Privacy Policy

1. Who operates this website

This website is operated by Dr Aydin Areta, an individual based in Australia. References to "we", "us" or "the site" in this policy refer to Dr Aydin Areta and aydinareta.com.

2. What information is collected and how

This website collects personal information only in the following circumstances:

• Contact and collaboration forms. If you submit the contact or collaboration form, your name, email address, and message are stored in a database on this server. This information is used only to respond to your enquiry.
• Patient feedback form. If you submit patient feedback via the medicine section, your ratings and comments are stored in a database on this server. Public display of any comment requires your explicit consent and is subject to moderation.
• Analytics. This site does not use any third-party analytics service. Server-level traffic data (page views, referrers, approximate geographic region) is available to the site operator via Cloudflare's server-side analytics. Cloudflare does not set cookies on your browser and does not track you across websites. No personal data is shared with advertising networks.
• Local storage. Your language preference is stored in your browser's localStorage under the key areta-lang. The audio player stores your last-played episode and position under areta-podcast-*. An anonymous episode-reaction token is stored under airo_reaction_token— see the Podcast section below for details. No other data is written to localStorage or cookies by this site.
• Search query logging. When you use the site search, the normalised query string and a zero-result flag are recorded in aggregate counts by day. No IP address, session identifier, or user identifier is stored alongside the query. This data is used only to identify vocabulary gaps in the site's taxonomy — for example, to add missing concept aliases — and is never shared with third parties.

3. Third-party services and external requests

This site is designed to make zero third-party network requests before you interact with it. Specifically:

• Fonts. All typefaces (Source Serif 4, Inter, Vazirmatn) are self-hosted on this server. No request is made to Google Fonts or any other font CDN.
• Embedded video. Video thumbnails are fetched through a server-side proxy on this domain. The YouTube player (youtube-nocookie.com) is loaded only when you click the play button. Until you click play, no request is made to YouTube or Google.
• Podcast audio. Audio files are streamed from the Internet Archive (archive.org) only when you press play. No audio is preloaded or buffered before you initiate playback.
• No advertising or tracking pixels. This site contains no advertising networks, social media tracking pixels, or behavioural analytics scripts of any kind.

4. How information is used

Personal information collected through this site is used only for the purpose for which it was provided. Information is not sold, rented, or shared with third parties for marketing purposes.

4b. Podcast section — functional first-party storage

The Podcast section uses no advertising, behavioural-tracking, or third-party identifiers. First-party functional state is permitted only where necessary for playback progress, Listen Later, queue state, and anonymous episode reactions.

Anonymous reaction token. When you react to a podcast episode (Like, Love, or Dislike), an opaque random identifier is generated and stored in your browser's localStorage under the key airo_reaction_token. This token contains no personal information — it does not encode your email address, name, or IP address. The server stores only a one-way cryptographic hash of this token; the raw token is never transmitted in rendered HTML or URL parameters and is never shared with advertisers or third parties.

The token is used solely to enforce the one-reaction-per-device rule and to allow you to change or remove your reaction. Reaction counts are displayed publicly in aggregate. Who reacted to which episode is not publicly disclosed.

Clearing your data. You can remove the reaction token at any time by clearing your browser's localStorage for this site. Reactions made with that token can no longer be identified as belonging to your device.

No analytics service receives the anonymous reaction token. Share and Copy Link actions are logged in aggregate (event type and episode identifier only) for editorial analysis; no personal data is attached to these logs.

5. Data storage and hosting

This website is hosted on GoDaddy's Airo platform. Data submitted through forms is stored in a MySQL database managed within that hosting environment. Network traffic is proxied through Cloudflare. No data is transferred to other countries or third-party processors beyond the hosting and CDN providers.

6. Retention

Contact and collaboration form submissions are retained for as long as necessary to respond to your enquiry. You may request deletion of your personal information at any time by contacting us.

7. Your rights

You have the right to access, correct, or request deletion of personal information we hold about you. To exercise these rights, please use the contact form.

8. External links

This site contains links to external websites including YouTube, Telegram, and academic institutions. This privacy policy applies only to aydinareta.com.

9. Children

This site is not directed at children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

10. Changes to this policy

This policy may be updated from time to time. The date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision.

11. Contact

For privacy-related enquiries, please use the contact form.