AliScore: Online Shopping Assistant for AliExpress

AliScore: Online Shopping Assistant for AliExpress ("the extension") helps you evaluate products while shopping on AliExpress. In short: the extension does not collect an account, a name, an email address, or any personally identifying information about you. From version 1.0.8 it sends anonymous purchase statistics to our own server, described in full under Purchase statistics below. From version 1.0.9 it also sends anonymous error reports when it cannot read a figure on an AliExpress page, described under Error reports. You can switch each of them off separately in the extension popup at any time. The sections below describe exactly what it reads and what leaves your browser.

What the extension does

When you open an AliExpress product, listing, cart or checkout page, the extension:

1. Reads the page's publicly visible product information (such as rating, review count, review sentiment, and store feedback) directly in your browser.
2. Requests public product-review statistics so it can calculate a 0–10 quality score — automatically for the product page you open, and on a listing page only for a product you ask about by hovering over or clicking its score badge. See Where the extension sends requests below.
3. Displays that score, a seller-trust indicator, and a "safe to buy" summary on the page.
4. May add our affiliate code to AliExpress product links on the pages you browse. When you open a product page and no affiliate code at all is on file, it opens that product once more through our affiliate link (at most once every 30 minutes). Nothing else opens unless you click it. See Affiliate links below.
5. Unless you switch it off, sends anonymous purchase statistics to our server. See Purchase statistics below.
6. Unless you switch it off, sends anonymous error reports to our server when it could not read a figure on an AliExpress page. See Error reports below.

The extension runs only on AliExpress domains (aliexpress.com and its regional variants, aliexpress.ru, and aliexpress.us). It never runs on, reads, or accesses any other website.

Where the extension sends requests

To look up review statistics, the extension sends the product identifier of the product you asked about to AliExpress's own public review endpoint (feedback.aliexpress.com). That request goes directly from your browser to AliExpress.

The lookup happens only when you ask for it — when you hover over or click an AliScore badge, or when you open a product page — and the answer is cached on your device for up to 72 hours, so viewing the same product again usually sends no request at all.

The extension contacts exactly two destinations: AliExpress, for the lookups above, and our own server at shoppingassistant.xyz, only for the purchase statistics and the error reports described in the next two sections. It contacts no third party — no analytics company, no advertising service, no data broker. (Earlier versions forwarded some review lookups through relay servers of ours; those relays were removed and the extension no longer contacts them.)

Purchase statistics

What it is for. We earn our income from AliExpress affiliate commissions. AliExpress's own affiliate dashboard shows us clicks and commissions, but not whether people who use the extension actually buy, or whether another extension's affiliate code took the credit for a purchase. These statistics answer those two questions, as counts.

What is sent, from your browser to shoppingassistant.xyz:

- a random install ID — a random number the extension generates once; it is not derived from you, your device, or your AliExpress account; - the extension version and browser family (for example "Chrome"); - once per day that you open AliExpress, a note that the extension was used that day; - when you view a product page, or have products in your cart: the AliExpress product ID of each such product, the page type (product, cart or checkout), and whose affiliate code AliExpress currently has on file — ours, another affiliate's public code, or "none"; - when you reach checkout: the product IDs at checkout and which affiliate code is on file; - when the extension detects that you placed an order: the product IDs, which affiliate code was on file when you pressed the order button, and a one-way fingerprint of each order number on the confirmation page (a SHA-256 hash of the install ID combined with the order number; an order split across several stores has one per store). The fingerprint lets us avoid counting one order twice, and lets us check orders that AliExpress's affiliate report already lists as earning our commission against the orders the extension saw: we hash the order number from that report the same way and compare. A fingerprint does not contain the order number, and we only ever compare it with order numbers AliExpress has already reported to us; the order number itself never leaves your browser. - when that checkout or order had no affiliate code on file at all, a few facts that help us understand why: whether the popup's affiliate switch is on, how many minutes ago the last automatic product-page pass happened and whose affiliate code (ours, another, or none) was on file when it finished (or that it never finished), and how many minutes ago you last viewed a product page and whose code was on file then. Minutes are rounded and capped at 30 days; no product, page address or affiliate code itself is part of it; - for the cart notice (the “secure my link” and “support AliScore” buttons): that it was shown, pressed, or hidden with “Not now”, which of the two it was, and — after you press it and your cart opens again — whose affiliate code is now on file.

What is never sent: your name, email, address, phone, AliExpress account or login, payment details, prices or order totals, order numbers, cookies, search terms, the addresses (URLs) of pages you visit, or anything about websites other than AliExpress. Our server does not store your IP address.

