Privacy & Cookie Policy

The data controller is Brilliant Blue Biosciences Ltd, Cambridge Innovation Park, 42 Helix Avenue, Cambridge CB4 0WS, United Kingdom. For any privacy question or request, contact us at [email protected].

• Member accounts — name, academic degree, affiliation, short bio, email address, a one-way password hash and the date you accepted this policy. Used to run your account, the forum and the specialist Q&A. Lawful basis: performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)).
• Forum posts, questions and answers — the content you publish and when. Visible to other signed-in members only. Lawful basis: contract, and our legitimate interest in moderating the community (Art. 6(1)(f)).
• Email verification — a single-use token sent to your address to confirm it belongs to you. Lawful basis: contract and legitimate interest in preventing abuse.
• Newsletter — your email address and the time you gave consent. Lawful basis: consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), which you can withdraw at any time.
• Contact enquiries — name, email, organisation and message. Used only to reply. Lawful basis: legitimate interest in answering enquiries.
• Server logs — IP address, browser type and requested pages, kept for security and troubleshooting. Lawful basis: legitimate interest in keeping the site secure.

Please do not post health data, patient information, unpublished confidential results or other people’s personal details in the forum or Q&A. We do not seek special-category data and will remove it when we find it.

We do not sell personal data or use it for advertising. We share it only with processors that help us run the site:

• our hosting provider, which stores the website and its database;
• our email delivery provider, which sends verification messages and newsletters.

Where a processor is outside the UK or EEA, we rely on an adequacy decision or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement / EU Standard Contractual Clauses. We may also disclose data where the law requires it.

• Unconfirmed registrations are deleted once their 24-hour verification link has expired.
• Member accounts are kept until you delete them. Inactive accounts are reviewed and removed after 3 years.
• Newsletter addresses are kept until you unsubscribe.
• Contact enquiries are kept for up to 24 months after the conversation ends.
• Server logs are kept for up to 90 days.

You have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to the processing of your personal data, and to receive it in a portable format. Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time without affecting earlier processing.

• Signed-in members can edit their profile, download their data and delete their account from Your profile. Deleting removes your profile, questions and replies; topics that others have replied to remain, shown as “Former member”.
• To unsubscribe from the newsletter or make any other request, email [email protected]. We reply within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk, 0303 123 1113) or, in the EU, to your local supervisory authority.

We use only strictly necessary storage. We do not use analytics, advertising or tracking cookies.

Because these are strictly necessary, they do not require consent under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR). Fonts are served from our own server, so no data is sent to font providers. External links (for example to journals or YouTube) are governed by those sites’ own policies.

Passwords are stored only as salted scrypt hashes, sessions are signed and HTTP-only, and the site is served over HTTPS. The member area is not intended for anyone under 16.

We will post any changes here and update the date above. Material changes will be notified to members by email.