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Privacy Policy

Last updated: March 4, 2026

Overview

Margin ("we", "our", or "us") is a web annotation tool that lets you highlight, annotate, and bookmark any webpage. Your data is stored on the decentralized AT Protocol network, giving you ownership and control over your content.

Data We Collect

Account Information

When you log in with your Bluesky/AT Protocol account, we access your:

  • Decentralized Identifier (DID)
  • Handle (username)
  • Display name and avatar (for showing your profile)

Annotations & Content

When you use Margin, we store:

  • URLs of pages you annotate
  • Text you highlight or select
  • Annotations and comments you create
  • Bookmarks you save
  • Collections you organize content into

Discover & Recommendations

To power the Discover page and personalized recommendations, we generate mathematical representations (embeddings) of:

  • Your annotations, highlights, and their associated tags
  • Publicly published documents from the AT Protocol network

These embeddings are used to build an interest profile that helps us suggest relevant content. Your interest profile is stored on our server and is not shared with other users.

Authentication

We store OAuth session tokens locally in your browser to keep you logged in. These tokens are used solely for authenticating API requests.

How We Use Your Data

Your data is used exclusively to:

  • Display your annotations on webpages
  • Sync your content across devices
  • Show your public annotations to other users
  • Enable social features like replies and likes
  • Generate personalized content recommendations on the Discover page

Third-Party Services

We use OpenAI to generate text embeddings for powering recommendations. When generating embeddings, the text content of your annotations and public documents is sent to OpenAI's API. OpenAI processes this data according to their API data usage policy, which states that API inputs are not used to train their models. No other third-party services receive your data.

Data Storage

Your annotations are stored on the AT Protocol network through your Personal Data Server (PDS). This means:

  • You own your data
  • You can export or delete it at any time
  • Your data is portable across AT Protocol services

We also maintain a local index of annotations to provide faster search and discovery features.

Margin PDS (margin.cafe)

We operate a Personal Data Server at margin.cafe. If you create an account on this PDS, we additionally store:

  • Your account credentials (password hashed, never stored in plain text)
  • Your email address (for account recovery)
  • All AT Protocol data repositories you create on this server

You can migrate your account and data to a different PDS at any time using standard AT Protocol account migration. Using the margin.cafe PDS is entirely optional as you can use Margin with any AT Protocol PDS.

Data Sharing

We do not sell your data. We do not share your data with third parties for advertising or marketing purposes.

Your public annotations may be visible to:

  • Other Margin users viewing the same webpage
  • Anyone on the AT Protocol network (for public content)

Browser Extension Permissions

The Margin browser extension requires certain permissions:

  • All URLs: To display and create annotations on any webpage. When checking a page for annotations, the URL is sent to our server. We do not store these requests, the URLs are redacted, and we do not link your identity to the URLs you visit. You can disable sending URLs to Margin by turning off page overlays in the extension settings.
  • Storage: To save your preferences and session locally
  • Cookies: To maintain your logged-in session
  • Tabs: To know which page you're viewing

Your Rights

You can:

  • Delete any annotation, highlight, or bookmark you've created
  • Delete your collections
  • Export your data from your PDS
  • Revoke the extension's access at any time

Contact

For privacy questions or concerns, contact us at hello@margin.at