Your country. The extension does not send your location. When the statistics arrive, our server works out which country they came from, using your IP address and the free DB-IP country database, and stores only that country (for example "Bangladesh") next to the random install ID. The IP address itself is used only for that lookup and is then discarded — it is not stored or logged. The country is the most recent one the statistics came from, and it is used only to count installs and orders per country.

How it is used and kept. Only to count, per day, per product and per affiliate code: how many installs used AliExpress, how many reached checkout, how many orders followed, and whose affiliate code received them — and, for orders with no affiliate code, why, and how often the cart notice is pressed. It is not sold, shared, used for advertising, or combined with any other data. Product-page, cart and checkout-page product records, and the cart-notice records, are deleted after 180 days, and daily-use records after 400 days. Order records, and the install's country, are kept until you switch the statistics off, because they are the counts this feature exists to produce.

Turning it off. Switch off "Share anonymous purchase stats" in the extension popup. Collection stops immediately, anything not yet sent is deleted from your browser, and the extension asks our server to delete every record for your install ID (if you are offline, it asks again the next time the browser starts). Removing the extension also stops collection. Because the install ID is random and lives only in your browser, removing the extension first means neither you nor we can tie the records already sent to you; switch the statistics off before uninstalling if you want them deleted.

Error reports

What it is for. AliExpress shows its pages in the shopper's language, and the extension reads figures such as the sold count or the store's positive-feedback rate from that page text. When AliExpress changes a page, or shows it in a language the extension reads badly, those figures silently go missing or come out wrong. Error reports tell us which figure failed, on which language of the site, so we can fix it.

What is sent, from your browser to shoppingassistant.xyz, at most once every 30 minutes:

- a random reporter ID — generated once by the extension, and separate from the purchase statistics' install ID; the two are never sent together, so our server cannot link an error report to purchase statistics; - the extension version, browser family and the browser's language (for example "es"); - per day: the AliExpress site (for example es.aliexpress.com), the language the page declared, the page type (product, listing or search), which figure it was (for example "sold count"), how many times reading it worked and how many times it failed that day; - for a figure that failed, up to 80 characters of the page text the extension could not read (for example "1,5 tys. sprzedanych"). This is public text from the AliExpress page — a price, a sold count, a rating label. From a product listing only the lines holding figures are taken, never the product's title.

What is never sent: the address (URL) of the page, product IDs, your AliExpress account or login, cookies, search terms, anything you typed, or anything about websites other than AliExpress.

How it is used and kept. Only to see which figures fail on which site and language, and to fix the extension. It is not sold, shared, used for advertising, or combined with the purchase statistics or any other data. Records are deleted 90 days after the day they describe.

Turning it off. Switch off "Send anonymous error reports" in the extension popup. Reporting stops immediately, the counts not yet sent are deleted from your browser, and the extension asks our server to delete every record for your reporter ID (if you are offline, it asks again the next time the browser starts). This switch is independent of the purchase statistics switch.

Data we collect

Apart from the anonymous purchase statistics and error reports described above, we do not collect, sell, share, or transmit any personal or personally identifiable information. There is no account, no tracking pixel, and no third-party analytics or advertising service. We do not access your location (beyond the country our server derives, as described under Purchase statistics), contacts, credentials, or your activity on any non-AliExpress website.

Cookies

The extension does not create, set, or modify any cookie. It does read two of AliExpress's own non-private cookies (aeu_cid and xman_us_f) on AliExpress pages, for a single purpose: these cookies record which affiliate referral AliExpress currently has on file, and reading them is how the extension can tell you that another installed extension has replaced that referral (see Affiliate links), and which affiliate code is on file for the purchase statistics. The cookie values themselves are never transmitted; only the public affiliate code read from them is, as described under Purchase statistics. AliExpress's login and session cookies are marked httpOnly, which means the extension is technically incapable of reading them at all.

Local storage

The extension may use your browser's local storage (chrome.storage.local) to remember your preferences from the extension popup, including whether affiliate links are switched on, and two timestamps for the affiliate features: when the last automatic product-page pass happened (so it happens at most once every 30 minutes) and, if you pressed “Not now” on the cart notice, until when it stays hidden.

