• The software
• This website
• If you pay for Pro
• Never
• What you can ask for

The software

The Chrome extension

It stores only the settings you chose: which switches are on, what a switch leaves out (the accounts, people and servers you name in an Exclude), any sites you added, your block messages, your block media and your theme. They live in Chrome's own extension storage, which Chrome syncs between your own signed-in Chromes. Nobody else can read them, including us.

It makes no network requests at all. Site blocking uses Chrome's declarativeNetRequest, which is built so that an extension cannot watch your traffic: we hand Chrome a list of rules and Chrome applies them. The extension is never told which pages you visited. The 20-second unblock countdown is not stored anywhere; it lives in the popup and disappears with it.

Chrome describes the permission the ad blocker needs as "read and change all your data on all websites", because that is the only wording Chrome has. What it is actually used for is two things: refusing requests to a fixed list of ad and tracking domains, and hiding parts of pages. To keep what an Exclude leaves in, it looks at who a post is from and compares that with your list, on your computer. So that a page is hidden before it draws, the scripts for the sites with switches inside them also keep a small note in that site's own storage on your computer: which of that site's switches are on, for Instagram's and YouTube's feed whether its Exclude is set to Everyone I follow or Only these accounts, and on X and Roblox which of your accounts is signed in there, which that site knows already. Two more notes last only as long as the tab they were made in: on Facebook, while Disable chats leaves Marketplace chats out, the numbers of the Marketplace conversations you opened in that tab (the last 50), so that reloading one keeps it open; and on Instagram, when and how many times in a row that tab was just sent on to your Following feed, so that it can never be sent round in a loop. The names in your Exclude never go there. Nothing is collected and nothing is sent anywhere.

The Windows app

Everything stays on your computer, in your own app-data folder: settings, your block messages and media, your alarms, your sounds. It talks to one thing over the network — the extension, on your own machine, so the two stay in step. If you fetch a video for your custom block messages/media from a link, that download goes to wherever the link points and nowhere else, and the voice engine runs on your computer with no internet at all.

The iPhone apps

Your switches live in a file on your own phone, which the two custom apps read. Nothing about them leaves the phone and nothing of yours reaches us.

Two things do go out, and both go past us rather than to us. The app signs in to Apple with your Apple ID to keep the other apps working — that happens between your phone and Apple, and we never see your Apple password. And it downloads the apps from GitHub, which sees the download the way any website sees a visitor.

The adult-websites block sends nothing to us either: it points your phone's own name lookups at Cloudflare's family resolver, and that traffic goes from your phone to Cloudflare.

This website

No analytics, no tracking, no advertising, no cookie banner — there is nothing to consent to because nothing is set. The site is plain files.

It is hosted by Netlify, who keep ordinary server logs (the address you asked for, roughly when, your IP address and browser) for a short period, as any web host does. We do not read them for anything but "is the site up".

One thing is stored in your own browser, and only while you are logged in: the key that says which account is yours, so you are not asked to log in again on the same computer. It never leaves your browser except to ask us about your account, and signing out deletes it.

Your account

The Windows app and the Chrome extension need you to sign in with an email and a password, on every plan. The account is kept by Google's Firebase Authentication, not by us: Firebase holds your address and your password (scrambled, so nobody can read it back, including us) and sends the emails that confirm your address and reset your password. Your password goes from the sign-in page straight to Google and never reaches our servers. We can see in Firebase which addresses have accounts and when they were made and last used.

If you pay for Pro

Payment is handled by Stripe. You type your card into Stripe's own page, not ours. We never see or hold card numbers.

Stripe holds, and we can see in Stripe's dashboard:

• your email address
• your name and billing address, if Stripe asked for them for tax
• which plan you are on, when it renews, and your payment history
• the last four digits and the brand of your card — never the number

There is no customer database anywhere else. This site keeps no list of accounts: your key carries a Stripe customer reference and a signature, so a key can be checked by doing arithmetic and then asking Stripe, and the account a key is on is written on that Stripe record. That is the whole account system.

Stripe is the processor for this; their own privacy notice is at stripe.com/privacy. We keep payment records as long as tax law requires, which is normally several years, even after you cancel.

Never

• Nothing is sold, rented or shared for advertising. Ever, to anyone.
• No analytics, telemetry, crash reporting or usage statistics, in any of the three parts.
• No reading or collecting of page content, browsing history, form data or credentials.
• No record of what you blocked, when you unblocked it, or how often.
• We never ask for your Apple password and could not use it if we had it.

The people we do use are the ones needed to take a payment, keep your account and put a website on the internet: Stripe, Google and Netlify. Nobody else receives anything.

What you can ask for

Write to us and you can have a copy of everything held about you, have it corrected, or have it deleted. There is not much: an email address and a subscription. Deleting it ends the subscription, because the subscription is the record.

Wherever you live, there are only two reasons anything is held at all: carrying out the subscription you bought, and the tax records a business is required to keep. If your country gives you rights over your data — the UK and the EU do, and so do others — you have them here, and you can complain to your own data protection authority if you think we have got this wrong.

focusmaxxing is sold everywhere, so for most people the two companies named above hold their information outside their own country: Stripe and Netlify are United States companies, both with servers in several places. There is nowhere else it goes.

Reaching us. hello@focusmaxxing.net.

Last written: 10 September 2026.