ArabDev Privacy Policy

Introduction and scope

ArabDev is a community for Arabic-speaking developers to share technical posts, follow each other, discuss ideas and discover new topics. To do that, the service has to handle some information about the people who use it: at the very least an email address and a password to sign in, and the posts, comments and profile details that people choose to publish.

We believe you should be able to understand exactly what happens to that information. This policy therefore describes our real practices in concrete terms. Where it names a specific cookie, a specific time limit or a specific protection, that is how the service actually works today.

What this policy covers

• The ArabDev web application at arabdev.site, including the sign-in and registration pages, the dashboard (your home feed at arabdev.site/dashboard), profiles, the editor, search, notifications and settings.
• The ArabDev API at /api/v1, which the web application uses and which developers can call directly.
• Uploaded files, such as profile pictures and images attached to posts.
• Emails we send about your account, such as password reset messages. They always come from an @arabdev.site address.
• The documentation sites: the Wiki at wiki.arabdev.site, this Privacy Policy at privacy.arabdev.site, and the Patch notes at patch.arabdev.site.

What this policy does not cover

• Websites that people link to from their posts, comments or profiles, and websites that advertisers link to. Those sites have their own policies (see Links to other websites).
• Copies of the ArabDev software that other people or organisations run on their own servers. ArabDev is open source, and whoever runs a copy is responsible for the data on it (see Self-hosted copies).
• Information you share with other developers outside ArabDev, for example if you give someone your email address in a post and they contact you directly.

How to read this policy

Every section starts with an In short box summarising it in a sentence or two. The summaries are there to help you find your way; the full text of each section is what applies. Terms such as personal information, processing and content are explained in the Definitions at the end.

This policy is available in Arabic and English. Both versions say the same thing. If a translation ever seems to differ, contact us and we will clarify and correct it; the more protective reading for you applies in the meantime.

Who we are

“ArabDev”, “we”, “us” and “our” in this policy mean the team that operates the official ArabDev service at arabdev.site. When you use ArabDev, we are the controller of your personal information: we decide why and how it is processed, and we are accountable to you and to regulators for doing so lawfully and carefully.

Some companies help us run the service, such as the hosting provider whose servers ArabDev runs on. They act as our processors: they handle information only on our instructions and only to provide their service to us. They are described in When information is shared.

You can reach us about anything in this policy using the details in Contact us.

We never sell your data

In particular, we do not:

• Sell, rent, lease or trade your personal information to anyone, for money or for anything else of value.
• Give or license your information to data brokers, marketing companies or list sellers.
• Share your information with advertisers. Advertisers never receive your name, username, email, interests, posts or activity.
• Build advertising profiles about you, or use your posts, likes, follows or searches to choose which ads you see.
• Put third-party tracking pixels, analytics scripts, fingerprinting code or social-media “like” buttons on ArabDev.
• Read your private information (such as your drafts or saved posts) for marketing purposes.
• Use your content to train commercial models for sale to third parties.

This commitment also covers the future. If ArabDev were ever reorganised, merged with another organisation or transferred to new operators, the promise not to sell your information would be a condition of that transfer. We would tell you before your information became subject to a different privacy policy, and you would be able to delete your account first.

Under some laws, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act, “selling” and “sharing” have wide legal meanings that include handing information to advertisers in exchange for services. We do not do that either, under any of those definitions.

Information you give us

Account details

When you register, we ask for:

We do not ask for your real name, date of birth, gender, phone number, national identity number, address or payment details. ArabDev does not need them.

Profile details (optional)

After registering, you can add details to your profile. All of them are optional, and all of them are shown publicly on your profile because their purpose is to introduce you to other developers. Only add what you are comfortable sharing.

• Display name: the name shown on your posts and profile (up to 50 characters). It does not need to be your legal name.
• Bio: a short description of yourself (up to 280 characters).
• Location: free text (up to 60 characters). You decide how precise to be; a country or city is plenty, and you can leave it empty.
• Website: a link to your site, portfolio or code repository (up to 200 characters).
• Profile picture: an image you upload. We process it before storing it, as described below.
• Interests: topics you choose during onboarding or in your settings, such as Python, React or DevOps. They personalise your feed and recommendations and are shown on your profile.

