First Posted: 2019-02-15
Last Update: 2020-06-20 (change history)
The IPFS Companion browser extension is owned by Protocol Labs Inc. and created by the IPFS Project. We know you care about how your personal data is used and we take your privacy seriously. That is why, at the moment, we don’t track or collect any of your Personal Data, nor do we sell it to anyone else or use it for advertising. If that changes, we'll let you know by updating this policy. By using IPFS Companion, you are accepting and agreeing to this Privacy Policy.
What Does This Privacy Policy Cover?
This Privacy Policy explains that we don’t gather, track, nor permanently store any of your Personal Data. It also covers Additional Privacy Protocols related to the way the IPFS Companion extension allows people to add and retrieve data to and from the IPFS Network (which is a peer-to-peer network). This Privacy Policy doesn’t apply to projects run by other organizations outside IPFS and Protocol Labs, even if we promote the use of those projects or happen to contribute to them.
What Information Do We Collect?
None. We don’t collect your Personal Data, period.
Explicitly Shared Data Will Be Publicly Available over IPFS
We do not collect, rent, store or sell your Personal Data to anyone. However because IPFS Companion is a web extension that provides access to the real-time, peer-to-peer IPFS Network (which is a public platform for which anyone may join and participate) the data that you import to the IPFS Network using IPFS Companion is then publicly available and accessible to everyone participating in IPFS Network.
Additional Privacy Protocols
If you add files to the IPFS Network using the IPFS Companion extension, they will be stored on your local IPFS Network node. Those files are also then cached by anyone who retrieves those files from the IPFS network and co-hosted on that user’s local IPFS Network node. Generally, cached files will eventually expire, but it’s possible for a user with whom you have shared access to such files (by sharing the relevant Content Identifier or CID) to pin that data, which means the cached files then will not expire and will remain stored on such user’s local IPFS Network node.
All content shared with the IPFS Network is public by default. This means your files and data that you’ve added will be accessible to everyone who knows the CID or queries the data on the IPFS Network. If you want to share certain materials or data privately, you must encrypt such data before adding it to the IPFS Network.
If you are using embedded JS IPFS node it will connect to bootstrap servers hosted by Protocol Labs and some of your Personal Information, such as public key and IP address of your IPFS node will be stored on the IPFS network publicly as well to facilitate p2p exchanges.
If you are using “window.ipfs”, “Linkify IPFS Addresses” or “Catch Unhandled IPFS Protocols” experiments, websites will be able to detect you are running IPFS Companion. This behavior can be changed on Preferences screen by disabling mentioned experiments.
If you are using DNSLink (its lookup is enabled by default), then IPFS node will be executing DNS queries for all domain names visited during browsing, and those queries will use DNS resolver configured in your operating system. To disable this behavior set "DNSLink lookup" to "Off" in Preferences.
Will We Ever Change This Privacy Policy?
We’re constantly trying to improve IPFS Companion, so we may need to change this Privacy Policy sometimes. When we do, we will update the date at the top of this Privacy Policy and will also post an update at https://ipfs.io/companion-privacy/ We encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Policy to stay informed, which is ultimately your responsibility. If you use IPFS Companion after any changes to the Privacy Policy have been posted, that means you agree to all of those changes.
What If I Have Questions About This Policy?
If you have any questions or concerns regarding our privacy policies, please send us a message at legalrequests@protocol.ai.