Privacy Policy — Auth Switcher

Last updated: 15 August 2026 · hammoudahsalameh@gmail.com · Source code

The short version

This extension has no server. Nothing it stores is transmitted anywhere. There is no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no remote code, and no third party of any kind. Everything below happens entirely inside your own copy of Chrome.

What it stores, and why

Data	Why	Where it is kept
Usernames and passwords you type into it	To answer the HTTP authentication prompt on the sites you configure	`chrome.storage.local`, on your machine
The domain list you configure	To decide which sites may receive those credentials	`chrome.storage.local`, on your machine
Which user is currently selected per domain	To know who to sign in as	Session storage, per browser profile
The authentication scheme a site asked for (Basic / Digest / NTLM / Negotiate)	To warn you when a setting is unsafe for your site	Session storage, per browser profile
Hosts that prompted for credentials but are not configured	To offer them as a one-click suggestion. Capped at 3, most recent first	`chrome.storage.local`, on your machine

How your credentials are used

Credentials are sent to one place: the site you configured them for, as the answer to that site's own HTTP authentication challenge. They are never sent anywhere else, never sent to the developer, and never sent to any third party.

Two restrictions are enforced in code:

Credentials are only ever offered to a domain in your configured list, or a subdomain of one. Everything else is ignored.
Basic authentication is refused over unencrypted http:// to a public host, because Basic puts the password on the wire in a trivially reversible encoding. Intranet addresses are exempt, since internal http-only tools are the reason this extension exists.

What a switch deletes

Switching users deletes data for the domain you are switching on, and nothing else. Cookies for that domain and its subdomains are removed individually; its its HTTP cache, localStorage, IndexedDB, CacheStorage and service workers are cleared. Your other sites are not touched, and their cookies are never read — the read is scoped to the target domain at the API level.

Earlier versions worked differently. They cleared every cookie in your profile and wrote the other sites' cookies back afterwards, which meant a copy of every cookie you held was written to extension storage — unencrypted, on disk, in a normal window — for the seconds a switch took. That no longer happens. Nothing is copied, stored or restored.

The one exception: the auth-cache flush

Chrome's HTTP authentication cache is what keeps you signed in as the previous user, and the only lever that drops it also deletes cookies for the whole registrable domain. Flushing k2.corp.com therefore also signs you out of jira.corp.com. Sites outside that registrable domain are never affected.

The extension only pays that cost when it has to. In pre-emptive mode the credential header it attaches overrides the cache outright, so no flush is issued at all. The flush happens only when pre-emptive is off, or when Chrome rejected the rule — the cases where the switch would otherwise silently keep serving the previous user.

Storage is not encrypted

Passwords are stored as you typed them, not encrypted. Anyone with read access to your Chrome profile directory — another user of the same account, backup software, or malware running as you — can read them.

This extension is built for QA and test accounts on internal systems. Do not put credentials in it that would matter if they leaked.

Backup files you export are encrypted with AES-256-GCM if you set a passphrase, and are written in plain text if you leave the passphrase blank. The export dialog says so at the time.

Private windows

A private window runs a separate instance with its own selected user, its own cookie diagnostics, neither of which is written to disk. Your saved user list and domain list are deliberately shared with private windows so you do not have to type them twice.

What is never collected

No browsing history. No page content. No keystrokes. No personal information. No location. No device identifiers. No usage statistics. The extension does not read the pages you visit; it only sees the authentication challenges that sites issue, and only acts on the ones for domains you configured.

Data sharing and sale

None. There is no recipient to share with. Data is not sold, not transferred, and not used for advertising, creditworthiness, or lending. It is not used for any purpose other than the single feature described above.

Deletion

Removing the extension from Chrome deletes everything it stored. Individual users and domains can be deleted at any time from the extension's own interface.

Permissions, and why each is needed

Permission	Why it is required
`webRequest`, `webRequestAuthProvider`	The only way to answer an HTTP authentication challenge programmatically
`declarativeNetRequest`	Optional pre-emptive mode: attaches the credential header so no challenge occurs
`cookies`	To delete the selected domain's own cookies. Other sites' cookies are never read
`browsingData`	To clear the selected domain's web storage, and to flush the HTTP auth cache for that domain when nothing else can make a switch take effect
`storage`	To hold your users and domains
`sidePanel`	To show the extension's UI in Chrome's side panel, which stays open when you click elsewhere. An action popup cannot
`tabs`	To reload the affected tabs after a switch, and to offer the current tab's domain
`<all_urls>`	The authentication listener must be registered before you configure any domain, so it cannot be scoped in advance. Credentials are only ever supplied to the domains you configure

Changes

Material changes to this policy will be published in the extension's repository alongside a version bump.