ApplyGuide Extension — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-05-17

1. Summary

The ApplyGuide browser extension scores a job posting on the page you are viewing against the résumé in your ApplyGuide account. It only sends data to our servers when you click Analyze, Save Job, or Tailor. It does not scan, store, or transmit anything from pages you have not acted on.

The main ApplyGuide privacy policy at /privacy.html covers the rest of your account (résumé, billing, deletion). This page only covers what the extension itself does.

2. What we collect

Only when you click a button

Job posting content — when you click Analyze or Save Job, the extension extracts the visible job description text, the page URL, and the page title from the current tab. It sends that to api.applyguide.net together with your auth cookie so we can score it against your résumé.
Resume identifier — when you tailor a posting, we send a reference to the résumé already in your ApplyGuide account. The résumé content itself never leaves our servers via the extension.

Automatically, for anonymous product analytics

An install-scoped UUID (client_id) generated by the extension on first launch. Persisted in chrome.storage.local.
Event names and basic metadata — for example: extension installed, Analyze clicked, score returned, host name of the analyzed page, fit score, verdict, and extension version. Sent to PostHog at us.i.posthog.com.
After you sign in, PostHog associates this UUID with your account so we can deduplicate users across the web and extension. No résumé or JD content goes to PostHog.

What the extension does not collect

The contents of pages you never click Analyze on. The content script reads the DOM only to detect whether a page looks like a job posting; it does not transmit page text otherwise.
Your browsing history. We do not log URLs of non-job pages, ever.
Form data, passwords, cookies (other than the ApplyGuide auth cookie, see Section 4), or anything from other websites' accounts.
Gmail data. The extension has no Gmail permissions and never connects to Google APIs.

3. Where it is stored

On your device (`chrome.storage.local`)

latest_analyze — the most recent analyze result, used for a brief 30-second window so the popup can re-render without a network call.
resume_status_cache — a short cache of whether your account has a résumé uploaded.
hidden_hosts — sites where you have dismissed the sidebar.
ag_active_tab — which sidebar tab was open last.
applyguide_ph_client_id and applyguide_ph_distinct_id — the PostHog install UUIDs.

We do not store your authentication token in chrome.storage.local. The previous version of this policy said we did. That was wrong; sign-in is now cookie-based (see Section 4).

On our servers

Saved Jobs items — jobs you saved via the extension live in DynamoDB, scoped to your account, and auto-delete after 7 days per item via a TTL.
Fit sessions — when you batch-rank your Saved Jobs, the result is saved as a fit session and auto-deletes after 3 days via a TTL.
Your résumé is stored under your main ApplyGuide account. Its retention is covered by the main privacy policy.

4. How sign-in works

When you sign in on applyguide.net, our web app sets an HTTP-only cookie (auth_token) scoped to the .applyguide.net domain. The extension reads this cookie via the Chrome cookies API only to check whether you are signed in and to attach the cookie to authenticated API calls.

The token never appears in chrome.storage and is not readable by JavaScript on web pages (it is HTTP-only). Signing out on the web app clears the cookie, which the extension detects within a few seconds and reflects in its UI.

5. Permissions explained

Permission	Why we need it
`activeTab`	Lets the popup read the active tab when you click the toolbar icon, so we can show whether the current page looks like a job posting.
`scripting`	Used as a cold-load fallback: if you click Analyze on a tab where the content script had not yet loaded, we inject the extractor to read the visible job description.
`storage`	Stores the small set of cached values listed in Section 3 on your device.
`cookies`	Reads the `auth_token` cookie on `.applyguide.net` to check sign-in state and detect sign-out from any tab.

Host permissions

https://*.applyguide.net/* — our API and web app.
https://us.i.posthog.com/* — anonymous product analytics endpoint.

Externally connectable

Only pages on applyguide.net, www.applyguide.net, and our staging hosts can send messages to the extension. This lets the web app tell the extension things like "you just upgraded to Pro" so the sidebar UI updates without a refresh.

6. Why the extension runs on all URLs (`<all_urls>`)

The extension's content script matches all URLs, but it is gated to do nothing on pages that are not job postings. Here is what actually happens on a page load:

The content script runs at document_idle (after the page has finished loading).
It checks for three signals — in order — to decide whether the page looks like a job posting:
- A site-specific extractor matches (we ship 12 of these, for Indeed, LinkedIn jobs, Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable, SmartRecruiters, iCIMS, ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, Monster).
- The page exposes a Schema.org JobPosting object in LD+JSON.
- The page has a recognizable headline plus Responsibilities or Qualifications sections (generic heuristic).
If none of those signals match, the script does nothing. No UI is shown, no network call is made, no page content is read beyond the small detection sample.
If a job posting is detected, a thin Shadow-DOM sidebar tab appears on the right edge. It still does not send page content anywhere — that happens only when you click Analyze.

We use the broad match because new ATS templates, careers pages, and SPA route changes appear constantly. A narrow allow-list would miss them. The cost of the broad match is that the script briefly runs on every page; we pay that cost so you don't have to copy-paste job descriptions.

7. Who else sees the data

The extension itself talks to a small number of third parties. Each is also listed on the full subprocessor page.

Provider	What gets sent	Why
ApplyGuide servers (AWS)	Job description text, page URL, page title, resume identifier, your auth cookie	To score and tailor against your résumé
OpenAI (via our servers)	The job description text, plus the parsed résumé content we already hold	To generate the fit score, verdict, and tailored bullets
PostHog	Event names, install UUID, fit score, verdict, host name of the analyzed page, extension version	Anonymous product analytics
logo.dev	Company name or domain string (e.g. "Lyft") as an image URL path	To display the employer's logo on Saved Jobs cards

The extension never sends data to Meta Pixel, Google Ads, or any ad network.

8. What we do not do

We do not sell or rent your data.
We do not share your résumé or saved jobs with any third party other than the subprocessors above.
We do not run ads or advertising scripts in the extension.
We do not auto-apply to jobs on your behalf.
We do not access Gmail, contacts, calendar, drive, or any Google API.
We do not read pages you never asked us to analyze.

9. Deleting your data

Wipe local state: right-click the toolbar icon → Manage Extension → uninstall, or sign out from the extension to clear the local caches.

Erase account data on our servers: deletion is account-wide and lives on the main app. Open applyguide.net → Settings → Manage Account → Delete Account. See the main privacy policy for what is deleted and on what timeline.

10. Contact

For questions about this policy or to report an issue, use the bug-report form: