Walkthrough Recorder privacy

What the recorder is

The Eightball Walkthrough Recorder is a Chrome extension for Eightball Teams authors. It records a demonstration of your own product in one browser tab and uploads it to your Teams certification, where it becomes a guided walkthrough for your learners.

What it captures, and when

Nothing is captured until you open the recorder on a tab, choose Agree and record, and allow access to your product’s site. The same question asks for the sites the page’s files come from; declining those never stops you from recording. Recording stops when you stop it, and pauses when you switch tabs or leave your product’s sites. When your product takes you to another site of its own (a billing page, a second product domain), you choose whether the recording continues there. When your product opens a new tab and you open the recorder in it, the recording, and its video, moves to that tab.

While recording, it captures from the recorded tab only, exactly as the page shows it: the page structure and text, the controls you click and the values you type, screenshots, and the page’s own images, fonts and stylesheets. The characters in a password field are withheld from the page’s text and painted out of screenshots; nothing else on the page is masked. Tab video records the tab as it looks on screen, so keep passwords hidden while recording video.

With each step it also keeps raw facts, so Eightball can improve your walkthrough later without a new recorder: the page’s full web address, where the pointer was and the path it took since the previous step, how the page and its scrolling areas were scrolled, which element had focus, a field’s value before you changed it and where the text cursor was in it, and the question a browser dialog asked. For the recording as a whole it keeps your screen size and pixel density, browser language, time zone and operating system, and whether your browser prefers a dark theme or reduced motion.

If Tab video is on, it records video of that tab. It never records the tab’s sound. If you turn Microphone on, your microphone audio is added to the video. Your walkthrough shows your product as you recorded it, so record with the data you want your learners to see.

Where it goes

The page’s own files are copied in your browser, with your login, from your product’s sites and from the sites its files come from that you allow: they are asked for when you start recording, and again when you stop for any new site the recording met since. Files from a site you do not allow are fetched by Eightball after upload, without your login.

A recording stays in your browser until you upload or discard it. When you upload, it is sent to your Eightball Teams workspace and stored with the certification you chose. Eightball processes it to build the walkthrough, including AI services that write step instructions and transcribe microphone audio on our behalf.

Recordings are not sold, not used for advertising, and not shared with anyone except the services needed to store and process them.

Activity and error logs

So that we can help when something does not work, the recorder sends Eightball a log of its own activity: the recorder actions you took and the screens it showed you, step counts, page-file and upload progress, and errors. It includes the domains of the sites you record and how many sites you have allowed it to access, and facts about your browser: the extension and Chrome versions, your operating system and browser language, whether you were online, how much browser storage the recorder uses and has available, and how the extension was installed. It also notes when the extension is installed, updated or started with Chrome.

These logs never contain page text, typed values, screenshots or video, and any web address in them is kept as its domain only, never its path or query. Each installation has a random identifier that links its logs together. Logs are sent while you are signed in, only under the Eightball account that was signed in when they happened, are linked to that account, and are deleted after 90 days.

Sign-in

You sign in with your Eightball Teams account. The sign-in token is kept in the extension’s own storage in your browser and is used only to talk to Eightball Teams. Signing out removes it.

Why it asks for its permissions

Access to teams.eightball.ai, to sign in and upload. Access to your product’s sites, asked when you start recording and when a recording continues on another of your product’s sites, to capture their pages. Access to the sites your product’s files come from, asked in the same question and again at Stop for any new ones the recording met since, so those files are copied with your login. Tab capture, to record the tab’s video. The active-tab grant from the toolbar icon or right-click menu, to take screenshots. Storage and unlimited storage, to keep long recordings on your device until they upload. Offscreen documents, to record video and upload while the panel is closed. Side panel, context menu, scripting and identity, for the recorder panel, the right-click entry, page capture and sign-in.

Deleting data

Discard removes a recording from this browser. It also cancels the recording’s upload if that upload never finished; a recording that finished uploading stays in the certification, and can be removed from the certification’s sources in Eightball Teams. Removing the extension removes every local recording. To delete your activity logs or ask anything about this policy, email support@eightball.ai.

This page adds to the Eightball privacy policy at www.eightball.ai/privacy.