Content you publish

ArabDev exists so that you can share things. What you publish includes:

• Posts, including their text, formatting, code blocks, tables, links, tags and an attached image.
• Comments on posts.
• Mentions of other developers (@username) inside posts and comments.

Posts and comments are public: anyone who visits ArabDev can read them, including people who are not signed in. Please do not put private information, yours or anyone else's, into posts or comments. In particular, never publish passwords, API keys, access tokens or private keys inside code samples.

Drafts

When you save a draft in the editor, it is stored on our servers so that you can continue on another device. Drafts are private: only you can see them, they never appear in feeds or search, and you can discard them at any time. Publishing a draft turns it into a normal public post.

Images you upload

When you upload a profile picture or an image for a post, we do not simply store the file you sent. We check that it really is an image, then re-encode it into the WebP format. Re-encoding removes hidden metadata that photos often carry, such as the camera model, the date and time the photo was taken and, most importantly, GPS location. We store the cleaned image together with basic technical details (its size, dimensions and format) and a note of which account uploaded it.

Settings and preferences

We store the choices you make in Settings so they follow you across devices:

• Appearance: light, dark or system theme, and Arabic or English.
• Privacy: whether you appear in suggestions and people search, whether your follower lists are visible, and who may mention you (everyone, people you follow, or no one).
• Notifications: whether you are notified about likes, comments, new followers, reposts and mentions.

When you contact us

If you write to us, we receive your message, your email address and anything you choose to include. We use it only to answer you and to keep a record of the request, for example of a privacy request we have fulfilled.

Information created as you use ArabDev

Some information is not typed in by you but is created by the things you do on ArabDev:

We use these records to make the features work: to build your feed from people you follow and topics you care about, to show accurate counts, to notify you, and to suggest developers with similar interests. We do not sell them, and we do not use them to target advertising (see Advertising).

How recommendations work

ArabDev suggests posts and developers using a small number of transparent signals: the interests you selected, the tags on posts, who you already follow, and how recent and how discussed a post is. These calculations happen on our servers when you open a page. We do not buy data about you from other sources, and we do not combine ArabDev activity with information from other websites.

You can influence recommendations directly by changing your interests in Settings, and you can remove yourself from other people's suggestions by turning off discoverability.

Information collected automatically

IP address

Your device's IP address is sent to our servers with every request; the internet cannot work without it. We use it in two ways:

• Rate limiting. To stop password-guessing, spam and abuse, ArabDev limits how many times certain actions can be performed in a short period (for example, ten sign-in attempts per minute). The limiter keeps a counter linked to the IP address, in memory, only for the length of the limit window, which is at most one hour. These counters are not written to the database and are not linked to your account.
• Server logs. Our web servers record basic request logs: the time, the IP address, the page or API address requested and whether it succeeded. We use these logs only to keep ArabDev running, to fix errors and to investigate attacks or abuse, and we delete them within 30 days.

We do not use IP addresses to work out your precise location, and we do not use them to build a profile of you.

Browser and device information

Your browser tells every website it visits what browser and operating system it is (the user agent) and which languages you prefer. We use your language preference to show messages in Arabic or English. When you sign in, we store the user agent with that sign-in session, so that sessions can be told apart and suspicious sign-ins can be investigated. It is deleted together with the session record (see Retention).

Sign-in sessions

When you sign in, we create a session record containing a hashed version of your session token (never the token itself), when it expires, whether you ticked Remember me, and the user agent described above. These records let you stay signed in and let us sign you out everywhere when you change your password.

Ad counts

Each ad keeps two totals: how many times it has been displayed and how many times it has been clicked. These are plain numbers, such as “shown 1,204 times, clicked 37 times”. They do not record who saw or clicked the ad.

Search terms

When you search ArabDev, your search terms are used to find matching posts, developers and tags and are then discarded. We do not keep a search history, and your searches are not added to your account or used for advertising.

Information we do not collect

Collecting less is the most reliable way to protect information. ArabDev does not collect:

• Your legal name, date of birth, gender, nationality or photo identification.
• Your phone number or postal address.
• Payment card or bank details. ArabDev is free and has nothing to pay for.
• Your contacts or address book.
• Precise location from your device's GPS. We also remove location data from uploaded photos.
• Special categories of data, such as health, religion, political opinions or biometric data. We never ask for them; please do not include them in your profile.
• Your browsing on other websites. There are no trackers, analytics tags or advertising pixels on ArabDev.
• Device fingerprints, meaning hidden identifiers calculated from your screen, fonts or hardware.
• Keystrokes, mouse movements or session recordings.
• Information about you from data brokers or other companies.

