It has come to our attention that some Overture users are making use of the Grammarly browser plugin. We at Overture have also been enjoying this fantastic new product. However …

We recommend that you disable Grammarly while using your Overture account for the following 2 reasons

Firstly, the Grammarly plugin seems to interfere with the code that we are using for the text areas within Overture causing multi-line entries to be deleted when saved. If you have experienced this problem then this is the most likely cause.

Secondly, we would like to bring your attention to the way in which Grammarly is setup as a service and the agreement that you sign up for when you create your Grammarly account.

Section 3 of the Grammarly Privacy Policy states:

“When you use our Products, User Content you transmit will be stored on our servers, which are located in the United States. When you use the Software on your computing device, User Content you save will be stored locally on that device and sync with our servers.”

“Please be aware that Personal Information and User Content submitted to Grammarly will be transferred to a data center in the United States. If you post or transfer any information to or through our Products, you are confirming your consent to such information, including Personal Information and User Content, being hosted and accessed in the United States.”

In short any information that you are entering into Overture via a text area will not only be stored in the Overture database but will also be stored in Grammarly’s database at which point we have no control over what actions they choose to take with it.

We are certainly not saying that Grammarly are using your data for their own purposes, just that you need to be aware of any sensitive information you are adding to Overture ending up in a location and database you might not be aware of.

It has always been (and always will be) Overture’s policy that our customers’ data belongs to our customers. Your data is yours and yours only. We only store it and never process it for any reason other than presenting it back to you. We believe it is one of the guiding principles that sets us apart from many other web applications.

Again, therefore, we reiterate, that you stop using Grammarly when using Overture or at least bear in mind that information you are transmitting will be stored on their servers every time you use a text field within Overture.