Privacy policy

Effective date: 2026-05-30.

1. Who we are

MNM-Edu is an independent personal educational project created and maintained by Ahmed S. Alkhalifah, MD, MBBS, a pediatric intensivist with subspecialty training in neurocritical care. The project is operated from Canada and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or representing any hospital, university, professional society, or employer. For the purposes of this policy, the data controller is the named author. Privacy contact: [email protected].

2. What this policy covers

This policy explains what personal information MNM-Edu collects, how it is used, who it is shared with, how long it is kept, and how to contact us about it. It applies to the public educational site at mnm.towardpcc.com and to the reviewer system that lives under /review/ on the same domain.

3. Public visitors (the educational pages)

The public site exists to read. You can use every page without creating an account.

• No login or account is required to read the educational content.
• No cookies are set on public pagesuntil you give consent for analytics (see "Cookies" below). The site stores your dark/light theme preference inlocalStorage on your device; this is not a cookie and is not transmitted to the server.
• Google Analytics(when enabled, and only after you give consent through the cookie banner) collects standard web analytics: page views, referrer, approximate location (city/region inferred from the IP, which is anonymized before storage in our configuration), device and browser type, and time on page. We do not enable Google Analytics' advertising features and do not share data for ad personalization.
• Server logs and Cloudflare: your IP address, request URL, user agent, and timestamp are processed transiently for service delivery, security (rate-limiting, DDoS protection), and debugging by Cloudflare (which proxies all traffic) and by the hosting platform. These logs are retained for a short operational period and are not used to build a profile of you.

4. Reviewers (the authenticated minority)

The reviewer system at /review/ is invitation-only and is used by a small group of clinical reviewers who provide feedback on the educational content. For reviewers, we collect and store:

• Account information: name, email address (used as the login identity), a bcrypt hash of your password (never the password itself), role (validator / admin / implementer / observer), and optional self-supplied fields (specialty, credentials, conflict-of-interest disclosure).
• Content you submit: review findings (title, detail, severity, category, suggested fix), comments on findings, screenshot attachments you upload, and metadata about which page and section the finding applies to.
• Audit trail: an append-only log of actions you take in the reviewer system (filed, status changes, comments, deletions). This is the governance value of the system and is retained for the integrity of the review record.
• Session: when you log in, a session cookie is set so you stay signed in. Sessions expire and can be revoked by signing out or by an admin deactivating your account.
• Notification metadata: when an admin emails you about a finding, we record the fact that an email was sent (recipient, subject, status at send), but never the body. The email itself goes through our SMTP provider.

Reviewer accounts are not for the public; there is no signup form. Reviewer access also passes a Cloudflare Access challenge (email allow-list at the edge) before reaching the login page.

5. Cookies and similar technologies

• Essential session cookies (reviewers only): set by the authentication system when a reviewer signs in. Required for the reviewer workflow to function. Not set for public visitors.
• Analytics cookies (public, consent-gated): Google Analytics sets first-party cookies (_ga, _ga_*) when, and only when, you accept analytics in the consent banner. Declining the banner means GA is not loaded at all and no analytics cookies are set. You can change your choice at any time using the "Cookie settings" link in the footer.
• localStorage (not a cookie): your dark/light theme preference is stored in your browser's localStorage. It is not transmitted to the server and is not used to identify you.

6. Third parties that process data

• Cloudflare: proxies all traffic to the site and provides DDoS protection, CDN, and (for the reviewer surface) access control. Receives IP and request metadata.
• Hosting platform: hosts the application, the MySQL/MariaDB database, and the attachment storage. The provider is Infomaniak (a Swiss managed- hosting company, based in Switzerland within the European Economic Area). Receives all data the application processes.
• Google (Analytics): when a public visitor consents to analytics, Google receives the analytics events described above. Google processes this data on its standard infrastructure, primarily in the United States.
• SMTP email provider: when a reviewer is notified about a finding by email, our configured SMTP provider transmits the message. The provider sees the recipient's email address, the subject, and the message body for the period required to deliver it.
• GitHub: the educational content and the application source code live in a public GitHub repository; reviewer data does NOT live in GitHub.

7. Data retention

• Public-side analytics: per Google Analytics' default retention window for the property.
• Reviewer accounts: retained while the account is active. Deactivated accounts are retained because their audit-trail entries are referenced by other records. Deletion on request is supported in principle; see section 9.
• Findings and audit trail: retained for the integrity of the review record. Soft-deleted findings remain in the database with a deletion marker so the audit chain stays intact; they are not visible to reviewers.
• Backups: encrypted backups of the database are taken on a routine cadence and retained for a short rolling window.

8. Where the data is stored and processed

The application and its database are hosted by Infomaniak in Switzerland(within the European Economic Area). Cloudflare may process traffic at edge locations worldwide. Google Analytics (when consented) processes data primarily in the United States on Google's standard infrastructure.

9. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to: access the personal information we hold about you; have inaccurate information corrected; have your information deleted in certain circumstances; restrict or object to certain processing; withdraw consent (for analytics, this is the cookie banner's decline option); and lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority.

To exercise any of these rights, email [email protected]. Because this is a personal project run alongside clinical work, response is best-effort but taken seriously.

10. Security

We take reasonable measures appropriate to the scale of this project: HTTPS everywhere, a strict Content-Security-Policy, security response headers, AES-256-GCM encryption of the outbound email credential at rest, bcrypt password hashing for reviewer accounts, and an email allow-list (Cloudflare Access) in front of the reviewer login. No system is absolutely secure; we cannot guarantee that data will never be compromised.

11. Children

MNM-Edu is intended for clinicians and trainees. It is not directed to children, does not knowingly collect personal information from children, and does not advertise to children.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected in the effective date at the top, and (for significant changes) in a note on the home page or via direct email to reviewers.

13. Contact

For privacy questions, access requests, or complaints: [email protected]. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact your local data-protection authority - for example, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec, the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), or the relevant EU Data Protection Authority.