Effective date: 2026-09-25

Quell is a browser extension by Purple Directive that hides content you did not ask for — AI answers on search engines, cookie-consent banners and, if you switch it on, newsletter pop-ups, chat widgets and "open in app" banners. It does this in your browser. This policy covers Quell for Chrome and the browsers that install from the Chrome Web Store, and for Firefox (desktop and Android).


Nothing, unless you press "This site looks broken" and then "Send report".

That report contains exactly two things, and Quell shows them to you before anything is sent:

• the domain of the site you are on (for example shop.example.com) — not the page address, not the path or search terms, not any page content;
• the Quell version (for example 0.6.0).

No identifier, account, cookie or browsing history is attached. Like any web request, the report reaches our server from your IP address; the server does not log or store IP addresses. To limit how often reports can be sent, it turns the address into a one-way, salted hash and uses that hash as the key of a rate-limit counter that covers 60 seconds (five reports per minute); it keeps nothing else about the request. What it stores is a count per domain, per Quell version, per day. Those counts are deleted after 180 days. We use them only to find and fix sites Quell breaks.

On Firefox, the browser itself also asks your permission the first time you send a report.

Quell has no analytics, no telemetry and no accounts, and it never sends your browsing anywhere else.

How the stores list this. Because a reported domain is a piece of your browsing, Quell's store listings declare it: on the Chrome Web Store as web history (limited to the domain you choose to report), on Firefox Add-ons as optional browsing activity plus technical data (the version number). It is used only to fix site breakage. It is never sold, never shared, and never used for anything unrelated to Quell or to determine creditworthiness or for lending.

• Your choices (which features are on or off, sites where you have paused Quell) are saved in your browser's extension sync storage. If you are signed in to your browser (for example a Google account in Chrome or a Mozilla account in Firefox) and sync is on, your browser copies those settings to your own account so your other computers get them. That sync is run by your browser's maker under their privacy terms; Purple Directive never receives it and cannot read it. If you are not signed in, or sync is off, the settings stay on this device. Firefox for Android does not sync extension settings, so there they always stay on the device.
• Three switches stay on each device and are never synced: other search engines, cookie banners and pop-ups. They need site access that your browser grants on each device separately.
• A running count of hidden items stays on this device.

All of it is removed when you uninstall Quell (synced copies are removed by your browser's sync).

• Google and Bing search result pages, to hide AI features there. This is the only site access Quell is installed with. (Firefox may ask you to allow it.)
• DuckDuckGo, Brave Search and Yahoo Search — only if you switch them on, which asks your browser for access to those three sites and nothing else. On DuckDuckGo and Brave you may instead choose "off at the source", which adds that engine's own "no AI answer" setting to the search address you are already loading; that request goes to the search engine, as your search already did. Quell only adds that setting when it is absent — a value you set yourself is never overwritten.
• All sites — only if you switch on Cookie banners or Pop-ups. Quell then runs on the pages you visit to hide those elements. When you switch both of them off, Quell gives this access back to your browser; switching either one on again asks for it again. It looks at a page only to decide what to hide — for example, never hiding the page's own article, a sign-in or checkout form, or your cart — does that on your device, keeps nothing and sends nothing from those pages.
• If you additionally switch on "Say reject all for me" (off by default), Quell clicks the Reject all button of consent banners it recognises. It checks that consent tool's own saved-choice cookie first, on your device, so a choice you have already made is left alone. For the consent tool to record your refusal it has to load, so with this switch on Quell no longer blocks the consent tools it can answer for you (OneTrust, Cookiebot, Didomi, Osano); they load from their providers as the site intended. Quell sends them nothing itself. It only ever presses controls belonging to a recognised consent tool, never a site's own buttons.

Apart from a breakage report you choose to send, Quell makes no network requests of its own. Its blocklists ship inside the extension and are updated through normal extension updates.


Material changes to this policy will be reflected in the extension's changelog and this page. Questions: support@purpledirective.com