Introducing opt-in usage statistics
2 min read (494 words)To help understand our userbase and improve Renewed Tab, we will be adding opt-in usage statistics collection to the next update (1.21). This will be designed to collect as little data as possible to achieve our goals. The collection will share information about feature use and retention, and will not contain any widget contents, browser history, or other personal information. The data will be processed in the EU by PostHog and not sold to advertisers.
Renewed Tab is privacy-conscious
One of Renewed Tab’s core priciples is to respect the user’s privacy. We are privacy advocates and believe that privacy is very important. Browser extensions run in an incredibly sensitive environment, and extensions often have access to sensitive information such as bookmarks and browser history. This is also the reason why we made Renewed Tab open source - we believe it’s important for user trust.
Why now?
We have avoided adding usage statistics for quite a while to keep with the privacy principle. However, we are now reaching the point where we’d like additional information to improve Renewed Tab. We are ramping up Renewed Tab development; soon, we’ll be releasing 2.0 with a lot of new features. This data will help us understand which features are most used, which features users misunderstand, and how long the extension retains users.
Opt-in
This will be opt-in. Users will see a prompt when setting up Renewed Tab. This may be Firefox’s built-in technical data collection permission or a dialog whilst onboarding.
Existing users will be shown a pop-up to accept or deny usage statistics. This will be gradually rolled out over time.
What data will be collected?
Rather than recording everything you do, we have limited our data collection to areas we’d like to understand more about.
If you allow usage statistics, the following information is sent to PostHog, our analytics provider:
- Actions you take with features, such as adding, removing, duplicating, or editing widgets, locking and unlocking widgets, changing the background, and choosing a preset during setup.
- The names of the settings you change, but not their values. For example, that you changed the URL of a Feed widget, but not the URL itself.
- A summary of your setup, once per day on days you use Renewed Tab: the types and number of widgets you have, the type of background, whether widgets are locked, whether the bookmarks bar is shown, and which theme settings you have changed (but not their values).
- The date you installed Renewed Tab, and how many days ago that was.
- Technical information, such as browser, operating system, device type, screen size, language, and the Renewed Tab version.
- Your approximate location (country and city), worked out from your IP address.
This information is linked to a random identifier stored in your browser, which isn’t connected to your name or any account.
Please read the privacy policy for all the details.