Last updated 29 July 2026. We keep the questions, not the questioner.
Trust Me Bro finds real sources for claims. To do that it has to send the claim somewhere. Here is exactly what moves, what stays, what we never touch, and the rights you have over all of it. We make money from subscriptions, not from selling you: we never sell or share your personal information, and we never sell user data to anyone. Who we are. The data controller is Edward Ashdown, sole proprietor, trading as Trust Me Bro, reachable at receipts@trustmebro.to. This policy covers the browser extension, the trustmebro website, and our public pages (Receipts, the Trust Feed, and the Trust Wiki).
Two different things live in two different places, and we want to be straight about it.
So: we keep the questions, not the questioner.
Where GDPR or UK GDPR applies, each use has a legal basis:
| What | Why | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Text you check, page title/URL | Search the literature and return sources, the service you asked for | Performance of a contract |
| Device ID, usage counts | Meter quotas, enforce tiers, prevent abuse | Legitimate interests |
| Account email + password hash | Sign-in, disputes, subscription management | Performance of a contract |
| Payment metadata | Billing via Stripe, tax | Contract and legal obligation |
| Anonymized claims in the Trust Feed and Wiki | Public record of what the engine judged | Legitimate interests (published without identity) |
| Feedback (thumbs up or down) | Improve accuracy of the engine | Legitimate interests |
Referral tokens and the tmb_ref cookie | Credit referrals | Legitimate interests, or consent where required |
We do not make automated decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.
This is the part most privacy policies fudge, so here it is plainly.
Trust Me Bro's use and transfer of information received from the extension adheres to the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements: data the extension handles is used only to provide and improve its single purpose, finding sources for claims, and never for advertising, creditworthiness, or sale to data brokers. The extension also tells you this up front, on first run, before anything is sent.
The API is for developers building on our engine, and the data picture is deliberately narrow. What we receive. The claim text you POST, the API key it came from (which identifies your account, not your users), the time, whether the answer came from the corpus or was constructed, and what it cost. Plus the IP the request came from, to enforce limits and stop abuse. We do not receive, and do not want, any identifier for your own end users. If one appears in a claim, it is because you put it there. What happens to the claim. A claim we have not checked before is checked and published, so it enters the public record as a Feed item and possibly a Receipt. This is the same treatment a claim gets from the extension, and it is what keeps the corpus-lookup price near cost. The published record carries the claim and the evidence and never your key, your account, or your users. Please do not send personal or confidential text through the API. Treat a claim as a public question. Who is responsible for what. You decide what to send us. For text that originates with your own users, you are the one who must have a lawful basis for sending it and who must tell them. Once a claim is published it is part of our public record and we are responsible for it as a controller, on the same terms as every other Receipt. Legal bases (for those who need them): performing our contract with you, for serving and billing API calls; our legitimate interest in preventing abuse, for the IP and rate-limit data; and our legitimate interest in maintaining a public verification record, for the corpus itself. Retention. Keys are stored as hashes and kept until you revoke them, then removed within 30 days. Ledger entries are kept as long as tax and accounting law requires. Published claims and verdicts are kept indefinitely, like every other checked claim. Abuse and rate-limit logs are kept for 5 days. Age. The API is for business use. Do not use it if you are under 18.
Receipts are permanent and public. None of them are connected to you.
tmb_ref) in their browser for 30 days so a later subscription can be credited to your wallet. It is a single opaque token, readable only by us, holding no personal data.We set only first-party cookies: tmb_session (sign-in, HttpOnly, up to 90 days) and tmb_ref (referral attribution, 30 days). We run no third-party analytics, ad pixels, or trackers on the extension, the site, or Receipt pages.
These providers receive only what's listed, never your identity alongside it:
Our servers and most providers above are in the United States, so your data is processed there, and wherever Google and Stripe operate, regardless of where you live. For users in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland, we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses and, where providers hold them, EU-US Data Privacy Framework certifications, as the safeguards for these transfers.
Wherever you live, you can ask us what we hold about you, ask for a copy, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. You do not have to ask us for most of it: signed in, Your data exports everything we hold about you as a single file and deletes your account and its contents, immediately and without a conversation. Where you would rather write to a person, email receipts@trustmebro.to from your account address, or include your device ID (shown in the extension's settings) for extension-only data. We answer within 30 days. If you are in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, you additionally have the rights to restrict or object to processing, to data portability, and to withdraw consent at any time where consent is the basis, and you may lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. If you are a California resident, you have the right to know, delete, and correct, and the right to opt out of sale or sharing of personal information. **We do not sell or share personal information as the CCPA defines those terms**, and we do not use sensitive personal information beyond providing the service. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any right. Deleting your account or data does not unpublish Receipts. Receipts were never connected to you in the first place, so there is nothing personal in them to remove; if you want a specific Receipt taken down, use the dispute or removal process above.
Everything moves over HTTPS. Passwords are stored only as salted scrypt hashes. Payment webhooks are signature-verified. Access to production data is limited to the operator. If a breach ever affects your personal data, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as the law requires, within 72 hours to authorities where GDPR applies.
The Service is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If we learn we have, we will delete it. If you are 13 to 17, use the Service with a parent or guardian's consent.
We date every version. If we change our data practices materially, we will give notice in the extension and on the site before the change takes effect, including the notice the Chrome Web Store requires when an extension's data practices change after install. Questions? receipts@trustmebro.to. We read everything.