Last updated: 13 October 2026
Data controller
The controller of your personal data is Brandon Ta, an individual trading as Shareglow. Contact: privacy@getshareglow.com.
1. What we collect
Account data (name, email, sign-in provider), workspace content (templates, links, scan results), billing status from Polar, and product usage needed to enforce plan limits.
We process account and usage data to run our contract with you, security and abuse-prevention data on the basis of our legitimate interests, analytics only with your consent, and billing records where the law requires. The service is not directed to children under 16.
2. Click analytics on short links
When someone opens a short link we record coarse data only: country, device type, browser family and referrer, and we do not store visitor IP addresses with click analytics. On links where the link owner enabled a retargeting pixel, the visitor first sees an intermediate page that loads that provider's script (Meta, Google, TikTok or LinkedIn); the provider receives the visitor's IP address and may set cookies, and the link owner is responsible for any consent the law requires. That page is never shown to visitors in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, and never when Global Privacy Control is on. Short links set no cookie of ours apart from the 24-hour sg_pw cookie on password-protected links.
For password-protected links the visitor's IP address is kept in a rate-limit counter for up to 15 minutes after a failed attempt. Sign-in sessions record your IP address and browser. Abuse reports record the reporter's email address.
3. Cookies and product analytics
We use a strictly necessary session cookie to keep you signed in, a cookie to remember your consent choice and, on password-protected short links, the 24-hour sg_pw cookie that keeps the link unlocked for the visitor who entered the password. A few other strictly necessary cookies remember your active workspace and whether you are signed in, and, for one hour during sign-up, the plan you picked and your acceptance of the Terms. Product analytics (PostHog) and the dashboard event tracking only start after you accept them in the cookie banner. If you decline, Shareglow works the same and no product analytics request is sent.
Separately, we measure visits and sign-ups with Umami, which we host ourselves. It sets no cookie, does not track you across other websites and does not need your consent. It records the page, referrer, country, browser and device type, performance timings, and events such as clicking a sign-up button, starting checkout and completing a purchase (plan and amount only, never card details). While you are signed in, events are linked to an internal account id, never your email address. We use no session replay. To keep campaign attribution through sign-up, your browser keeps the utm_source, utm_campaign and referrer host of your first page in session storage until you close the tab.
4. Browser extension
The Shareglow Chrome extension scans the page in your active tab for Open Graph and link preview problems. It reads the address (URL) of the active tab and, for local development hosts, the HTML and images of that page. It does not read your browsing history, cookies, form data or the content of other pages.
Local and private addresses (localhost, 127.0.0.1, private network ranges, *.local) are scanned inside your browser and nothing is sent to Shareglow. For public addresses the extension sends the page address to the Shareglow API (POST /v1/scan) with your own API key, and the Shareglow server fetches the page. By default this happens only when you open the popup. If you turn on "Scan public pages automatically" in the options page, each public page you visit is sent the same way, without its query string or fragment. This setting is off by default.
When you click the AI quick fix, the extension sends the page address, title and description to the Shareglow API (POST /v1/ai/meta), which processes them as described in section 6.
The extension stores your API key and settings in chrome.storage.local on your device only; they are never synced to other devices. A short-lived scan result cache is kept in chrome.storage.session and is cleared when the browser session ends. The key is sent only to the Shareglow API host, or to a custom host you explicitly confirm in the options page. The extension contains no advertising, analytics or tracking code.
We do not sell or transfer this data to third parties other than the service providers in section 7, and we use it only to provide the extension's single purpose: scanning link previews and showing how to fix them. We do not use it for personalised advertising or to determine creditworthiness, and our staff do not read it except with your consent, for security or abuse investigation, or where the law requires.
The use of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
5. WordPress plugin
The Shareglow WordPress plugin does nothing until a site administrator pastes a Shareglow API key in Settings > Shareglow. It collects no data about your site visitors and sends nothing from the public side of your site. The og:image address it prints in your page head points to Shareglow's image host (img.getshareglow.com), so visitors and social platforms load the image from there.
Data sent from your site to the Shareglow API, always with your API key: when you test the connection or open the settings page, a request for your templates (GET /v1/templates). When a published post of a post type you mapped is saved and its mapped values changed, the template id and the values you mapped (any of post title, excerpt, site name, author display name, published date, featured image URL or a custom field), to generate the image (POST /v1/images). When you click Generate AI meta or Generate AI alt text in the editor, never automatically on save, the post URL, title, excerpt and up to five headings (POST /v1/ai/meta), processed as described in section 6.
The plugin stores, in your WordPress database: the API key, the template mapping and the connection status as options, plus per-post meta with the generated image address and any title and description you set in the Shareglow box. The API key is stored in plain text in the options table, as WordPress does for settings. When you delete the plugin from the Plugins screen, it removes these options, the per-post meta, its cached template list and its scheduled jobs. Shareglow keeps only the data described in the rest of this policy, such as the images generated for your workspace; delete them from your workspace if you also want them gone.
6. AI processing
AI features run only when you ask for them (AI template from a URL, AI meta title, description and alt text, copy variants, CTR score and AI background). They are never run in the background on your content. We use Google Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite as the primary model and Anthropic Claude Haiku 5.5 as a fallback if Gemini fails; the same request is then sent to Anthropic instead.
What is sent: for meta, alt text and copy variants, the page URL and the title, description and up to five headings of that page, as supplied by you, the extension or the WordPress plugin; for template generation, the domain, the brand colours, fonts and logo address found on the page and the page title and description; for the CTR score, the design layers of your template; for the AI background, a topic and brand colours. The model only chooses from fixed layouts, styles and lengths. We do not send your account details, API keys or billing data.
Results for template generation are cached per domain, and copy variants per page address, for 24 hours so repeat requests do not call the model again. Our own logs record the model name, token counts and cost of each call, not the prompt text.
We send only the page text needed for the request. Google Gemini and Anthropic process it under their API terms, and each provider's retention of API data follows its own published API data policy. We do not control or guarantee those retention periods.
7. Service providers
We share data only with providers that run the service: Cloudflare (hosting, storage, edge, queues), Contabo (the server that runs our database and the headless browser worker that reads public pages for scans), Google (Gemini API for AI features, and Safe Browsing to check destination URLs), Anthropic (Claude API, fallback for AI features), Polar (payments, as merchant of record), Zoho ZeptoMail (email), PostHog (product analytics, only with your consent), our self-hosted Umami (visit and purchase analytics) and Sentry (error monitoring).
Where personal data leaves the EEA or UK we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses.
When you use Refresh preview on a link, the page address is sent to Meta (Facebook Graph API) so it re-reads the page.
Our public marketing pages also load one third-party resource: the Product Hunt badge image from api.producthunt.com, which lets Product Hunt see your IP address and browser details when the home page or footer loads. Fonts are served from our own domain; no font provider is contacted.
8. Retention
We keep workspace data while your account is active. Click analytics are aggregated and retained per plan. Deleting a workspace removes its links and content; backups expire within 35 days.
9. Your rights
You can access, correct, export or delete your data, and object to processing, by emailing privacy@getshareglow.com. EU and UK customers can sign the Data Processing Agreement. You can complain to your local data-protection authority.
We do not sell or share personal information as defined by the California CCPA/CPRA.