not sent to a developer-controlled server by the code in version 1.0.0.
13. Third parties and data sale
Tab Seal does not sell, rent, trade, or broker seal data. It does not share seal contents with advertisers, data brokers, analytics providers, or AI services.
There are no embedded third-party services in the extension package that receive form state or selected text. Chrome itself provides the extension APIs and local storage mechanisms used by Tab Seal.
A sealed webpage may independently communicate with its own service providers when it loads or reacts to restored values. Those website relationships are outside this extension.
14. Security design
Tab Seal minimizes exposure by using temporary activeTab access instead of persistent site-wide host permissions and by excluding common sensitive input types from capture.
Snapshots are stored in extension-local storage and are not encrypted by Tab Seal with a separate user password. Security therefore also depends on the security of the user’s device, operating-system account, and Chrome profile.
The resolver for form controls favors strong identifiers and skips controls that cannot be found. This reduces the chance of writing a stored value into an unrelated field after a page structure changes.
15. Private and incognito browsing
Chrome controls whether an extension is allowed to run in incognito mode. Tab Seal does not enable itself for incognito automatically.
If a user explicitly allows Tab Seal in incognito through Chrome settings, the browser determines the storage separation and extension behavior for that mode. Users should consider the sensitivity of sealed form state before enabling an extension in private browsing.
Tab Seal does not contain special code intended to defeat private-browsing isolation or correlate private and regular browsing sessions.
16. Children
Tab Seal is a general-purpose browser utility and is not designed specifically for children. It does not provide social features, advertising, profiling, or a service that requests a child’s name, email address, age, or other account information.
Because the extension stores the contents of ordinary form controls selected by user action, guardians and managed-device administrators should decide whether the utility is appropriate for a particular user and browsing environment.
The extension does not knowingly collect children’s personal information on a developer server because it has no developer data collection server.
17. Changes to this policy
This policy describes version 1.0.0. A future release that changes permissions, storage fields, network behavior, cloud features, analytics, or the categories of captured page state will require a corresponding policy update.
Minor wording changes may clarify existing practices without changing the extension’s behavior. Material changes should be reflected in the policy published with the Chrome Web Store listing and, when appropriate, in release notes.
Users who do not agree with a future change can remove stored seals and uninstall the extension.
18. Contact and questions
Privacy and support questions should be sent through the developer support contact published on the Chrome Web Store listing associated with Tab Seal. This avoids placing an unverified personal address inside the packaged policy.
When reporting a problem, users should avoid sending sensitive form values or screenshots containing private information unless they intentionally choose to disclose those details for troubleshooting.
A useful privacy report should identify the Tab Seal version, Chrome version, the type of page involved, and the behavior observed without including unnecessary page contents.
19. Operational limitations
Tab Seal cannot guarantee restoration of a control that a website removes, renames beyond recognition, replaces with a non-standard component, or protects from script access. In those cases the extension skips the unresolved control and leaves the current page state unchanged for that item.
Restoring a value may cause a website to run its own validation or reactive interface code because Tab Seal dispatches standard input and change events. The extension does not control what the website itself does in response to those ordinary events.
A seal is a convenience checkpoint rather than a transaction guarantee, backup system, version-control repository, or substitute for saving work through the website when the website provides its own save operation.
- Review important restored values before submitting a form.
- Use the website’s own save mechanism for durable server-side work.
- Break a seal when the local checkpoint is no longer appropriate.
20. Data flow at a glance
The data path has four steps: a user gesture grants temporary page access; the page agent captures the supported checkpoint; chrome.storage.local retains the checkpoint; and an explicit restore sends that checkpoint back to the same sealed tab.
Change notifications travel only from the loaded page agent to the extension service worker. They contain a small changed/not-changed status and reason rather than a stream of field contents.
No step in this flow requires a developer server. Normal website navigation can contact the website itself, but the extension does not duplicate that traffic to another destination.
21. Policy summary
Tab Seal is built around an intentionally limited data flow: the user seals a tab, the extension stores a local checkpoint, the loaded page agent reports whether that checkpoint has been disturbed, and restore applies the saved values back to the same tab on request.
The extension does not require a developer account, does not upload the checkpoint, does not use remote code, and does not monetize browsing data.
Users control when a checkpoint is created, when it is replaced, when it is restored, and when it is deleted.