After publishing one of my Chrome extensions, I opened its Chrome Web Store page to check how everything looked.
The description was there.
The screenshots looked fine.
The listing was live.
Then I scrolled down.
And saw an address I recognized immediately.
It was my home address.
I had been thinking about the user's privacy, not mine
For the extensions I build under Legacy Tools, I pay a lot of attention to privacy.
I try to:
- keep processing inside the browser
- avoid unnecessary permissions
- avoid external network requests where possible
- avoid collecting user input or detection results
I had reviewed permissions, data handling, and Chrome Web Store disclosures carefully.
But I had completely missed another category of information:
the developer's own information.
I had spent so much time thinking about what my extension might expose that I never seriously checked what publishing the extension might expose about me.
The reason was my trader status
Chrome Web Store asks developers to declare whether they are acting as a trader or a non-trader.
When I first completed the registration, I selected the trader option.
Here, "trader" does not mean someone trading stocks.
It refers to whether you are acting for purposes related to your trade, business, craft, or profession.
When I reviewed the information again, I realized that verified contact information associated with a trader can be displayed on the Chrome Web Store.
I had treated the address as information I was providing to Google for verification.
I had not understood that it could become information visible to users.
By the time I noticed, the extension was already public.
"Just choose non-trader" is not the lesson
My first reaction was obvious:
Then I should just switch to non-trader.
But that is not really the right way to think about it.
Trader status is not a privacy toggle.
You should not choose non-trader simply because you do not want your address to appear.
The declaration needs to match how you actually operate.
In my case, I reviewed the description and my current way of publishing Legacy Tools extensions, which are currently offered for free, and concluded that non-trader better matched my situation.
After I changed the setting, the address was no longer displayed on the store page.
But the important lesson was not the setting itself.
Developer identity is part of product design
Before this happened, I thought of developer registration as an administrative step at the end of the publishing process.
Build the extension.
Prepare the screenshots.
Write the description.
Pass the review.
Publish.
Done.
That was too simple.
If you plan to publish extensions as an independent developer, you should think about things like:
- whose name will appear as the publisher
- which address is associated with the developer account
- which email address users will see
- whether you should separate personal and public contact information
- how your trader status affects the information shown to users
None of these questions change your JavaScript.
But they absolutely affect what it means to publish software publicly.
Check your own store page after publishing
Once an extension passes review, it is easy to feel that the job is finished.
I now think there is one more step.
Open the public Chrome Web Store listing exactly as a user would.
Scroll from top to bottom.
Do not only check the screenshots and description.
Check what information about you is being published alongside the extension.
I learned this only after finding my own home address on the page.
Publishing a browser extension is not only about deciding what your software reveals.
It is also about deciding what you, as the developer, reveal with it.
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