How we use information

To provide the service

• Create and maintain your account and sign you in.
• Show your profile, posts, comments and reposts to other people.
• Build your feed, recommendations and search results.
• Save your drafts, bookmarks and settings.
• Send you notifications about activity involving you, according to your notification settings.
• Remember your language and appearance choices.

To keep ArabDev safe

• Protect accounts from password guessing and takeover, for example with rate limits and by detecting reuse of stolen session tokens.
• Prevent spam and abuse, and enforce our community guidelines.
• Investigate and fix security issues and errors.
• Clean uploaded content and remove unsafe code from posts before anyone sees them.

To communicate with you

• Send password reset links you ask for.
• Tell you about important changes to your account, to the service or to this policy.
• Reply when you contact us.

We do not send marketing emails or newsletters. If we ever offer one, it will be strictly opt-in, and every message will include a one-click way to unsubscribe.

To improve ArabDev

We look at information such as error reports, the overall number of posts and accounts, and aggregate ad totals to understand what is working and what to fix. We use aggregate figures for this wherever possible, not information about individual people.

To meet legal obligations

We may use information to comply with the law, to respond to valid legal requests, and to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

What we will not use it for

• Selling or renting it, or letting advertisers target you with it.
• Making automated decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.
• Any purpose incompatible with the ones above without first telling you and, where required, asking for your consent.

Legal bases for processing

Data protection laws such as the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and several laws in the Arab world, allow personal information to be processed only when there is a valid legal basis. These are the bases we rely on:

Where we rely on legitimate interests, you have the right to object (see Your rights).

What is public and what is private

ArabDev is a public community, so a lot of what you do on it is meant to be seen. It is important to know exactly where the line is:

Controls you have

• Discoverability: turn it off and ArabDev stops suggesting your account to others and leaves you out of people search, unless someone types your exact username. Your profile and posts are still reachable by direct link.
• Follow lists: hide who you follow and who follows you.
• Mentions: choose whether everyone, only people you follow, or no one may mention you.
• Editing and deleting: edit or delete your posts at any time. Deleting a post also removes its comments, likes, reposts and bookmarks.

When information is shared

Apart from the content you choose to make public, we share personal information only in these situations:

Service providers

We use a small number of trusted companies to run ArabDev, such as the provider that hosts our servers and database, the network that delivers the website's files, and, once configured, an email service to deliver password reset messages. These providers:

• Receive only the information they need to do their job.
• Are bound by contracts that require them to protect it and to use it only on our instructions.
• Are not allowed to use it for their own purposes, including advertising.
• Must delete or return it when their service to us ends.

Legal requirements

We may disclose information if we believe in good faith that the law requires it, for example in response to a court order. We review every request carefully, push back on requests that are too broad or lack a proper legal basis, and disclose only the minimum required. Unless the law forbids it, we will tell you about a request concerning your account before we disclose anything, so that you can object.

Protecting people and ArabDev

We may share information when it is necessary to prevent serious harm to someone's life or safety, or to investigate fraud or security attacks against ArabDev and its users.

Changes to the organisation

If ArabDev is reorganised or transferred to new operators, user information may pass to them as part of that change. As explained in We never sell your data, any successor must keep the commitments in this policy, and we will tell you in advance.

With your permission

In any other situation, we will ask for your explicit permission first.

Advertising

Ads help keep ArabDev free. We designed them to respect your privacy completely.

How ads are chosen

An ad is picked using only:

• Where it will appear: in the feed (after every eight posts) or in the sidebar.
• The language of the interface, so Arabic readers see Arabic ads.
• The page number in the feed, so that different pages show different ads.

That is the whole list. Ads are not chosen using your identity, interests, posts, likes, follows, searches, location or browsing history. Two different people reading the same page in the same language see the same ads.

How ads are measured

We count how many times each ad is displayed and clicked, as totals only. When you click an ad, ArabDev adds one to that ad's click count and then opens the advertiser's site in a new tab. We do not record which account clicked, and we do not tell the advertiser who you are.

