Kick Off — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-05-14

Kick Off is a new tab replacement for Firefox. It is designed to do as little as possible, and that includes how it handles your data. This document explains, in plain English, what data the extension touches, where it goes, and what you control.

If you only read one sentence: Kick Off does not have a server that collects information about you, does not have analytics, does not have ads, and does not have accounts. The few external requests it makes are described below and either (a) only happen at your explicit opt-in, or (b) are the search redirect you initiated yourself.

1. The short version

Nothing else is collected. There is no Kick Off backend that receives, logs, or aggregates your activity.

2. What the extension can technically do (permissions)

Firefox requires extensions to declare permissions. Here's what each permission is for in Kick Off and what it is not used for.

history — "Read browsing history"

• Why we have it: To rank the shortcut tiles on the new tab. Kick Off queries your local history for sites you've visited in the last ~180 days, applies a recency- and frequency-based score, and shows the top hostnames as tiles.
• What we do with it: Compute the tile list in memory each time you open a new tab.
• What we do not do: We don't store this list externally, send it to any server, link it to your identity, or share it with third parties. We don't read URL paths beyond the hostname for display purposes.

topSites — "Access recently browsed sites"

• Why we have it: Fallback for the shortcut tiles when the history query returns nothing (e.g. fresh profile, history cleared).
• What we do with it: Same as above — render the tiles, in memory, per tab.
• What we do not do: No transmission, no aggregation.

storage — "Store unlimited amount of client-side data"

• Why we have it: To remember your preferences across browser restarts. Specifically:
  • Theme choice (light/dark/system)
  • Clock format (12-hour or 24-hour)
  • Which optional widgets are enabled
  • Photo background mode + locked photo (if any)
  • Pinned and hidden shortcut tiles
  • Your notes text (if you use the Notes widget)
  • Your mood log entries (if you use the Mood Check widget)
  • Your world clock cities
  • Your weather city and a short cache of the last weather response
• Where it lives: browser.storage.local — i.e. your Firefox profile on your own machine. It is not synced to Firefox Sync, not uploaded, not shared.

search (currently declared, will be removed)

The current manifest declares the search permission but the code does not use it. It will be removed in the next version. It does not grant access to your search history or search engine data.

3. Optional host permissions (the weather widget)

The weather widget is disabled by default. When (and only when) you click "Enable weather", Firefox will prompt you to grant access to:

• api.open-meteo.com — to fetch the forecast.
• geocoding-api.open-meteo.com — to look up the coordinates of a city you type.
• One of ipwho.is, get.geojs.io, ipapi.co — to get a rough (city-level) location from your IP if you haven't picked a city manually. Kick Off tries them in order and stops at the first success.

Until you opt in:

• No request is made to any of these hosts.
• The weather widget is not visible.
• No location data exists in storage.

If you turn the widget off, the cached weather data and your city are removed from local storage.

About Open-Meteo

Open-Meteo is a free, open-source weather API that does not require an API key and states it does not log personal data. Their privacy notice: https://open-meteo.com/en/terms.

About the IP-geolocation hosts

These services return an approximate location (typically city-level) based on the IP address of the request. None of them require an account or API key for the small number of requests Kick Off makes. Their respective privacy policies:

• ipwho.is — https://ipwho.is/privacy
• GeoJS — https://www.geojs.io/privacy/
• ipapi.co — https://ipapi.co/privacy/

If you'd rather not contact any of these, type a city name into the weather widget — the IP lookup is then skipped entirely.

4. Search

When you type a query into the Kick Off search bar and press Enter, your browser is redirected to:

https://kickoffsearch.com/search.php?q=<your query>

kickoffsearch.com forwards the query to a Yahoo-syndicated search results page under a search syndication partnership. Your Firefox default search engine is not changed — the URL bar continues to use whatever you have configured.

What we receive at kickoffsearch.com:

• The query string you typed.
• Standard HTTP request metadata (your IP, your User-Agent, the Referer) that any web request includes.

What we do with it:

• The query is forwarded immediately to the Yahoo-syndicated endpoint and is not stored by kickoffsearch.com.
• We don't run analytics, ad pixels, or third-party tracking on kickoffsearch.com.

What Yahoo does with it:

• Yahoo is a third party with its own privacy policy: https://legal.yahoo.com/us/en/yahoo/privacy/index.html. Once your browser lands on the results page, you are interacting with Yahoo's site under their policy.

If you would rather not use the Kick Off search bar, leave it alone — Firefox's address bar and built-in search are unaffected.

5. What we do NOT do

• We do not have user accounts or logins.
• We do not have a backend that receives your tabs, history, or activity.
• We do not run analytics, tracking pixels, fingerprinting scripts, or session replay.
• We do not load remote code. The entire extension is the source you can read in addons.mozilla.org.
• We do not sell, rent, or share data with advertisers or data brokers.
• We do not place ads in the new tab page.
• We do not modify pages other than the new tab page.

6. Data retention and deletion

All data stored by Kick Off lives in your browser's local storage. You can delete it at any time by:

• Removing the Kick Off extension (Firefox removes the extension's local storage with it), or
• Going to about:preferences#privacy, scrolling to Cookies and Site Data → Manage Data…, and clearing data for moz-extension://… (the Kick Off origin), or
• Using Firefox's "Clear recent history" with Site preferences and Cookies and site data selected.

There is no remote copy of your data to delete because no remote copy exists.

7. Children's privacy

Kick Off does not knowingly collect any personal data, from anyone — children included. It does not require an account, an email address, or any identifying input.

8. Changes to this policy

If we make material changes (for example, adding a new optional integration), we will:

• Bump the "Last updated" date at the top of this document.
• Mention the change in the Firefox add-on listing's release notes.
• Where the change requires a new permission, Firefox itself will prompt you before the new permission becomes active.

We don't have a mailing list — if you want to track changes, watch the AMO listing or the project repository.

9. Contact

For privacy questions, security disclosures, or removal requests:

• Email: [email protected]

We try to respond within five business days.

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