Effective: October 16, 2026
The short version
- Searching happens on your device. Your search terms, the pages you search, and your PDFs never leave your browser.
- The extension has no analytics, no telemetry, and no ads.
- If you buy Pro, Polar handles the payment as the merchant of record. We never see your card details.
- To deliver and check a Pro license, the extension sends your email address, a one-time code, a checkout reference, a device label, and your license identifiers to our licensing service and to Polar. It never sends what you search.
- Our website uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which sets no cookies.
Who we are
Ctrl-F Plus is made by Chavez Consulting Inc. When this policy says "we", it means Chavez Consulting Inc. You can reach us at support@ctrl-f.plus.
Searching stays on your device
Ctrl-F Plus searches the tabs in your browser window on your device. Your search terms, the text of the pages you search, your PDFs, your annotations, and any text the PDF viewer recognizes in scanned pages stay in your browser. The extension does not send them to us or to anyone else.
When the PDF viewer opens a PDF, it downloads the file from the address you opened, the same way your browser would. That request goes to the site hosting the PDF, not to us.
What the extension stores on your device
The extension keeps its data in your browser's storage for the extension, on your device:
- Your settings, such as whether PDFs open in the extension's viewer and whether scanned pages are recognized.
- If you have Pro: your license key, a device activation identifier, a random install identifier, and a cached record of your license status so Pro keeps working offline.
- While you are signing in on the Settings page: a session token that expires after one hour.
When the PDF viewer opens a scanned document, it recognizes the text on the scanned pages on your device, so you can search, select, and copy that text. To save time when you open the same document again, it keeps the recognized words and their positions on the page in your browser's storage for the extension. It keeps up to 100 MB and removes the documents you opened least recently first. A document is identified by a code computed from the file's contents, not by its web address, and no page image is kept. You can delete the kept text at any time with "Clear recognized text" on the extension's settings page, and you can turn recognition off there with "Recognize text in scanned PDFs". Nothing is kept in an Incognito window.
Highlights, notes, and drawings you add in the PDF viewer are held in memory and written only into the copy of the PDF you download.
Uninstalling the extension deletes everything it stored on your device. It does not delete the records Polar holds about your purchase and license; see "Keeping and deleting your data" below.
Buying Pro
Pro is sold by Chavez Consulting Inc. through Polar Software Inc. ("Polar"), which acts as the merchant of record and authorized reseller. Checkout happens on polar.sh in a regular browser tab, never inside the extension. Polar and its payment processor, Stripe, collect your name, email address, billing details, and payment information under Polar's privacy policy and buyer terms. We never see your card details.
After you pay, Polar sends you to a confirmation page that carries a checkout reference. If the extension is installed, it sends that reference once to our licensing service, which asks Polar for your license and returns it to the extension. The reference stops working one hour after checkout.
When you reach the pricing page from a "Get Pro" link inside the extension, the link tells us which part of the extension you came from, such as the search bar or the Settings page. Polar keeps that label on your order. It contains nothing that identifies you.
Signing in with your email
To use Pro on another device, or to get your license back, you sign in on the extension's Settings page with the email address you bought with. The extension sends that address to our licensing service, which asks Polar to email you a six-digit code. Our service keeps your address for up to one hour, only as the key of a counter that limits how many codes can be requested for one address, and keeps no other record of it. You enter the code in the extension, which passes it through our service to Polar. Polar checks it and returns a session that lasts one hour and lets the extension fetch your license.
Your license and your devices
Pro works on up to three devices. When you activate a device, the extension sends your license key, a random install identifier, and a device label to our licensing service, which registers the device with Polar. The default label is the browser and operating system, such as "Chrome on Mac"; you can rename it in Settings, and every device on your license can see the labels. Polar stores the license key, the activation, the install identifier, and the label.
About once a day, the extension sends your license key and install identifier to our service to confirm that the license is still valid. If the check cannot run, Pro keeps working for 14 days from the last successful check. You can remove a device in Settings or in the Polar customer portal.
Our licensing service
Our licensing service runs at api.ctrl-f.plus on Cloudflare Workers. It receives the requests described above and passes them to Polar over an encrypted connection. It keeps no record of customers, licenses, or devices. The only data it stores are the rate-limit counters, keyed by IP address or email address, that protect it from abuse, and each counter is deleted within an hour. When a request fails, the service logs the request path, the status code, and the error, never the email address, IP address, license key, or any token. Cloudflare keeps those logs for seven days. Like any host, Cloudflare sees the IP address of each request.
Our website
ctrl-f.plus is hosted on Cloudflare and uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to count page views. It sets no cookies, does not record the query string of the address you visit, and does not follow you across sites. Cloudflare keeps unsampled data for seven days and aggregated data for six months. Our hosting may keep standard short-lived access logs. The "See how it works" video on our home page is embedded from YouTube and loads only when you open it; YouTube may then set its own cookies under Google's privacy policy.
Who receives your data
- Polar Software Inc., the merchant of record, holds your customer, order, and license records, and Stripe processes your payment for Polar.
- Cloudflare hosts our licensing service and website and provides the analytics above.
- YouTube, only when you open the "See how it works" video on our home page.
We do not sell your data, do not share it with anyone else, and do not use it for advertising.
Keeping and deleting your data
- Data on your device is deleted when you uninstall the extension. Signing out in Settings removes the saved license from that browser.
- Device activations stay on your license until you remove them in Settings or in the Polar portal.
- Polar keeps your customer and order records under its own policy. You can view and manage them in the Polar customer portal.
- Our licensing service keeps nothing beyond the one-hour counters and the seven-day error logs described above.
To ask us about your data, email support@ctrl-f.plus. For records Polar holds, you can also contact Polar at support@polar.sh.
Chrome Web Store
The extension's use of the data described here follows the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements. It collects data only to provide the features described on this page.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. We will post the new version on this page with a new effective date.
Contact
By email: support@ctrl-f.plus