Privacy

Chatfossil · last updated 13 August 2026

Chatfossil has no account, no server and no analytics. Your messages are stored in your own browser, on your own device, and are never uploaded.

What is stored, and where

Chatfossil keeps your archive in your browser's own IndexedDB database, on the WhatsApp Web origin. That includes message text, sender and chat names, timestamps, and — if you enable it — copies of photos, voice notes, audio and files. It never leaves your computer. Clearing site data for WhatsApp Web deletes it.

What is sent anywhere

One thing, and only if you leave it switched on. To show what a shared tweet said, Chatfossil sends that tweet's numeric ID to a public tweet-reading service (fxtwitter.com, falling back to vxtwitter.com), and fetches the tweet's picture or clip from Twitter's public media CDN.

No message text is ever sent.
No phone numbers, contact names or chat names are ever sent.
Nothing identifying you is attached to the request.
Turn off “Read the text of X / Twitter links” in Settings and nothing leaves your device at all.

If you separately switch on “Read the titles of other links” — off by default, and gated behind an explicit browser permission — Chatfossil will also request the pages you were linked to, in order to read their title. Those requests go to whichever site the link points at.

What is never done

No data is collected, sold, rented or shared.
No advertising, tracking, fingerprinting or profiling.
No telemetry, crash reporting or usage statistics.
No messages are ever sent on your behalf. Chatfossil only reads.

Deleting everything

Remove the extension, or clear site data for web.whatsapp.com in your browser settings. Both remove the whole archive immediately and permanently. There is no copy anywhere else.

Children

Chatfossil is not directed at children and collects nothing from anyone.

Changes

If this policy ever changes, the date at the top changes with it.

Contact

privacy@chatfossil.com