What advertisers receive

Advertisers may receive the total impressions and clicks of their own ads. They receive no personal information about ArabDev users. ArabDev does not load advertising code from advertisers or ad networks: every ad is displayed by ArabDev itself.

For sponsors

Businesses and communities that want to sponsor ArabDev or place an ad can write to hi@arabdev.site. Every sponsor is bound by the same rules: no tracking code, no personal data, and clear labelling.

After you click

Once you are on an advertiser's website, their privacy policy applies, not ours. They may see your IP address and use their own cookies, as any website can. ArabDev opens ad links in a way that prevents the advertiser's page from controlling the ArabDev tab.

Cookies and browser storage

Cookies and browser storage are small pieces of information that a website saves in your browser. ArabDev uses them only where they are strictly necessary or remember a choice you made. Because none of them track you, we do not show a cookie consent banner: there is nothing for you to accept or refuse.

Cookies

That is the only cookie ArabDev sets. The short-lived access token that proves who you are to the API is held only in the page's memory and disappears when you close the tab.

Browser storage

All of these entries except the last are kept in local storage. None of them is sent to our servers or shared with anyone. You can clear them at any time through your browser's settings; ArabDev will simply return to its default language and appearance.

Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track

Because ArabDev does not track you or sell or share your information, the result is already what these signals ask for. We honour them automatically, and there is nothing further to switch off.

How we keep your information secure

Security is built into ArabDev from the ground up, not added afterwards. The main protections are:

Passwords

• Passwords are hashed with Argon2id, a modern algorithm designed to make stolen hashes extremely costly to crack. We never store or log the password itself.
• Passwords must be at least 8 characters and contain both letters and numbers, and we reject very repetitive ones.
• When you change or reset your password, every other signed-in session is ended immediately.
• Sign-in takes the same time whether or not an email address is registered, and the password reset page gives the same answer either way, so neither can be used to find out who has an account.

Sessions

• Access tokens are short-lived (15 minutes) and kept only in the page's memory.
• The long-lived session token is stored in an HttpOnly cookie that scripts cannot read, and in our database only as a SHA-256 hash.
• Session tokens are rotated every time they are used. If an old token is ever used again, which suggests it was stolen, every session in that chain is ended.
• Session refreshes require a special request header that other websites cannot send, which protects against cross-site request forgery.
• Password reset links are single-use, expire after 30 minutes and are stored only as hashes.

Content and uploads

• Every post is cleaned on the server with a strict allow-list before it is saved, and cleaned again in your browser before it is shown, so scripts and dangerous code cannot run.
• Links in posts are marked so they do not pass your ArabDev page address to other sites and cannot control the ArabDev tab.
• Uploaded images are checked, size-limited (5 MB) and re-encoded, which also removes hidden metadata and location data.

Infrastructure

• In production, all traffic is encrypted with HTTPS.
• Sensitive actions are rate limited to stop automated attacks.
• The service sends security headers that stop other sites from framing ArabDev and stop browsers from misinterpreting files.
• Access to servers and the database is limited to the people who operate ArabDev, and only for maintenance, security and legal obligations.
• Secrets such as signing keys are kept out of the source code and must be set separately for every deployment.

What you can do

• Use a unique password for ArabDev, ideally from a password manager.
• Only tick Remember me on your own devices, and sign out on shared ones.
• Never share your password. ArabDev staff will never ask you for it.
• Never publish secrets such as API keys or tokens in your posts' code blocks.

No service on the internet can promise perfect security, but we take every reasonable measure to keep your information safe, and we keep improving them. If you find a security weakness, please tell us privately (see Contact us) so we can fix it before it can be misused.

How long we keep information

We may keep specific information longer only when the law requires it or when it is needed for an ongoing legal claim or security investigation, and only for as long as that lasts.

Deleting your account

Go to Settings → Account, choose Delete my account and confirm with your password. The password check makes sure nobody else can delete your account from a device you left signed in.

What is deleted

Deletion is immediate and permanent. It removes:

• Your account, email address, password hash, profile and settings.
• All your posts, together with the comments, likes, reposts and bookmarks on them.
• All your comments on other people's posts.
• Your likes, reposts and bookmarks.
• Who you follow and who follows you.
• Your drafts and notifications, and notifications about you in other people's accounts.
• Every image you uploaded; the files themselves are removed from storage.
• All your sign-in sessions, which signs you out everywhere.

