Privacy

Does 4chan X collect user data?

4chan X doesn't spy on you or sell information to third parties. The only ways that information is sent to me as a result of you using 4chan X are:

• You visiting the 4chan X website.
• You posting information to the bug tracker.
• Your browser / user script manager checking for updates to 4chan X. (If you installed 4chan X from a third party, information will be sent to them instead.)

In an earlier version of 4chan X not maintained by me, error reports were automatically sent back to the maintainer, but this was discontinued in November 2013. This version of 4chan X has an error reporting feature, but it is done manually by clicking a Report link, and you can edit the information sent.

Does 4chan X send data to any other sites?

Other than the imageboards you use 4chan X on, 4chan X communicates with these sites:

• 4chan X periodically checks the sites it is configured to get archive list updates from (by default https://4chenz.github.io/archives.json/archives.json). You can turn this off by unchecking Auto-update in the Archives section of the Advanced settings page.

• 4chan X automatically redirects links to dead threads to various archives, listed here. 4chan X also replaces dead links with links to archive sites, and fetches deleted posts and images from archive sites. When you report a post for illegal content, 4chan X will offer the option to report it to the archives as well. You can turn these features off by disabling the 404 Redirect, Archive Report, and Resurrect Quotes settings.

• 4chan X automatically looks up the titles of links to YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Streamable, SoundCloud, Clyp, and Github Gists. To disable this, turn off the Link Title option in your settings.

• If you have Cover Preview enabled (on by default) and hover over a link to a supported service (currently YouTube and DailyMotion), 4chan X will load a preview thumbnail.

• If you have embedding enabled and click an (embed) link, 4chan X will load content from the linked site. If you have Auto-embed turned on (it is off by default), 4chan X will do this automatically without you clicking on the (embed) links.

• If Disable Autoplaying Sounds (on by default) is on, 4chan X will rewrite the URLs of Youtube videos that have been embedded in the page by 4chan mods or admins to keep them from autoplaying.

• If you click the link button in the Quick Reply, 4chan X will open a dialog allowing you to enter a URL from which it will download the file to be posted. 4chan X will also open this dialog in some cases when pasting an image from another site in Firefox; if this happens, the URL to fetch the image from will be pre-filled.

• If captchas are enabled on a board and you're not using a 4chan Pass, 4chan X will connect with Google to obtain and validate captchas. 4chan's API key for Recaptcha is sent as part of these requests. If you don't have Javascript from Google blocked, Google will run its own Javascript as part of the captcha and may collect other information, the extent of which is unknown to me since the code is obfuscated. For more info, you will have to consult Google's privacy policy. 4chan X is not a content blocker, and choosing Force Noscript Captcha does not stop Google's Javascript from running; it merely makes 4chan X's Quick Reply work if you have blocked that Javascript with another extension.

• If you enable the Captcha Solving Service setting, 4chan X will request captchas from the chosen site using your API key.

• If you are using 4chan X on multiple sites and watch threads on another site, 4chan X will request data about the threads from the other site's API at regular intervals (if Auto Update is on) and when you manually refresh.

• In addition to what 4chan X sends to these sites, depending on your browser privacy settings, your browser may also send various other information in the headers. This often includes a referrer header indicating which site or page you were on at the time, a user-agent header indicating the browser you're using, and various other details. To learn about what information your browser sends to websites in request headers, open the network tab of the console and inspect the various requests.

• This should go without saying, but following any links added by 4chan X will cause your browser to request that page from the site. For links that come from linkifying URLs in posts, 4chan X adds the rel="noreferrer" attribute to prevent referrers from being sent when you click them, but some browsers, particularly old versions, may not support this directive.

• If you use a browser sync service such as Google Chrome's, your 4chan X settings and data will be stored in the cloud in addition to on your local machine.

• Your browser or user script manager will periodically check for and install new versions of 4chan X, unless you have disabled automatic updates or your browser / user script manager does not support them. Updates will be checked for at either from www.4chan-x.net or the Chrome store, depending on how you installed 4chan X. If you installed 4chan X from a third-party mirror, your browser may check that mirror.