Privacy policy
Should I Buy It? (website and browser extension) · Last updated October 26, 2026
Short version: there are no accounts, no tracking and no analytics, and nothing about you is collected, sold or shared. Your goals, lists and settings stay in your own browser.
What stays in your browser
Your goals, skip list, favorites, grocery list, plate, the prices you enter, foods you looked up, and the extension's settings are saved in your browser's own storage on your device. They are never sent to us; we run no server that could receive them. The product the extension is showing is passed to its side panel through the browser's session storage, which only the extension can read and which is cleared when you close the browser. Clearing your browser data, or removing the extension, deletes them.
What the browser extension reads
The extension runs only on walmart.com, samsclub.com and costco.com. On a product page it reads that page's product information (name, barcode, category, ingredients and Nutrition Facts) to show its verdict. If you turn on search badges in its settings, it also opens the product pages of items in search results you scroll to, to read the same information. It does not read other sites, your browsing history, your store accounts, your cart or anything you type.
Label photos
If you read a photo of a label (in the app, or in the extension's side panel), the photo is read on your device by a text-recognition program that comes with the app (Tesseract). The photo is never uploaded or saved. In the extension, picking one of the product's own photos loads that photo from the store's image server, just as the product page does. Reading Costco's photos needs your permission to load images from gdx-assets.costco.com; the extension asks the first time and you can say no.
What leaves your device, and only to look up nutrition
| Sent | To | When |
|---|---|---|
| A product's barcode number | Open Food Facts, then USDA FoodData Central | Only when a product page has no Nutrition Facts of its own. Sent without cookies. |
| What you search for, or a barcode you scan | Open Food Facts or USDA FoodData Central | Only when you use the website's search or barcode lookup. |
These are public nutrition databases. They receive the request like any website visit (including your IP address, as every web request does) and are covered by their own privacy policies. Nothing that identifies you is added to these requests.
Links you choose to open
Backup files, transfer links and "send to your list" links carry your saved data inside the file or the link itself, so they reach only whoever you give them to. The website reads them in your browser and asks before changing anything.
What we don't do
- No accounts, sign-in, advertising, analytics or tracking.
- No selling or transferring of data to anyone, and no use of data for anything other than showing nutrition verdicts.
- No remote code: the extension runs only the code it was installed with.
Contact
Questions: open an issue at github.com/QuocHHDo/should-i-buy-it.
Should I Buy It? is an independent project and isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Walmart, Sam's Club or Costco. Nutrition verdicts are general guidance, not medical advice.