The counts on other people's posts, such as the number of likes, are recalculated so they no longer include your activity.

Your username afterwards

After deletion your username becomes available again, and someone else may register it later. Links to your old profile will stop working.

Your rights and choices

Wherever you live, we give every ArabDev user the following rights. Some laws also give you additional rights, described in Regional privacy laws.

How we handle requests

• We will confirm receipt within 7 days and respond fully within 30 days. If a request is complex, we may extend this by up to two more months, and we will tell you why.
• To protect your account, we will ask you to confirm your identity, normally by writing from the email address on your account.
• Using your rights is free. We will never treat you differently for using them.
• If we cannot do what you asked, we will explain why and tell you how to challenge our decision.

Regional privacy laws

Arab countries

Many Arab countries have modern personal data protection laws. Depending on where you live, these may include, among others:

• Saudi Arabia: the Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) and its implementing regulations.
• United Arab Emirates: Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021 on the Protection of Personal Data.
• Egypt: Law No. 151 of 2020 on the Protection of Personal Data.
• Qatar: Law No. 13 of 2016 on the Protection of Personal Data Privacy.
• Bahrain: Law No. 30 of 2018 on the Protection of Personal Data.
• Oman: the Personal Data Protection Law issued by Royal Decree No. 6/2022.
• Jordan: the Personal Data Protection Law No. 24 of 2023.
• Morocco: Law No. 09-08 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data.
• Tunisia: Organic Law No. 2004-63 on the protection of personal data.

These laws generally give you the right to be informed, to access and correct your data, to have it deleted, and to withdraw consent, and they require that data be kept secure and not used for unrelated purposes. This policy and the rights in Your rights and choices are designed to meet these requirements. Where a law in your country gives you a right not described here, contact us and we will honour it.

European Union, EEA and United Kingdom

If you are in the EU, EEA or UK, the GDPR (or UK GDPR) applies. You have all the rights listed in Your rights and choices, and our legal bases are set out in Legal bases for processing. You may lodge a complaint with the data protection authority in the country where you live or work, or where you believe a problem occurred.

United States

If you live in California or another US state with a consumer privacy law, you have the right to know what personal information we collect, use and disclose; to delete it; to correct it; and to opt out of its sale or sharing for targeted advertising. As explained throughout this policy:

• The categories of personal information we collect are identifiers (username, email, IP address), account and profile information, content you create, and internet activity on ArabDev (such as follows and likes).
• We do not sell personal information and do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and have not done so in the past 12 months.
• We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes that would give you a right to limit it.
• We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your rights.

You may use an authorised agent to make a request; we will verify both the agent's authority and your identity.

Children

ArabDev is a community for developers and is not directed at children. You must be at least 13 years old to create an account. If the law in your country sets a higher age for using online services without a parent's consent, such as 16 in some countries, you must meet that age or have your parent's or guardian's consent.

We do not knowingly collect information from children below these ages. If you believe a child has created an account, please contact us. We will investigate, and if the account belongs to a child below the minimum age, we will delete it and its information.

Young developers are an important part of every tech community. If you are a teenager using ArabDev, please be especially careful about sharing personal details such as your school, city or photos of yourself.

Where information is processed

ArabDev is used by developers in many countries, and the servers and service providers we rely on may be located outside your country. For example, the website's files may be delivered through a global content delivery network so that pages load quickly wherever you are.

When information is transferred between countries, we make sure it stays protected as this policy describes and as the law requires. For example, we use providers in countries recognised as offering adequate protection, or we sign contracts based on approved standard clauses, together with any additional safeguards that are needed.

Self-hosted copies of ArabDev

The ArabDev software is published under the GNU General Public License version 3, which lets anyone run, study, modify and share it. Schools, companies and communities may therefore run their own copies of ArabDev.

• This policy applies only to the official ArabDev service operated by us at arabdev.site and its subdomains.
• The organisation or person that runs another copy decides how it is configured and is the controller of its users' information. We have no access to it.
• If you use a copy run by someone else, read their privacy policy and contact them about your data.

If you run your own copy, we encourage you to adopt the same commitments as this policy, starting with never selling user information. You are welcome to adapt this policy as a starting point, but you must make sure it accurately describes your own setup and complies with the laws that apply to you.

Links to other websites

Developers often link to documentation, code repositories and articles. ArabDev is not responsible for the content or privacy practices of other websites.

