Presentation - FMaz008/VineHelper GitHub Wiki

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Vine Helper is a browser extension which aim to improve the experience of members of the Amazon Vine program. And to do so within the boundaries of the Conditions of Uses of the Vine Program.

Vine Helper is a tool which looks at what you are browsing, and share useful information with other members of the same country.

Improving the experience:

Vine is an awesome program, it really is, but the interface we have to use is very basic in term of features and it has issues which have plagued the user experience for a few years:

  • Vine often lists items which can't be ordered (International shipping, or items no longer enrolled in the vine program, etc)
  • Some items with variations but unspecified variants will cause an infinite loading windows and trigger a reported error to Amazon.
  • The overall feeling of being overwhelmed by products but unable to sort for what might be of interest to you.

This extension aims at alleviating those issues by relying on the community to help identify the items with issues, and when fixing the issue is not possible, to be able to mark, or discard, those problematic items from the browsing experience.

A community experience

In each country where Vine is available, vibrant communities of dedicated viners have emerge. Within this dynamic, users of Vine Helper are empowered to share valuable insights, enriching the browsing experience for all. These include:

  • Providing estimated ETV ranges observed by fellow users.
  • Offering statistics on successful orders or encountered errors, contributing to a clearer picture for potential buyers.
  • Documenting the initial appearance of items in the listing.

By fostering the exchange of such fundamental data among users, Vine Helper evolved with enhanced user-friendliness, laying the groundwork for further advancements.

Is Vine Helper a bot?

Vine helper is not a bot:

  • It does not query Amazon directly.
  • It does not automate membership actions.
  • It cannot make an order for you.
  • It does not auto-refresh data from Amazon.

Furthermore, Vine Helper does not:

  • Access to your amazon profile or access your personal information
  • Store identifying data (currently a UUID system is being used.)
  • Use or access cookies

Webstore declared data collection:

If you look at the webstore, you may notice the following items which are declared on a voluntary basis:

Amazon Vine Helper collects the following:

Financial and payment information For example: transactions, credit card numbers, credit balances, bank statements or payment history

While technically everything on Vine is free, there are obviously no payment collected, or card number or any of that, but Vine Helper does keep track of orders, which qualify as transactions. Even if the value is 0.00$, to be on the safe side and out of an abundance of transparency, it was chosen to declare the collection of financial and payment.

Web history The list of web pages consulted by the user, as well as the associated data, such as the page and time of the visit

Vine Helper does not track pages consulted per say, but will collect information about the items on these pages and when they are viewed. This information, however, is not linked to your identity.

Activity of the user For example: network monitoring, clicks, mouse position, recording of scroll movements or keys of the keyboard

Vine Helper does monitor the network traffic between the vine webpage and vine's server. This is to enable the storing of ETV values, Order attempts as well as fixing the Infinite Spinner errors. Note that in the case of orders attempts, it is linked to your UUID. The traffic itself it not stored. Vine Helper does not record user inputs.

Content of the website For example: text, images, sounds, videos or hyperlinks

Vine Helper definitely collect content of the webpage, specifically text and URL, as you are browsing. Once again, that information is not linked to your identity.

I hope this clarify how Vine Helper collect data :)