Privacy Policy

Last updated 2026-07-04

The short version: the CarVitals car check needs no account, builds no profile of you, and we do not sell data. When you use the extension, we process facts about the car you're looking at, not about you. If you choose to create a free account for your Garage, it holds your sign-in details and the cars you saved, and that is what it is for.

What the extension processes

When you open a supported used-car listing (currently CarMax), the extension reads these details about the vehicle from the page: make, model, year, trim, mileage, listing price, the listing's stock identifier, and the VIN if the page shows one. It sends them to our analysis service to look up recall campaigns, complaint patterns, crash tests, and pricing history, and shows you the result in the sidebar.

• We do not read or transmit the seller's free-text description or anything else on the page.
• We do not collect your name, location, or browsing history. The car check itself never sends us your email or any identifier tied to you; sign-in details exist only if you create an optional account (see "Optional accounts" below).
• We do not use cookies or analytics inside the extension.
• The extension stores its own settings and your saved-cars Garage locally in your browser. These stay in your browser.

What we keep

Our service keeps a record of vehicle listings it has analyzed (the car's details and asking price at the time) to improve price context over time. These records describe cars, not people, and contain nothing that identifies you.

How the VIN is used

When a listing shows a VIN, the extension decodes it against the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) vehicle database to confirm the car's trim and specifications, which sharpens the pricing and known-issue context. A VIN identifies a vehicle, not its owner or viewer. Recall campaigns are matched by model and year, and we do not store per-VIN results.

This website

Report pages and guides are static pages. We do not run third-party analytics. The only cookies involved are the session cookies that keep you signed in if you use an optional account; there are no advertising or tracking cookies. If we introduce advertising on report pages, the ad provider's cookie usage will be disclosed here first, and a consent notice will be added where required by law. Inside the extension, advertising is limited to at most one clearly-labeled sponsored card, served by our own service rather than an ad network and not informed by data about you. As built, CarVitals holds no data about you to target advertising with.

Data sales and sharing

We do not sell data. We do not share data with data brokers or advertising networks. We use public data sources (NHTSA, manufacturer pricing records, automotive publications) to build the reports; links to them appear in every report's Sources sections.

Chrome Web Store compliance

The extension's use of data complies with the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements: data the extension reads from listing pages is used solely to provide the analysis feature you see, and is not transferred to third parties for advertising, data brokering, or any other purpose.

Optional accounts (your Garage)

The car check and the report pages work without signing in. A free account exists for one feature: the Garage, the shortlist of cars you save, so your saved cars stay with you.

• Sign-in is handled by Clerk, our authentication provider. Clerk stores your sign-in details (such as your email) on our behalf; we do not see or store your password.
• Your account is used to open your Garage and attach the cars you saved to you. Your saved list, including any notes, exists to be shown back to you: we do not mine it, share it, or use it for advertising, and it is never sent to any AI system.
• Removing a saved car removes it from your Garage.
• The core safety checks never require an account.

Children

CarVitals is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly process their data.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date above changes with it, and material changes will be called out plainly at the top of this page.

Contact

Questions: [email protected]