It also keeps a local cache of the public review statistics it has already looked up, so that checking the same product again does not send another request. Each cached entry holds only the AliExpress product identifier and the public review figures for that product — star average, review count, positive/negative percentages and the review labels AliExpress shows on the page — plus the time that entry was stored, which exists solely so the entry can expire and never leaves your device. It holds nothing that identifies you: no user or session identifier, no count of how often you looked at anything, no URLs and no browsing history. Entries are discarded automatically after 72 hours (6 hours for a product that had no review data), and the number of entries is capped, so the cache cannot grow without bound.

It also uses your browser's per-tab sessionStorage to remember which products it has already counted in that tab, so a reload does not count them again. All of this stays on your device.

For the purchase statistics, local storage also holds the random install ID, the statistics waiting to be sent (at most 500, removed once sent, never older than 29 days), and the most recent checkout — its product IDs and which affiliate code was on file — for up to three hours, so the extension can tell whether an order followed it. It also keeps the time and product ID of the last automatic product-page pass and whose affiliate code was on file when it finished, and the time of your last product-page view and whose code was on file then — only so a later order with no affiliate code can report the facts listed under _Purchase statistics_; they are overwritten each time, never sent as a history. When you press the cart notice, the tab's sessionStorage remembers that press for two minutes, so the cart page it opens can tell that it came from the press. For error reports, it holds the random reporter ID and the per-day counts described under Error reports, for at most 13 days. Nothing else in local storage is ever uploaded. You can clear all of it at any time by removing the extension.

Affiliate links

Some AliExpress product links shown or enhanced by the extension may include our affiliate tracking code. If you make a purchase through such a link, we may earn a small commission from AliExpress at no extra cost to you — prices never change.

The extension opens a page by itself in one case only, described in item 4 below. Apart from that it only changes where a link points, before you click it, and nothing on AliExpress opens, moves, or reloads unless you click it yourself.

Concretely, there are four things it does. The first three need a click from you:

1. Product links on listing pages. On AliExpress home, bundle, and wholesale listing pages, the extension sets our affiliate code on the product links in the page. If another extension has already put its own affiliate code on a link, ours replaces it. The link still points at the same product on the same AliExpress site; only the tracking code differs, and the link opens only if you click it.

2. A “secure my link” button. When another extension's affiliate code is the one currently on file, the extension may show a small notice on the product page or the cart page offering to re-open your cart through our link. It is a button. It does nothing until you press it, and if you never press it nothing happens.

3. A “support AliScore” button. When no affiliate code at all is on file, the extension may show a small notice on the cart page asking whether you want to support it. Pressing its button opens your cart through our link; pressing “Not now” hides the notice for seven days. Like the other button, it does nothing unless you press it.

4. One automatic pass on a product page. When you open an AliExpress product page and no affiliate code at all is on file (neither ours nor anyone else's), the extension opens that same product once more through our affiliate link, at most once every 30 minutes. You will see the product page load a second time. It never does this when another affiliate's code is on file, and never on the cart, checkout, or order pages.

You can switch all four off at any time from the extension popup (“Support us with affiliate links”), and switching it off stops them immediately.

All affiliate tracking itself is handled by AliExpress's own affiliate system. AliExpress does not tell us who you are or any of your account details. The only purchase information we receive is the anonymous product-level statistics described under Purchase statistics, which you can switch off.

This website

This section is about shoppingassistant.xyz, the extension's website, and nothing else. The extension is described in every section above, and none of what follows applies to it: the extension loads nothing from Google and contacts no analytics service. (The purchase statistics it sends to shoppingassistant.xyz/api/ are the ones described above; they are not written to the website log below, and are not shared with Google.)

Our server log. Our web server writes one line for each page requested: the page, the time, the referring page if your browser sent one, your browser's user-agent string, and your IP address with its last part removed before it is written (the final octet of an IPv4 address, or everything after the first three groups of an IPv6 address), so the log cannot identify you. These logs are kept for up to one year and produce aggregated counts only — page views, referrers, browsers.

Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics. The website loads Google Tag Manager (container GTM-NBHCG8MP), which loads the measurement tags we configure in it, currently Google Analytics. These run in your browser, set their own cookies, and send Google the page you are viewing, the page that referred you to it, an approximate location derived from your IP address, and your browser and device type. We use this only to see which pages and which search queries bring readers to the site, as visitor counts rather than as individuals: we upload no list of people to it, and it holds no name, email address or account of yours, because the website has no accounts. Google's own handling of that data is described in its privacy policy.

Turning it off. Any content blocker, or your browser's built-in tracking protection, stops these tags loading, and every page of the website works exactly the same without them.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this URL with a new "last updated" date.

Contact

Questions about this policy?

anwarazim03@gmail.com