Privacy Policy

Effective date: March 28, 2026

OrganicChemistryData.org ("the Site") is operated by the Division of Organic Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. This privacy policy describes how we collect, use, and protect information when you visit and use the Site.

1. Information We Collect

Information you provide

If you log in to the Site's administrative area, we receive your name and email address from the Division of Organic Chemistry's WordPress authentication system (organicdivision.org). This information is used solely to manage your account and permissions on the Site.

Information collected automatically

When you visit the Site, our self-hosted analytics system (Matomo) collects:

• Pages visited and time spent
• Referring website (how you arrived)
• Browser type and operating system
• Approximate geographic location (country/region, derived from IP address)
• Screen resolution and device type

IP addresses are anonymized (the last two octets are removed) before being stored. We do not store full IP addresses in our analytics system.

2. How We Use Information

We use the information we collect to:

• Understand how visitors use the Site and which content is most valuable
• Improve the Site's content, navigation, and performance
• Manage administrative accounts for authorized editors
• Monitor the Site for security issues

We do not sell, rent, or share personal information with third parties for marketing purposes.

3. Cookies and Tracking

The Site uses first-party cookies only. We use self-hosted Matomo analytics running on our own servers. No data is sent to Google Analytics, Facebook, or any other third-party tracking service.

Cookies used by the Site:

• Session cookie (PHPSESSID) — maintains your login session if you are an administrator. Expires when you close your browser.
• Analytics cookies (_pk_id, _pk_ses) — used by Matomo to distinguish unique visitors. The ID cookie expires after 13 months; the session cookie after 30 minutes of inactivity.

If your browser sends a Do Not Track signal, Matomo respects it and will not track your visit.

4. Third-Party Services

The Site loads the following resources from third-party CDNs:

• Bootstrap CSS/JS (cdn.jsdelivr.net) — page layout framework
• Font Awesome (cdnjs.cloudflare.com) — icon fonts

These CDN providers may receive your IP address and browser information as part of serving these files. We do not control their privacy practices. No personal data is intentionally shared with these services.

5. Data Security

The Site is served over HTTPS with TLS 1.2 or higher. Administrative access requires authentication. Server access is restricted to key-based SSH on a non-standard port. The server is monitored with fail2ban intrusion prevention and automated security updates.

6. Data Retention

• Analytics data is retained for 26 months, after which it is automatically purged.
• Administrative accounts are retained as long as the user has an active role on the Site.
• Server logs (Nginx access/error logs) are rotated every 14 days.

7. Your Rights

You may:

• Visit the Site without providing any personal information
• Disable cookies in your browser to prevent analytics tracking
• Enable Do Not Track in your browser to opt out of Matomo analytics
• Request deletion of your administrative account by contacting us

8. Contact

For questions about this privacy policy or to exercise your data rights, please contact us:

• Contact form: organicdivision.org/contact

9. Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated effective date. Continued use of the Site after changes constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.