Privacy
Privacy Policy
Last updated 2026-10-31 · Vulpine 0.5.0
This covers two separate things: this website, and the Vulpine browser you can download from it. They involve different amounts of information, and they are worth keeping apart.
The short version: the browser sends nothing about you anywhere. There is no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, and no identifier that follows you around. The rest of this page lists every request it does make.
The browser
What stays on your computer
All of it, unless you sign in. Your browsing history, bookmarks, download list, settings, per-site permissions, per-site zoom levels and per-site Shields overrides are stored in a file in your own user profile directory. None of it is transmitted anywhere. Saved logins are held by your operating system's credential store, which is machine-local by design.
There is no Vulpine server that holds your browsing, so there is nothing for anyone here to look at.
What does leave your computer
This is the complete list.
| What | Where it goes | What is sent |
|---|---|---|
| Filter list updates | easylist.to, secure.fanboy.co.nz, raw.githubusercontent.com | A plain file download, about once a day. Nothing about you is included. Those servers see your IP address, as any server does |
| Update check | vulpine.lol | A request for a small version file, on start and daily. No identifier is sent. The updater generates a random id for staged rollouts, but it is only ever compared locally and is never transmitted |
| DNS queries | Cloudflare by default, falling back to your system resolver. Switchable to Google, Quad9, AdGuard, Mullvad, your own resolver, or off | The hostname of every site you visit, encrypted over DNS-over-HTTPS. Every browser has to look up names somewhere; you choose the resolver, or turn it off |
| Searches | DuckDuckGo by default. Brave, Startpage, Mojeek or Google if you change it | Your search terms, and only when you actually search. Typing an address navigates straight there and searches nothing |
| Extension updates | The store an extension came from | Only if you install extensions. The extension's id and version |
| Settings and bookmarks | Clerk, the accounts provider | Only if you create an account. There is no account unless you make one, and nothing syncs until you sign in |
| The pages you visit | The sites themselves | Whatever you send them by visiting. Shields cancels requests to known advertising and tracking endpoints before they are made |
Widevine, which lets protected video play, is Google's component and is fetched and updated by Chromium itself. It is subject to Google's terms rather than ours.
Private windows
A private window uses a separate session that is discarded when you close it. Nothing from it is written to your history, and its storage is cleared. Files you download are still saved.
Accounts, if you make one
Accounts are optional and inactive until you sign in. They exist for one purpose: carrying your settings and bookmarks to a second machine.
Accounts are handled by Clerk, which stores your sign-in details and processes them on our behalf under its own privacy terms. We do not run an account server and never see your password.
Exactly what syncs
- A fixed list of preferences: your Shields settings, search engine, homepage, session restore, Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control, bookmarks bar, custom filter rules, DNS-over-HTTPS choice, download prompting, memory saver and automatic updates.
- Your bookmarks: address, title, and when you added each one.
- Per-site Shields overrides.
What is never synced, by design
- Browsing history.
- Saved logins. They stay in your operating system's keychain, where only your machine can decrypt them.
- Open tabs and sessions. Restored locally instead.
- Downloads. Paths that mean nothing on another machine.
- Your proxy configuration, download folder, and extension paths.
The synced record is capped at a few kilobytes, which is far too small to hold browsing history.
Deleting it
Signing out stops syncing and leaves everything on your machine alone. Deleting your account removes what Clerk holds for you, including the synced settings and bookmarks. The copy on your own computer is yours, and neither action touches it.
This website
The site is static pages and a download. It sets no cookies of its own and runs no analytics: no Google Analytics, no Plausible, no tracking pixel, nothing counting visitors.
It also makes no third-party requests. Every file the page needs, including the typefaces, is served from this site. The fonts used to come from Google Fonts, which meant Google saw the IP address of everyone who opened a page here; they are hosted here now, so nothing about your visit reaches anyone else.
One thing you should know anyway
- The host keeps access logs. Like nearly every web server, it records requests: IP address, time, page, and browser string. That is the hosting provider's ordinary operation. It is not used to build a profile of you and is not combined with anything else.
If you sign in, the account pages are served by Clerk and set the cookies needed to keep you signed in.
Children
Vulpine is not directed at children under 13, and accounts are not knowingly created for them.
Changes
This page is generated from the same repository as the browser, so when what the software sends changes, this changes with it and the date at the top moves.
Contact
Questions about any of this: privacy@vulpine.lol
Before publishing: set up a working mailbox for privacy@vulpine.lol (or change the address), and fill in the governing law on the Terms page. Both are constants at the top of scripts/legal.js. Neither can be guessed from the code, so neither was.