vRate Chrome Extension FAQ

You can go to settings from the vRate icon on the address bar or launch this from the Chrome settings menu->More Tools->Extensions. Search for the vRate Chrome extension and click on the Options link. A brief walk through of the settings page:

• The browser mode allows you to change the role of the user. Typically if an adult is using the Internet, it would make sense to switch to the Adult mode. However, do remember to switch back to the Child mode before handing it over to you child
• The Racy/Provocative settings allow you to fine tune the visibility of inappropriate content.
• Sensitivity settings allow you to specify how re-directions are handled, when inappropriate content is found vRate typically re-directs to a safe page to prevent further exposure
• Advanced Settings allow you customize what vRate can block or bypass by using blacklists and whitelists respectively
• The Clear Cache button is can be used to resolve issues with incorrect classification or as a means to reset the extension. This may be used for troubleshooting issues.

vRate does not store, record or analyze your data. The vRate browser extension operates by intercepting images prior to loading in Chrome. The intercepted images are analyzed in the cloud. Only publicly accessible urls of images are sent to our cloud backend. Our privacy policy is located at https://www.masala.one/about/privacy-policy/.

You may experience slower browsing speeds for web pages that have a large number of images. However, there are certain things that can be done to get back to normal browsing speeds, this includes clearing your browser cache and also clearing the vRate cache in the settings page.

Please also try disabling and then enabling the extension. If none of these options work, please contact us with specific details so we can have a look at your issue.

There may be several reasons for this to occur — including, but not limited to more than a dozen browser tabs being open, other open applications also utilizing your device’s memory or computing resources, and more. 

We recommend to disable the extension and then re-enable it immediately. This can be done from the Chrome Settings > More Tools > Extensions, search for vRate, then click on checkbox to disable then enable it back again. 

Other reasons for disrupted performance may be due to intermittent internet connectivity. For example, public WiFi may have several computers vying for the same connection resources. If you are able to disconnect, then reconnect to the wired or wireless internet connection, this may show improvement. If it does not resolve the issue, please contact us.

No. The filter does not affect bandwidth and will not impair use on metered internet plans.

You may occasionally see timeout messages, this is normal if the page subsequently loads completely without any issues. If you see this message several times within a few seconds, and the web page has not loaded, please check if the page loads on other browsers or after disabling the extension, this could be an issue with the web page you are visiting. If the web page does load fine in other browsers, please contact us with specific details so we can have a look at your issue.

vRate applies the latest advances in artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically analyze images without any manual intervention. Though several advancements have been made in this field, it is still short of comparable human accuracy and depending on the quality of the image, background objects and the exposure of skin, there is around a 10 to 15% chance that perfectly safe images could get wrongly classified as inappropriate content. We constantly strive to improve the accuracy of our AI models and this will be an ongoing effort but we cannot totally rule out mis-classifications.

Based on our observations, we believe most modern websites show content dynamically based on several factors including trends specific to your region and past browsing history. vRate automatically analyzes what is served by these web pages and flags inappropriate content. If the percentage of inappropriate images (including video thumbnails) is higher than sensitivity that you have set, we automatically block the entire page to prevent further exposure.

One way to resolve this is to either try again after sometime, since the content is always changing, or reduce the sensitivity level in the Settings page. Another option would be to change the vRate mode to the adult mode, review the website and identify what could be potentially causing vRate to flag such content. If you feel that vRate is wrongly classifying the page, you could add the entire url into the vRate Whitelist (under the advanced settings section). This will ensure that vRate bypasses such websites. However, do use this feature with caution as website content are known to change dynamically and what is considered safe today might not be the case in the future.

If you would like vRate to block websites that you specify, please add this to the Blacklist in the Advanced Settings. Similarly, if you would like to bypass the vRate analysis on a website, simply add the full website url to the Whitelist. 

This typically happens when the vRate filter is busy analyzing images on a web page. Please wait for all web pages to completely load on all Chrome tabs before accessing settings.

After changing settings, you will need to reload the web page to have the change take effect. In some cases, you may need to hold the “Shift” key while clicking on the page reload button.

Currently the Chrome browser does not prevent a user from disabling an extension, this is outside our scope, but we certainly hope to see this support from Chrome soon.

No. This extension is only able to work with the desktop/laptop version of the Chrome browser due to differences in how extensions are supported in Chrome for Android. 

At this time we only support the Google Chrome web browser. Support for other web browsers (Firefox, Brave, Safari, etc.) may come at a later date.