Last updated: 9 September 2026. Applies to ORBTUBE 1.1.50 and later.
ORBTUBE is a Chrome extension made by FirmaMentum Holdings Pty Ltd (Victoria, Australia). It puts category badges and a trust score on YouTube videos and lets you filter your own feed. This page says exactly what it does with data, in plain words.
The short version
- ORBTUBE has no accounts, no sign-in, no analytics and no tracking.
- Everything it learns about you stays on your computer.
- Three things leave your computer. Your browser fetches public YouTube pages for the videos and channels in your feed, without your cookies. Every 12 hours it downloads the current category list from us; that request carries nothing about you. And, only if you choose to, it sends a label correction in. You can turn the corrections off, and you can turn the background YouTube fetches off under More.
- ORBTUBE does not block, hide or skip advertising.
What stays on your device
Stored in Chrome’s extension storage on your computer only:
- Your settings: which parts of YouTube show badges, badge position, Shorts options.
- Your Orbit: the categories you picked and whether you are showing only those or hiding them.
- Labels you fixed on individual videos, and words you taught ORBTUBE.
- A cache of the category list.
- A cache of details ORBTUBE has read from public YouTube pages: for videos, the title, channel, YouTube’s category and the creator’s tags; for channels, a summary of recent upload titles. Up to about 4,000 videos and 400 channels, oldest dropped first.
- A random identifier created when ORBTUBE is installed. It is not linked to you, your Google account or your device, and it changes if you reinstall.
Backup file
So that your edits survive an uninstall, ORBTUBE writes them to:
Downloads\ORBTUBE\orbtube-edits-latest.json
on your computer a few seconds after any change. You can turn this off in the Contribute tab. The file stays until you delete it.
What ORBTUBE reads while you browse
To label a video, ORBTUBE reads:
- The YouTube page you are already looking at, including titles, channel names and whether your account shows the Premium logo.
- Public YouTube pages it fetches in the background for the videos and channels that appear in your feed: a video’s own page, to read YouTube’s category and the creator’s tags; and a channel’s Videos and Shorts pages, to see what that creator usually posts.
These requests go to YouTube directly from your browser, are sent without your cookies, and return only public information. YouTube sees them the way it sees any page load from your connection.
That means YouTube receives your network address for those requests, as it does for every page you open there.
ORBTUBE does not read your watch history, subscriptions, comments, or anything behind your login.
What ORBTUBE downloads from us
Once every 12 hours, or when you press Refresh, ORBTUBE fetches the current ORB category list, including category names, keywords, community video labels and approved creator declarations, from a FirmaMentum Holdings endpoint hosted on Google Apps Script.
That request contains nothing about you or the pages you visit.
A copy of the list also ships inside the extension, so ORBTUBE works even if the fetch fails.
What you can choose to send us
Nothing is sent unless you act.
When you fix a label with Also send this correction in ticked, ORBTUBE sends one report containing:
- the video ID and title, and the channel handle and name
- the label it had and the label you chose
- whether you ticked I am this video’s creator, and the reason you typed, which is required for creators
- the ORBTUBE version and the random install identifier described above
That report is stored in a Google Sheet operated by FirmaMentum Holdings.
Untick the box and the correction stays on your computer only.
If the report cannot be sent, it is kept on your device and included in your next export.
The correction report itself contains no name, email address, YouTube account or IP address; only the fields listed above. As with any web request, the servers that receive it, Google Apps Script and Google Sheets, see the network address the request came from and may log it under Google’s own policies. We do not store it, and it does not appear in the sheet.
How we use reports
- To decide whether a video’s label should change for everyone. Ordinary corrections are adopted only when at least two separate installs agree on the same category. The install identifier exists solely so we can tell “two people” from “one person twice”.
- Creator corrections are read by a person before any change is made. ORBTUBE does not ask for or collect an email address, so we cannot contact you about a correction; the outcome shows as the label changing, or not, in a later category list.
- We do not sell reports, share them with advertisers, or combine them with any other data. We do not know who sent them.
Reports are kept as long as they are useful to maintaining the category list. You may ask us to delete any report you sent; quote the video and the approximate time.
Exporting and restoring
Save my edits to a file and Copy to clipboard in the Contribute tab create a copy of your local edits.
Those files go where you put them and are sent to us only if you send them.
Uninstalling
Chrome deletes ORBTUBE’s extension storage when you remove the extension.
Your backup file in Downloads remains until you delete it.
When you uninstall, Chrome opens:
fmholdings.co/orbtube/uninstall/
explaining how to restore your edits.
Advertising
ORBTUBE does not block, hide, mute or skip advertisements on YouTube and does not alter how ads are served.
It only changes which videos you choose to open.
Third parties
ORBTUBE interacts with YouTube, operated by Google LLC, and stores the category list and reports using Google Apps Script and Google Sheets, also operated by Google LLC.
Their privacy policies apply to their services.
No other third party is involved. There are no analytics, advertising or tracking libraries in ORBTUBE.
Children
ORBTUBE is not directed at children under 13.
It has no accounts and does not ask anyone for a name, email address, age or any other personal detail. The only identifier it creates is a random install code that is not linked to a person or device.
Permissions, and why
- storage, unlimitedStorage: keep your settings and the caches described above on your device.
- alarms: refresh the category list every 12 hours.
- downloads: write the backup file to Downloads.
- Access to youtube.com: show badges and read public video and channel pages.
- Access to script.google.com and script.googleusercontent.com: fetch the category list and receive corrections you choose to send.
Changes
We will update this page when ORBTUBE’s behaviour changes and note the version it applies to at the top.
Contact
FirmaMentum Holdings Pty Ltd