YouGuard Browser Shield

YouGuard Browser Shield is a family safety extension that helps parents and guardians protect their loved ones online. It enforces YouTube channel approvals, logs browsing activity, detects scam websites, and sends real-time alerts when dangerous or sensitive sites are visited. Whether you're keeping your child safe on YouTube or helping an elderly parent avoid online scams, Browser Shield gives guardians visibility and control through the YouGuard dashboard at youguard.app. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ HOW IT WORKS YouTube Protection When the person you're protecting tries to watch a video from a channel you haven't approved, they're automatically redirected to a random video from a channel you HAVE approved. No blocked screens, no confrontation — just safe content. Sidebar recommendations and homepage suggestions from unapproved channels are also hidden. Browsing History The extension logs all websites visited and displays them in a timeline on your YouGuard dashboard, along with domain statistics showing the most-visited sites over the last 7 days. Scam Detection Browser Shield automatically scans web pages for common scam patterns including fake virus warnings, tech support scams, gift card fraud, fake prize notifications, and urgency-based phishing. When a scam is detected, guardians are alerted immediately via the dashboard and email. Dangerous Site Protection URLs are checked against Google's threat database to identify known malware, phishing, and unwanted software sites. If a dangerous site is detected, guardians receive a critical alert with details about the threat. Sensitive Site Alerts Guardians are notified when banking, cryptocurrency, investment, remote access, gift card, or government websites are visited. This is especially useful for protecting seniors from social engineering attacks where scammers direct victims to these types of sites. Panic Button If the person using the browser suspects they're being scammed — whether it's a suspicious phone call, a fake pop-up, or a phishing page — they can press the "I think this is a scam" button. This immediately sends an urgent alert to all linked guardians with the current URL and context. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FEATURES YouTube Safety • Real-time YouTube channel filtering based on guardian approvals • Sidebar filtering hides "Up next" recommendations from unapproved channels • Homepage filtering hides video suggestions from unapproved channels • Smart redirects send users to approved videos instead of showing a block page • Block logs show guardians which channels were blocked and when Browsing Visibility • Logs all visited websites with page titles, domains, and timestamps • Domain statistics show the most-visited sites over the last 7 days • Timeline view in the guardian dashboard with domain filtering • Refresh and load more for browsing through history Threat Protection • Scam page detection scans for fake virus warnings, tech support scams, gift card fraud, fake prizes, and urgency-based phishing • Dangerous site detection checks URLs against Google's Web Risk threat database for malware, phishing, and unwanted software • Sensitive site alerts notify guardians when banking, crypto, investment, remote access, gift card, or government sites are visited • Panic button lets the protected person send an urgent alert to guardians instantly • Guardian email alerts for critical and warning-level threats Dashboard & Management • Alert timeline in the guardian dashboard with severity indicators • Filter alerts by type and severity • Mark alerts as read or dismiss them • PIN protection prevents children from switching profiles or disabling the extension • Multi-child support lets guardians switch between different children's profiles • Works across Chrome, Edge, Brave, and other Chromium-based browsers ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHO IS THIS FOR? For Parents Set up approved YouTube channels in YouGuard, and Browser Shield enforces those approvals in real-time. See what websites your child visits and get alerted if they encounter dangerous content. For Adult Children of Seniors Protect elderly parents from online scams and fraud. Get notified when they visit banking or remote access sites — common targets in tech support scams. The panic button gives them a simple way to ask for help when something feels wrong. For Accountability Partners Spouses, friends, or accountability partners can use YouGuard to monitor each other's browsing activity with mutual consent. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ HOW TO SET UP 1. Create a YouGuard account at youguard.app 2. Add the person you want to protect and set up their approved YouTube channels 3. Install this extension on their browser 4. Click the extension icon, sign in with your YouGuard account, and select who is using the browser 5. YouTube is now filtered, browsing is logged, and scam protection is active ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ PRIVACY AND DATA We take privacy seriously. Here's exactly what data is collected and how it's used: Data collected: • Google account email (for authentication only) • Browser type and version (for troubleshooting) • Visited website URLs, page titles, and domains (displayed in the guardian dashboard) • Blocked YouTube channel IDs (displayed in the guardian dashboard) • Page text content (first 5000 characters scanned locally for scam patterns — only the names of matched patterns are sent to YouGuard servers, never raw page text) Data NOT collected: • Passwords, form inputs, or autofill data • Cookies, local storage, or session data • Data from internal browser pages (chrome://, about://, file://, etc.) • Financial information, credit card numbers, or payment data • Keystrokes, mouse movements, or screen recordings How data is used: • All data is used solely for family safety functionality • Data is transmitted securely over HTTPS to YouGuard servers • Browsing history is only visible to linked guardians in the YouGuar…