Privacy policy

Last updated: 20 October 2026

Likelyread works in two ways. With Likelyread Cloud you sign in with Google and we store your tracking data on our server, in Germany, only to show it to you. With a self-hosted server the extension talks only to a server that you run, and we never receive anything. The extension has no analytics or telemetry in either case.

Who we are

Likelyread is an open-source project (MIT licence) developed by Hugo Sequier, who operates Likelyread Cloud. In this policy, "we" means Likelyread. "The server" means the Likelyread server the extension is connected to: ours for Likelyread Cloud, or one you install on a machine you control.

What the Chrome extension does with data

The extension's single purpose is to tell you when the emails you send from Gmail™ are opened.

• When you send an email with tracking on, the extension adds a small invisible image to it and sends to the server: the subject, the recipient addresses (To, Cc and Bcc), the address you send from, the campaign you picked, the time of sending and a random identifier.
• When you view an email you sent, the extension tells the server the random identifier of that email, so your own view is not counted as an open. To do this it looks for Likelyread images in the messages on screen and checks who sent the message. It does not read, store or send the text of your emails.
• Stored in your browser (Chrome extension storage, on your device): the server address and your access token, your preferences, your default campaign, the addresses you have sent tracked email from, and a short queue of emails waiting to be sent to the server if it was unreachable.

The extension sends data only to the server it is connected to. It uses no advertising and loads no code from the internet.

Likelyread Cloud

• Sign-in. You sign in with Google. We ask Google only for your email address and a stable account identifier (the openid email scopes). We get no access to your Gmail, contacts or Google Drive.
• What we store. Your email address and plan; for each tracked email the details listed above; and for each load of the invisible image, the time, the IP address and the user-agent string of whoever loaded it. Access tokens are stored only as one-way hashes.
• Why. Only to show you your own tracking results, run your account and bill you if you pay. Nobody else can see your data. We do not read it except when you ask for support or to keep the service secure.
• Where. On our server at Contabo in Germany.
• How long. Until you delete it. You can delete any email from the dashboard, or delete your whole account and all of its data from the Account page. It is removed at once from the live database and from backups within 30 days.
• Payments. Paid plans are sold by our reseller Polar (Polar Software Inc.), which acts as merchant of record and handles your card details, invoices and taxes. We receive your email address, what you bought and whether your subscription is active. We never see your card number.
• Service providers. Google (sign-in), Polar (payments), Contabo (hosting) and Cloudflare (this website and DNS). Each one processes data only to provide its service.
• Your rights. You can access, export, correct or delete your data at any time, and you can complain to your data protection authority. Write to us at the address below for anything the dashboard does not cover.

A self-hosted server

Your server stores the information above for each tracked email, and for each load of the invisible image the time, the IP address (unless you turn this off with STORE_IP=false) and the user-agent string. You can delete any email and its records from the dashboard, and set RETENTION_DAYS to delete old records automatically. The server runs on infrastructure you choose. We have no access to it and receive nothing from it.

Your responsibilities when tracking

When you track emails, you are responsible for the data of your recipients. Tracking images can fall under the EU ePrivacy rules and the GDPR. In France, the CNIL recommends getting the recipient's consent before measuring opens of campaign emails, B2B included. Check the rules that apply to you.

Selling and sharing

We do not sell, rent or share user data, use it for advertising, or use it to determine creditworthiness. With a self-hosted server we never receive it in the first place.

This website

likelyread.com uses no cookies, no analytics and no third-party scripts or fonts. It is hosted on Cloudflare Pages, which may keep standard request logs (such as IP address and time) to run and protect the service.

Changes

If this policy changes, we update this page and the date at the top. Material changes are also noted in the project's release notes.

Contact

Questions about privacy: hello@likelyread.com, or open an issue on GitHub.

Gmail is a trademark of Google LLC. Likelyread is not affiliated with Google.