Privacy Policy – Live Area OCR

Last updated: 3 November 2026

This policy explains how the Live Area OCR Chrome extension ("the extension"), published by Cywaretech ("we", "us"), handles information. The extension lets you select an area of a web page or video and copy the text in it using optical character recognition (OCR), in Telugu and English.

1. What the extension accesses

The extension takes a screenshot of the visible part of the current tab only when you ask it to read text. That happens when you press the keyboard shortcut, click the Copy button, or turn on Live mode. Only the area you selected is used. Screenshots are processed in memory and discarded right away. They are never saved to disk or sent to us.

The extension can only access a tab after you use one of its keyboard shortcuts or click its icon on that tab (Chrome's "activeTab" permission). That access ends when you leave or reload the page. The extension does not read, record or transmit the content of the pages you visit.

2. Where processing happens

By default, all OCR runs locally on your device. The OCR engine (Tesseract) and its language models are bundled inside the extension. Nothing is sent over the internet.

3. Optional Google Cloud Vision

You can choose to switch the OCR engine to Google Cloud Vision and enter your own API key. Only if you do this, the image of the selected area is sent directly from your browser to Google's Cloud Vision API for text recognition. It does not pass through our servers, and we never receive it. Google's handling of that data is governed by the Google Privacy Policy and the Google Cloud Privacy Notice. You can switch back to the offline engine at any time.

4. What is stored

• Settings: your chosen languages, OCR engine, optional API key, and Live mode options. These are saved with Chrome's built-in storage. If Chrome sync is on, they sync between your own Chrome browsers. We cannot access them.
• Selected area position: kept in the page's session storage so the box comes back after a reload. It is deleted when you close the tab.
• Recognized text: shown in the on-page panel and copied to your clipboard only. It disappears when you close or reload the page.

5. What we do not do

• We do not collect personal information such as your name, email address or location.
• We do not collect browsing history, page content, screenshots or recognized text.
• We do not use analytics, cookies, advertising or tracking of any kind.
• We do not sell or transfer user data to third parties.

6. Chrome Web Store Limited Use

The use of information received by the extension adheres to the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Data is used only to provide the extension's single purpose: reading text from the area you select and copying it.

7. Children

The extension does not knowingly collect any information from anyone, including children under 13.

8. Changes to this policy

If we change how the extension handles data, we will update this page and the "Last updated" date above. Significant changes will also be noted in the extension's Chrome Web Store listing.

9. Contact

Questions about this policy or the extension? Email communeimpact@gmail.com.