Privacy Policy

Last updated: March 21, 2026

    Summary: Ibid does not collect, transmit, or store any personal data. All citation processing happens locally in your browser. We have no servers, no analytics, no accounts, and no way to access your data.
  

1. What data Ibid collects

None. Ibid does not collect any personal information, usage data, browsing history, or citation data.

2. How Ibid works

Ibid is a browser extension that processes citations entirely within your browser:

Citation formatting is performed by a Rust/WebAssembly engine running locally in the browser's service worker.
Metadata extraction happens via a content script injected only when you click the Ibid icon on a page (using the activeTab permission).
Your citation library is stored in chrome.storage.local on your device. It is never transmitted anywhere.
74 citation styles are bundled with the extension and loaded locally. No network requests are made to load styles.

3. Network requests

Ibid makes network requests only when you explicitly trigger them by clicking the "Enhance" button to look up a DOI, ISBN, PMID, or arXiv ID. These requests go to:

Service	URL	When	Data sent
CrossRef	api.crossref.org	DOI lookup	The DOI only
Open Library	openlibrary.org	ISBN lookup	The ISBN only
NCBI/PubMed	api.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov	PMID lookup	The PMID only
arXiv	export.arxiv.org	arXiv ID lookup	The arXiv ID only

These are all public, free academic APIs. No personal information, cookies, or authentication tokens are sent. No requests are made in the background or without your action.

4. Permissions explained

Permission	Why
`activeTab`	Read the current page's metadata when you click the Ibid icon. Only the active tab, only when you click.
`scripting`	Inject the metadata extraction script into the current page on demand.
`storage`	Save your citations, projects, and settings locally on your device.
`sidePanel`	Open the library management panel alongside your browser.
`contextMenus`	Add "Cite this page" and "Save quote" to the right-click menu.

We request no other permissions. No <all_urls>, no tabs, no host_permissions, no identity.

5. Content Security Policy

The extension uses wasm-unsafe-eval in its Content Security Policy. This is required to run the Rust/WebAssembly citation engine. It does not enable arbitrary code execution — it only allows compiled WebAssembly modules bundled with the extension to run.

6. Data storage

All data (citations, projects, settings) is stored in chrome.storage.local on your device.
No data is transmitted to any server.
You can export all your data at any time (BibTeX, RIS, CSL-JSON, etc.).
You can delete all data from the extension's Advanced Settings page.
Uninstalling the extension removes all stored data.

7. Third-party services

Ibid does not use any third-party analytics, advertising, crash reporting, or tracking services. There are no third-party scripts, SDKs, or pixels included in the extension.

8. Children's privacy

Ibid does not collect any data from anyone, including children. There are no accounts, no registration, and no personal information collected.

9. Changes to this policy

If we ever change this privacy policy, we will update the "Last updated" date above and include a notice in the extension's changelog. Since we don't collect any data, changes would only relate to new features that might introduce network requests (such as cloud sync in future versions), which would always be opt-in and clearly disclosed.

10. Contact

If you have questions about this privacy policy, contact us at:

privacy@ibid.tools

    In plain English: Ibid is a tool that runs on your computer. We built it because existing citation tools collect data, show ads, or abuse your bandwidth. We don't do any of that. We can't see your citations, we don't know who you are, and we like it that way.
  