Announcing Your Privacy: Local-First In-Browser Privacy Scoring from Bookcicle Labs
The modern web has quietly become a surveillance labyrinth. Whether you're an author researching historical archives, an indie creator exploring new markets, or simply a reader opening an essay over morning coffee, dozens of invisible third-party scripts, pixel beacons, stateful trackers, and session recorders run silently in the background of almost every page you visit.
At Bookcicle, our work has always been rooted in giving creators and readers ownership over their stories and their digital spaces. But reading, writing, and learning don't happen in a vacuum—they happen in the browser.
Today, we are thrilled to officially announce Your Privacy by Bookcicle, a fast, lightweight, local-first browser extension and privacy scoring engine built by Bookcicle Labs.
Why We Built "Your Privacy"
Most internet users know they are being tracked, but very few tools give them clear, empirical insight into what a website is actually executing on their machine.
Existing "reputation" and "safety" extensions often come with their own troubling compromises:
- They sell aggregated browsing telemetry to ad-tech brokers.
- They operate as opaque "black boxes" with hidden ratings algorithms.
- They demand user accounts, email signups, and persistent remote logins.
We wanted something fundamentally different: a tool built with uncompromising client sovereignty. A tool that gives you immediate, transparent visibility into the privacy posture of every page you visit—without collecting a single byte of your browsing data.
How It Works: Local-First & Deterministic
Your Privacy by Bookcicle calculates an empirical privacy score from 0 to 100 directly inside your browser.
Here is what sets it apart:
1. 100% Local-First Scoring
The entire heuristic engine runs in browser memory and local storage (storage.local). The domain lists, tracker vendor databases, and penalty weights are bundled directly into the extension. Zero remote code or third-party CDNs are ever executed at runtime.
2. Zero Telemetry by Default
Out of the box, zero bytes leave your device. There are no user accounts, no profile identifiers, no session tokens, and no background analytics pings.
3. Transparent, Deterministic Mathematics
No black-box machine learning models or arbitrary editorial grades. The algorithm uses a clear, open mathematical deduction formula:
Score = max(0, 100 - Total Penalties)
- Third-Party Domains: -5 points each (network surface exposure)
- Known Tracking Vendors: -15 points each (advertising, analytics, and data brokers)
- External Cookie Domains: -8 points each (cross-site state persistence)
- Session Replay Recorders: -25 points each (vendors capturing clicks, keystrokes, and scroll telemetry)
4. Non-Intrusive, Thoughtful In-Page HUD
A sleek floating pill rests in the bottom corner of your screen:
- Green (80–100): Clean, low-tracking sites collapse into a subtle 20px dot so you can browse without distraction.
- Yellow (50–79): Moderate exposure signals noticeable commercial tracking.
- Red (0–49): Aggressive profiling and third-party trackers detected.
Clicking the pill opens a detailed inspection panel showing the exact vendor breakdown, external domain counts, and cookie hosts. It includes dark mode support that seamlessly follows your system theme, full keyboard accessibility (Esc dismissal), and touch-friendly mobile optimizations.
5. Community Defense (Strictly Opt-In)
If—and only if—you choose to voluntarily enable Community Defense in Settings, the extension shares anonymous, weekly deduplicated domain grades with events.bookcicle.com.
- Each domain is reported at most once per week.
- Payloads are strictly zero-PII: no IP addresses are logged, no user accounts exist, and no individual browsing histories are stitched together.
- You can inspect your local cache count or wipe it clean anytime with a single click.
Cross-Browser & Mobile Ready
Your Privacy is built on modern Manifest V3 web standards and works across both desktop and extension-supported mobile environments.
| Platform | Browser | Engine / Spec | Support Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Desktop | Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Opera | Chromium · MV3 | 🟢 Full Support | Runs in-memory service workers with standard request audits. |
| Desktop | Mozilla Firefox | Gecko · MV3 | 🟢 Full Support | Background event scripts with Gecko 109+ APIs. |
| Android | Firefox for Android | Gecko · WebExtensions | 🟢 Full Support | Native mobile add-on with touch-adapted HUD and safe-area margins. |
| Android | Kiwi Browser, Lemur, Yandex | Chromium · MV3 | 🟢 Full Support | Full Chromium mobile extension runtime identical to desktop. |
| iOS & iPadOS | Orion Browser | WebKit · WebExtensions | 🟢 Full Support | Native iOS browser supporting dual Chrome/Firefox extensions. |
| iOS & iPadOS | Apple Safari | WebKit · Safari Extension | 🟡 App Store Required | Core JS engine compatible; requires native Xcode/Swift packaging. |
| Mobile | Chrome Mobile & Safari Default | Blink / WebKit | 🔴 Extensions Disabled | Google and Apple disable third-party extensions on default mobile engines. |
You can read the complete architecture specification, explore our privacy guarantees, and test our interactive algorithm calculator right now on Bookcicle Labs:
👉 Explore Your Privacy on Bookcicle Labs
A Glimpse Ahead: More Software Coming Soon
While Bookcicle began with independent author tools and digital publishing platforms, our vision has always been broader: building thoughtful, independent, high-craft software that respects the people who use it.
Building Your Privacy reminded us how much we love solving fundamental web and desktop problems with clean engineering and transparent ethics.
And we're just getting started.
Over the past several months, our team has been quietly deep in development on an exciting lineup of new software products across desktop applications, creative reading and writing workflows, and privacy utilities. We are taking the same local-first, zero-PII, high-performance philosophy behind Your Privacy and applying it to creative workspaces and everyday tools.
We can't share all the details quite yet, but we are genuinely thrilled about what is taking shape—and we'll have major announcements to share very soon.
Stay tuned, enjoy a faster and more transparent web with Your Privacy, and let us know what you think!