Privacy Policy
Last updated 26 September 2026
The short version. Medicine works without an account, and then nothing about you leaves your device. If you create an account, we store what's needed to sign you in and sync your study progress. No ads, no analytics or tracking, and we never sell or share your data.
Who we are
Medicine is a free, open-source study tool for medical students, available at medicine.necr.help. Its source code is public at github.com/neccrr/medicine. In this policy "we" means the people who run it.
Using Medicine as a guest
Without an account, your progress (flashcard reviews, quiz and exam results, reading position, study days and settings) is saved only in your browser's local storage on your device. We never receive it. Clearing your browser's site data deletes it; the Progress page lets you export it to a file first.
What we store if you create an account
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Name, email address, and (optionally) your cohort or entry year | To identify your account, and to compare scores within your class if you join the leaderboard |
| A password hash, if you sign up with email (never the password itself) | To check your password when you sign in |
| If you use Google: your Google account ID, your profile picture link, and the sign-in tokens Google returns (stored encrypted) | To sign you in with Google |
| Sign-in sessions: a random token, when it expires, and the IP address and browser that signed in | To keep you signed in, and to protect your account from abuse |
| Your study progress (the same data as guest mode, listed above) | To sync it between your devices |
| Short-lived counters of sign-in attempts per IP address | To slow down password-guessing attacks |
| If you join the leaderboard: the display name you choose, and scores worked out from your progress | To show the leaderboard |
We use one cookie, which keeps you signed in. It is strictly necessary and isn't used for anything else.
Google sign-in
If you sign in with Google, we ask Google only for your basic profile: your name, email
address and profile picture (the openid, email and
profile permissions). We don't request or have access to your Gmail, Drive,
contacts, calendar or any other Google data. We use what Google sends only to create and
sign in to your Medicine account.
Medicine's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We don't use Google user data for advertising, don't sell it, and don't transfer it to anyone except as needed to run the service (below) or as required by law.
Who else can see your data
- Other students see only what you choose to show on the leaderboard (display name, cohort and scores), and only if you join it. They never see your email or your answers. The leaderboard is visible only to signed-in users.
- Service providers that run Medicine for us and process data only on our behalf:
- Vercel hosts the website and its server, which receive your IP address and request details as part of normal web traffic;
- MongoDB Atlas hosts the account database, in Singapore;
- Google handles Google sign-in if you use it, and serves the fonts the site uses (Google Fonts), which means your browser requests them from Google.
- We may disclose data if the law requires it.
We don't use analytics, advertising or tracking services.
How long we keep it
- Account data and synced progress: until you delete your account.
- Sign-in sessions: they expire after 60 days of not being used and are then deleted automatically.
- Sign-in attempt counters: a count per IP address that resets after a short time window.
- Server logs kept by our hosting provider: for their standard log retention period.
Your choices and rights
- See and download your data: Account → Download my data gives you everything stored in your account as a file.
- Correct it: edit your name and cohort on the Account page, and your display name on the Leaderboard page.
- Leave the leaderboard at any time from the Leaderboard page.
- Delete your account: Account → Delete account permanently removes your account, sessions, sign-in methods, synced progress and leaderboard entry from our database. Progress saved in your own browser stays until you clear it.
- Disconnect Google: you can also remove Medicine's access in your Google account settings.
Depending on where you live, you may have further rights over your personal data, such as objecting to processing or complaining to a data protection authority. Contact us to use them.
Security
Connections to Medicine are encrypted (HTTPS). Passwords are stored only as salted hashes, Google sign-in tokens are encrypted, and each user's data can only be read with their own signed-in session. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a password you don't use anywhere else.
Children
Medicine is made for university students. It isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their data.
Changes
If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top. For significant changes we'll also show a notice in the app.
Contact
Questions or requests about your data: open an issue at github.com/neccrr/medicine/issues. Please don't include personal details in a public issue; ask for a private contact and we'll reply.