Privacy Policy

1. How a page gets saved

What happens depends on which part of Mothball you use.

• The Chrome extension. Extraction happens in your browser. The Chrome extension reads the page you are already looking at and strips the ads and clutter there. That page is not sent to Mothball. The saved file is uploaded from the Chrome extension straight to Google Drive.
• The web app, when you paste a link. Your browser cannot fetch another website's page on its own (a restriction called CORS). The address is sent to Mothball's server in the body of the request. The server fetches the page, removes the ads and clutter with Mozilla's Readability library, and sends the clean article back to your browser. That work happens in memory. The page is not written to a database or kept after your browser has the result.
• Images and original PDFs. When you save a document that includes pictures, or you also save the original PDF, the server fetches those files so they can be placed in your Drive. The file's address is part of that request. The file is not kept after the response is sent.

When you click Save, the finished file is uploaded from your browser to Google Drive with Google's own API. Mothball does not keep a copy of your archive.

The three "Try a sample" articles on the app home screen are snapshots saved inside the app: a Wikipedia article, a PDF fact sheet, and an Amazon product listing. Opening one does not contact Mothball's server and does not require a Google account. Saving requires sign-in.

2. The Google permissions Mothball asks for

Sign-in uses your Google account. Mothball asks for the basic OpenID, email, and profile scopes: your account id, email address, name, and profile photo. That is how the app knows who you are.

For Drive, Mothball requests one scope, drive.file. It covers two things:

• Files and folders Mothball itself creates, such as My Drive › Mothball and the files saved into it.
• A folder you choose yourself through Google's folder picker, if you would rather save somewhere else.

Mothball does not request permission to list, search, read, edit, or delete the rest of your Drive. Documents, spreadsheets, photos, and folders you have not pointed it at are not visible to the app, because Google does not disclose them to an app that only holds drive.file.

Mothball does not sell your personal data, and does not use your personal data or your archived content to train machine learning or artificial intelligence models.

3. What Mothball stores

Mothball keeps a small profile for each signed-in user in Google Cloud Firestore, keyed by your Google user id. That profile holds:

• The email address on your Google account, and the display name Google shares
• Whether you have Mothball Pro, and the time that status last changed
• If you subscribe: the Stripe customer id, subscription id, subscription status, and the current period end. The period end is shown in Settings. It does not decide whether Pro is on.

It does not hold the pages you save, their contents, their titles, or a history of what you saved. Your archive exists only in your Google Drive.

We keep a monthly count of saves made in the web app and the Chrome extension, and nothing about what was saved. The Chrome extension asks Mothball to count the save before the file goes to Google Drive. That request includes the Google sign-in token so Mothball can tell who is saving. Mothball checks the token with Google and does not store it. The first time that count is recorded for a Google account that has not signed in on the website yet, Mothball creates the sign-in record for that account so the website and the Chrome extension share one count. Signing in on the website later uses that same record.

Settings such as your default save format and folder name stay in this browser (local storage). They are not written to Firestore. The short-lived Google Drive access token used to upload a file also stays in this browser, and in the Chrome extension's own storage if you use the Chrome extension. That access token is not written to Firestore. The Chrome extension does send that token to Mothball for the save count described above. Mothball does not keep a copy of it.

Mothball also keeps an encrypted Drive permission on the server, so a later save does not have to ask Google again. Only the server can read that record. Your browser, this page, and the Chrome extension never receive that permission. Signing out deletes it and tells Google to cancel it. The finished file is still uploaded from your browser to Google Drive. Mothball does not keep a copy of your archive.

4. Payments

Payment for Mothball Pro is handled by Stripe as a yearly subscription. Your card details go to Stripe. They are not stored on Mothball's servers. Pro is turned on in your Firestore record only after Stripe confirms a payment (the webhook, or a check of that paid checkout). If you cancel, Pro stays on until the end of the paid year and is then turned off. When we refund a first-year payment we cancel the subscription at the same time, which turns Pro off. A refunded one-time purchase also turns Pro off.

5. Removing your data

You can withdraw Mothball's access to your Google account at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Mothball then loses the ability to create or read files in your Drive.

To have the Firestore record deleted, email [email protected] from the address on your account.

Neither of those steps changes files already saved in your Drive. They stay where they are, and you can read, move, export, or delete them yourself.

6. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that affects how your data is handled, the date at the top of this page will change and the new version will be posted here.

7. Contact

Questions go to [email protected].