To reduce what other sites learn when you follow a link, ArabDev marks links in posts, comments and profiles so that:

• The other site is not told which ArabDev page you came from.
• The other site cannot control or redirect the ArabDev tab you came from.

ArabDev does not embed content from other sites, such as videos, social media widgets or third-party comment systems, which could otherwise track you while you read.

ArabDev's fonts are hosted on ArabDev's own servers, so loading a page does not contact any third-party font service.

The wiki, this policy and patch notes

The ArabDev Wiki, this Privacy Policy and the Patch notes have their own addresses, wiki.arabdev.site, privacy.arabdev.site and patch.arabdev.site, and open in their own tab. They:

• Set no cookies.
• Save arabdev.lang in their own browser storage, so that next time their front page opens in the language you last read them in.
• Save arabdev.mode if you switch between light and dark mode on them. Until you do, they follow your device's setting.
• Keep these entries separate from the app's: because each site has its own address, browsers do not share their storage with arabdev.site.
• Run their search entirely in your browser. What you type is never sent to our servers.
• Contain no analytics, trackers or ads.

As with any website, the server that delivers these pages receives your IP address and basic request details, handled as described in Information collected automatically.

Open source and transparency

Privacy promises are easier to trust when they can be checked. ArabDev is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License v3. Its source code shows exactly which information is stored, which cookies are set and how data is deleted.

Security researchers and developers are welcome to review the code and report problems. We will publish meaningful changes to how ArabDev handles data in the Patch notes, and we will update this policy before any such change takes effect.

If something goes wrong

We prepare for security incidents in the hope of never needing to. If one happens, we will:

1. Act immediately to contain it and stop any further harm.
2. Investigate what happened and which information and accounts were affected.
3. Notify the relevant data protection authorities within the time the law requires, which is often 72 hours.
4. Tell affected users without undue delay, in plain language: what happened, what information was involved, what we are doing, and what you can do to protect yourself.
5. Take protective steps on your behalf where it helps, such as ending sessions or requiring a password reset.
6. Learn from it and strengthen our protections so it does not happen again.

Changes to this policy

ArabDev will grow, and this policy will change with it. When it does, we will update the Last updated date and the version number at the top of this page, and record the change in the history below.

• For important changes, such as collecting a new kind of information or using it in a new way, we will notify you at least 30 days in advance, by email or with a clear notice in ArabDev.
• For minor changes, such as clearer wording or corrected links, we will update this page.
• We will never use a policy change to weaken the promise that we do not sell your information.

Version history

Contact us

You can write to us in Arabic or English. To help us respond quickly, please:

• Write from the email address linked to your ArabDev account, if your message concerns your account.
• Include your ArabDev username.
• Tell us clearly what you would like us to do, for example “send me a copy of my data”.
• Never include your password. We will never ask for it.
• For security problems, use the subject “Security” and do not publish the details until we have fixed them.

We only ever write to you from an @arabdev.site address. Treat any other message that claims to come from ArabDev with suspicion.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you have the right to complain to the data protection authority where you live.

Definitions

Personal information

Any information that relates to an identified or identifiable person, such as an email address, a username, an IP address or a post written by you. Some laws call it “personal data”.

Processing

Anything done with personal information, including collecting, storing, using, sharing and deleting it.

Controller

The organisation that decides why and how personal information is processed. For the official ArabDev service, that is us.

Processor

A company that processes personal information on a controller's behalf and on its instructions, such as a hosting provider.

Content

Posts, comments, images and other material that users publish on ArabDev.

Selling

Giving personal information to someone else in exchange for money or anything else of value. ArabDev does not do this.

Hash

The result of a one-way mathematical function. A hash can be used to check whether a password or token is correct, but the original cannot be recovered from it.

Session

The period during which you stay signed in on a device, from signing in until you sign out or the session expires.

Cookie

A small piece of information that a website asks your browser to store and send back with later requests.

Local storage

Storage inside your browser where a website can keep small preferences. Unlike cookies, it is not sent to the server automatically.

Metadata

Information about a file rather than its visible content, such as the camera model or GPS location inside a photo.

Rate limiting

Restricting how often an action can be repeated in a period of time, to prevent abuse.

Aggregate

Combined into totals so that no single person can be identified, for example “this ad was clicked 37 times”.