Privacy Policy

Last updated: June 2, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how MethodMath handles information when you visit the site, create an account, sign in with Google, ask questions, answer questions, vote, follow topics, upload a profile picture, use search, or contact us.

MethodMath is designed as a public mathematics community. Public contributions are meant to be visible, indexed, discussed, and discovered.

1. Information You Provide

We process information you provide directly, including:

• Name, username, email address, password hash, and account settings
• Google account identifier and verified email address if you choose Google sign-in
• Profile details such as bio, avatar, followed topics, social links, and role signals
• Questions, answers, comments, reports, accepted-answer selections, and edits
• Contact form messages, including the name, email address, subject, and message you submit
• Optional uploaded profile pictures that pass size and type restrictions

2. Public Content and Community Signals

Questions, answers, comments, usernames, display names, avatars, topics, vote counts, answer counts, view counts, accepted answers, badges, and profile statistics may be public.

Public content can appear on question pages, feeds, profile pages, topic pages, search pages, internal recommendations, social previews, structured data, and search engine results.

3. Technical and Security Data

We may process technical data needed to operate and protect the service, including:

• IP address, user-agent, browser type, device category, approximate location, and requested URL
• Authentication, password reset, session, CSRF, and API security events
• Rate-limit events, failed requests, error pages, referrers, and request timing
• Upload metadata such as file type, size, and storage path
• Search terms and result counts used to improve search quality

This data helps prevent abuse, investigate errors, protect accounts, and keep the platform reliable on limited hosting resources.

4. Analytics

MethodMath uses privacy-conscious internal analytics to understand whether pages work, where users encounter errors, and what content attracts attention.

Google Analytics is loaded only if you choose Allow analytics in the cookie notice. When allowed, Google may process analytics data under Google's own privacy practices. MethodMath configures the Google tag with advertising personalization disabled.

You can change your analytics choice later through Cookie preferences in the footer.

5. Why We Use Information

We use information to:

• Provide accounts, authentication, profiles, Q&A features, comments, votes, follows, notifications, and search
• Render mathematical content, previews, metadata, and topic pages
• Personalize lightweight feed ordering in the browser where supported
• Detect spam, abuse, duplicate accounts, vote manipulation, and security risks
• Improve reliability, performance, SEO, onboarding, and content discovery
• Reply to contact, privacy, account, and safety requests
• Comply with applicable law and protect legal rights

6. Service Providers

We do not sell personal information. Limited information may be processed by providers that help operate the platform, such as:

• Vercel for frontend hosting and delivery
• Hostinger for backend hosting, files, and database infrastructure
• Google for Google sign-in and optional Google Analytics
• Email infrastructure used for password reset or contact messages
• Real-time or delivery services if enabled for notifications

Providers process information according to their own terms and privacy practices.

7. Cookies and Local Storage

We use cookies and browser storage for authentication, security, preferences, drafts, feed state, analytics consent, and optional analytics. See the Cookie and Local Storage Policy for more detail.

8. Retention

• Account information is retained while the account exists and as needed for security, legal, or operational reasons.
• Public community content may be retained to preserve discussions, even if an account is later deleted or anonymized.
• Raw internal analytics events are designed for limited retention. Aggregated statistics may be retained longer.
• Security, error, rate-limit, and abuse-prevention records are kept only as long as reasonably needed for their purpose.
• Contact messages may be retained long enough to respond and maintain an appropriate record.

9. Your Choices and Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, object to, or receive a copy of certain personal information.

You can edit supported profile fields in settings. You can also contact us for privacy, account access, or deletion requests using the contact form. Include enough information to identify and verify the relevant account.

10. Account Deletion

If you request account deletion, we may remove or anonymize account-level information. Public questions, answers, and comments may remain where needed to preserve educational discussions and avoid breaking community context.

Tell us whether your request also concerns public contributions.

11. Children

MethodMath is not intended for children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided personal information, contact us through the contact form.

12. Security

We use safeguards such as HTTPS, password hashing, input validation, upload restrictions, access controls, rate limiting, security headers, and limited administrative access.

No internet service can guarantee absolute security, but we work to reduce risk and respond to credible issues.

13. International Use

MethodMath may be accessed from different countries. Information may be processed where hosting providers, infrastructure, or service providers operate.

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy when the platform, providers, laws, or practices change. The latest revision date appears at the top.

15. Contact

For privacy questions or requests, use the contact form.