CarrierVet Privacy Policy

What CarrierVet collects

CarrierVet collects one thing: the carrier identifier you ask it to look up. That is an MC number, a DOT number, or a company name. It is sent to the CarrierVet API only when you take a deliberate action:

• You click the CarrierVet badge over text you highlighted.
• You choose Vet carrier from the right-click menu.
• You type a query into the side panel's search bar.

Each lookup request also carries the extension's version number in an x-carriervet-version header, so we can tell which build a bug came from. That is the complete list of what leaves your browser, apart from the IP address that any HTTP request carries with it — see rate limiting below.

What CarrierVet does not collect

CarrierVet does not transmit or store any of the following:

• The body, subject, or headers of your email — including the message the MC number happened to be sitting in. To work out whether a bare number is an MC or a DOT, the extension does look at the text immediately around your selection, but that happens in your browser and that text is never sent anywhere.
• The contents of the page you are on, beyond the text you highlighted and acted on.
• The sender's address, or anyone else's address.
• Your browsing history, or a record of the sites you visit.
• Your name, email, company, or any other identifying detail.

There are no analytics trackers, no advertising SDKs, and no session recording in the extension.

What is stored, and for how long

In your browser

• Lookup results. Carrier profiles you have already pulled are cached in your browser's session storage for 15 minutes, so re-checking the same MC does not fire a second request. Session storage is cleared by the browser when the browsing session ends.
• A theme preference. Whether you picked the light or dark side panel is kept in local extension storage. It is a single value and it never leaves your machine.

Nothing else is written to your browser. There is no history of past lookups.

On our servers

• A cache of public FMCSA profiles. Once CarrierVet assembles a carrier profile from the FMCSA sources, it stores that profile for 24 hours so the next person asking about the same DOT number does not trigger a fresh round of FMCSA queries. The cache is keyed by DOT number. It contains public FMCSA data about the carrier — not about you. It is not associated with any user, because CarrierVet has no users to associate it with.
• No lookup history. We do not keep a record of which queries came from which browser, IP address, or person. There is no such table.

Rate limiting

To keep the free API from being scraped, the server counts requests per IP address in a rolling one-minute window and rejects anything over the cap. That counter lives in memory, holds only a count and a timestamp, is not written to a database, and is discarded when the server process recycles. It is not a log and it is not retained.

Our hosting provider, like any web host, generates its own operational logs as a routine part of serving traffic. We do not use those logs to build a profile of anyone, and we do not export or share them.

Permissions, and why each one is needed

Chrome shows you a list of permissions at install. Here is what each one is actually for.

• storage — holds the 15-minute lookup cache and your theme preference. Nothing more.
• contextMenus — adds the Vet carrier item to the right-click menu when you have text selected.
• sidePanel — opens the Chrome side panel where the carrier profile is rendered.
• activeTab — lets the extension act on the tab you are currently looking at when you invoke it, and only then.
• scripting — registers the highlight-detection script. This is the mechanism behind the optional all-sites setting below; it is how the script gets turned on and off.
• Access to Gmail and Outlook on the web (mail.google.com, outlook.office.com, outlook.live.com) — this is where automatic highlight detection runs, because it is where carrier vetting actually happens. The script watches for a text selection that looks like a carrier identifier — an MC number, a DOT number, a phone number, an email address — and offers you a badge. That matching happens entirely in your browser, and nothing is sent unless you click. Phone and email reverse lookup are not built yet, so clicking one of those sends nothing at all.

The optional all-sites permission

CarrierVet can also detect highlights on every site rather than just the two mail hosts. This is off by default. It is a Chrome optional permission, which means Chrome will not grant it unless you turn it on yourself from the extension's options page, and Chrome will prompt you when you do. You can revoke it from the same page at any time. If you leave it off, the right-click Vet carrier menu still works everywhere.

Where the carrier data comes from

Everything in the side panel is public information published by FMCSA: the QCMobile API, the Licensing & Insurance system, the Company Census file, and FMCSA's public inspection and violation files. When a lookup requires a live call to FMCSA, the only thing forwarded is the carrier number — or, if you searched by company name, the name you typed. No information about you is sent to FMCSA or to anyone else. Details on freshness are on the CarrierVet product page.

What we share

Nothing. We do not sell, rent, trade, or share user data with third parties. We do not run ads and we do not participate in ad networks. We do not transfer data to data brokers. The only outbound requests CarrierVet makes are to the CarrierVet API and, from there, to FMCSA's public data services — and they carry only the carrier number or company name being looked up.

The single exception any policy has to name: if we were compelled by valid legal process, we would comply. Given that we hold no accounts and no lookup history, there is very little to compel.

Security

All traffic between the extension and the CarrierVet API is encrypted in transit over HTTPS. The API is read-only — it accepts a carrier number or a company name and returns a public profile. It accepts no user data and stores none. For how Keelway handles security on the paid platform, see our security page.

Children

CarrierVet is a business tool for freight brokers and dispatchers. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.

Changes to this policy

If CarrierVet starts collecting or storing something it does not collect or store today, this page changes first, and the date at the top of it changes with it. Material changes will also be reflected in the Chrome Web Store listing.

Contact

Privacy questions, deletion requests, or anything else about this policy: hello@keelway.com. We read every one.