Is Grammarly Safe to Use?

Writing is a primary means of communication in the 21st century. Now it’s much easier to write a message than to call. Young people choose this method of communication because of its speed and convenience.

In addition, with the advent of the internet, the number of blogging platforms and sites has increased, where everyone can write about what they are interested in either in free form or as structured content.

All this is united by one thing: the written word. Naturally, therefore, it is essential to write not only clearly, but also competently, both stylistically and in terms of structure and punctuation.

For this, there is Grammarly — a service for correcting errors in your written text. It is pretty popular and convenient.

But is Grammarly safe to use?

If you are blogger or write a lot, you should choose the best blogging platform. Find out the most suitable and proven variants here.

What is Grammarly?

Grammarly is a full-featured spelling and grammar checker that works with almost everything you type on the internet. The software is activated by entering any text editing field, such as Facebook, WordPress, Twitter or email, in which all errors are displayed in real time.

Initially, Grammarly began as a grammar checker. It is a universal solution for writing documents with a wide range of tools and methods that allow you to create messages, documents, and publications that are clear, error-free, and improve user interaction when writing on the internet.

Grammarly operates on an SaaS business model based on a freemium subscription (basic functions are provided for free, and you need to pay for premium services).

Grammarly supports four English language standards: American English, British English, Canadian English, and Australian English. In the Grammarly online editor, the user can create a text or upload it from a document. When writing a text, the following options are available to the user: changing the font of the text (bold, italics, underlined, and standard), inserting titles and links, adding a list, and viewing text statistics (number of words, time for reading and pronunciation).

Suggestions for editing are displayed in the right part of the editor. Issues are divided into four groups: correctness (grammar, punctuation), clarity (helps to increase the clarity of the text), engagement (helps to increase the interest and effectiveness of writing), and presentation (helps to make an impression). To select the preferences for the document, you need to go to the “Goals” tab, where the options for audience parameters, format, scope, tone, and purpose of the text will be presented for selection.

How to send files anonymously? Try secure file sharing services.

What problems does Grammarly solve?

Clear the text of errors

It works very simply: you need to write/upload/copy the text to Grammarly, and the system will automatically check it for grammatical, syntactic, and other errors. They are highlighted in red, and when clicked, the correct option is shown. Although sometimes the smart assistant “slows down,” in general, it copes well with:

prepositions
punctuation
spelling
forms of verbs, nouns, adjectives

Proofreading

In addition to grammatical errors, which are highlighted in red, you can also find green, blue and purple underscores.

The blue ones help to simplify the text and make it more understandable.
The green advises on how to make the text more engaging and interesting.
The purple suggests how to make the right impression on the reader.

Check the uniqueness

Unique content is the key to successful promotion in SERP. And here Grammarly decided not to concede to the services for checking uniqueness by launching its own. It is very simple to use: you just need to click on Plagiarism in the lower right corner, and the system will quickly compare the text with those published on the World Wide Web. Unlike other services, Grammarly displays the percentage of plagiarism, not unique content.

Adjust the style

Grammarly is able to give recommendations on how to optimize the text based on the established style. When opening a new document, the service offers to set goals. You can choose goals in these categories:

audience
formality
domain
tone
intention

If suddenly the author goes off track and forgets to adhere to the right style, a smart “proofreader” will immediately return them to the true path with tips and recommendations.

Set the corporate “tone of voice”

Grammarly’s know-how in 2021 is the corporate “tone of voice” for Grammarly Business. This administrative tool allows you to customize the rules of writing texts in the company in order to develop a single style for e-mail, social media posts, or commercial offers. Only here you need to rely not on the integrity of the employees, but on the effective work of the Grammarly smart assistant.

Typical tasks include:

Uniform spelling and capitalization of the corporate name, product, etc.
A style guide with a library of relevant words, terms, and phrases.
Replacement of acronyms and jargon.

At the same time, the established rules on the basis of which recommendations are generated can be changed in real time. You should rely not only on your own flair, but also on statistics that display the pain points of the organization.

Is Grammarly safe?

Questions about Grammarly’s privacy are asked regularly, as they concern many users from Western countries. Its Privacy Policy (the latest version at the time of writing is dated December 30, 2019) says the following: “We do not sell and will not sell your information. Furthermore, we do not help other companies to advertise their products to you.” At first glance, the company ensures the security of user data and does not transfer information about its users to third parties.

However, a further point is: “We use some trusted third-party companies to provide our products.” This means that the transfer of your data is still possible.

We look at the conditions under which: “We work with service providers to provide specific services and functions, including email communication, customer support services, and analytics. These service providers may access, process, or store personal data only following our instructions.” And then: “We have your explicit consent to the provision of your data.”

However, “Grammarly does not transfer your personal data to third parties to enable them to show you their advertising.”

Grammarly does not cooperate with advertising and marketing companies (Google, Facebook, and smaller providers of targeted advertising), which can be considered a big plus. Still, it does not guarantee the security of personal data, since “access to your personal data can be carried out for protection… the security of Grammarly and users of our website, software and/or services, or in response to requests from law enforcement agencies.”

In addition, do not forget about the vulnerability of the service revealed in 2018: it revealed users’ personal documents.

According to Tavis Ormandy, a security researcher from Google Project Zero who discovered the vulnerability, the extension disclosed authentication tokens to all websites. This way, any site could access user documents, history, logs, and other data.

The extension developers promptly responded to the researcher’s message and released an update that fixed the vulnerability. However, we cannot deny the fact of information leakage.

Don’t forget that your Google activity is always monitored.

Conclusion

Grammarly is a convenient and valuable service for correcting grammatical errors. It will help to fix stylistic and punctuation inaccuracies in the text in seconds.

The main problem is only in its security. Unfortunately, the developers cannot guarantee it in full. The fact is that each separate text input on the computer is sent to the service and then analyzed. The service cannot control the data until it reaches the server.

However, you can always use it for everyday texts but decline to use it when checking confidential documents.

Stay safe and secure with our data protection types.