NewsTrace — news verification

Traces a story back to its sources. Shows what can and cannot be independently confirmed.

You've got an article, a forwarded link, a post in your feed — and no easy way to know what's behind it. NewsTrace opens beside whatever you're reading and traces the story back to its sources. It shows you what can be independently confirmed and what can't, and it never tells you what to believe. WHAT IT SHOWS YOU - Who actually published this. Not the URL — the real publisher. When a story is carried by an aggregator, NewsTrace names the newsroom behind it rather than the site you happen to be on. - Who else is covering it. A live search of other newsrooms reporting the same story, so you can see whether it's widely covered or standing alone. - How old the domain is. Pulled from public registration records. A site registered last month and a site registered in 1993 are different propositions. - Whether the outlet is accountable. Does it name its authors? Disclose its ownership? Publish a corrections policy? NewsTrace reads the outlet's own pages and reports what it finds. - Institutional facts. For known outlets: founding year and current ownership, from a curated registry — labelled as such, never presented as something read off the page. - Check a single claim. Highlight any sentence, right-click, and see which outlets are reporting it. WHAT IT WON'T DO NewsTrace does not score outlets, rate them left or right, or label anything true or false. It has no credibility meter and no verdict. When it can't confirm something, it says so about itself — "I couldn't corroborate this" — never about the outlet. A story with no corroboration isn't marked suspicious, because that's completely normal for local news. Absence of evidence is never presented as evidence of anything. This isn't a limitation NewsTrace apologises for. It's the design. PRIVACY No account. No login. No analytics. Nothing to sign up for. Article text never leaves your device. NewsTrace reads the page you already opened, in your browser, and shows you the result. Your reading history is never transmitted anywhere. NewsTrace sends you back to the source — it never tries to be the source. Why NewsTrace needs broad website access When you scan an article, NewsTrace fetches the publisher's public About and Corrections pages to verify ownership and editorial standards. Since news outlets host these pages on different domains, we need access to look them up. What this means: - NewsTrace reads these public pages only—it never modifies or changes anything on any website - It never reads your login info, payment data, or personal browsing history - All data stays on your device—nothing is sent to a server - See our privacy policy for details This is the same permission structure used by privacy-focused tools like password managers and adblockers.