Effective date: April 1, 2026
Last updated: April 1, 2026
Pathway to Medicine, Inc. (“we,” “us,” “our”) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (EIN 41-4916973) registered in the State of Connecticut. We operate the website pathwaytomedicine.com (“the Site”). This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, store, and protect your information.
By using the Site, you agree to the collection and use of information as described in this policy.
1. Information We Collect
1.1 Information You Provide
When you create an account, we collect the information you provide during registration: display name, username, email address, and password. Passwords are stored using one-way cryptographic hashing and cannot be read by anyone, including our administrators. When you submit a discussion comment, we collect your display name, email address, and the content of your comment. When you contact us or submit feedback, we collect the content of your message and any contact information you provide.
1.2 Information from Social Login Providers
If you sign in using Google, Facebook, or Apple through our Nextend Social Login integration, we receive limited information from that provider. This typically includes your name, email address, and profile photo. We do not receive your password, friends list, posts, messages, photos, or any content from your social media accounts. We do not post to your social media accounts. We do not store OAuth access tokens beyond the initial authentication.
Each provider has its own privacy policy: Google (policies.google.com/privacy), Facebook/Meta (facebook.com/privacy/policy), Apple (apple.com/legal/privacy).
Apple Sign In may provide a private relay email address instead of your actual email. We treat relay addresses the same as direct email addresses.
1.3 Information Collected Automatically
When you visit the Site, we automatically collect your IP address (used for security, rate limiting, and anonymous vote deduplication in discussions), browser type and version, operating system, referring URL, pages visited and time spent, and general geographic location (country or region, not precise). This information is collected through standard web server logs (Nginx) and is used to maintain security and improve performance.
1.4 Cookies
We use cookies for the following purposes:
- Authentication: WordPress session cookies (wordpress_logged_in_*, wordpress_sec_*) maintain your login state. These are deleted when you sign out or close your browser.
- Preferences: A cookie stores your dark mode preference.
- Discussion voting: A persistent cookie (ptm_voter) is used to prevent duplicate voting on discussion comments. This cookie contains a random identifier, not personal information.
- Bot protection: Cloudflare and Cloudflare Turnstile may set cookies for security and bot detection purposes.
We do not use cookies for advertising, behavioral tracking, retargeting, or profiling.
1.5 Third-Party Services
The Site uses the following third-party services that may collect data:
- Cloudflare: Content delivery network (CDN), DNS, DDoS protection, and web application firewall. Cloudflare processes all traffic to the Site. See Cloudflare Privacy Policy.
- Cloudflare Turnstile: Invisible bot detection on login and registration forms. May use device fingerprinting and behavioral signals. See Cloudflare Privacy Policy.
- Cloudflare Web Analytics: Privacy-focused analytics that does not use cookies or track individual users.
- ElevenLabs: Text-to-speech service. When you click “Listen,” the text content of the page is sent to ElevenLabs for audio generation. No personal information is sent. See ElevenLabs Privacy Policy.
- Gravatar: If you have a Gravatar account linked to your email, your profile photo may be loaded from Gravatar’s servers. See Automattic Privacy Policy.
- IONOS SMTP: Transactional emails (account verification, password resets, comment notifications) are delivered through IONOS mail servers.
1.6 Site Search
The Site uses Meilisearch, a self-hosted search engine running on our own server. Search queries are processed locally and are not sent to any third-party service. We do not log individual search queries or associate them with user accounts.
2. How We Use Your Information
We use collected information to provide and maintain the Site and your account, respond to inquiries and support requests, send account-related notifications (email verification, password resets), moderate discussion comments (all comments require manual approval before publication), generate text-to-speech audio via ElevenLabs, prevent abuse through rate limiting and bot detection, generate anonymous aggregate usage statistics, comply with legal obligations, and enforce our Terms of Service.
We do not use your information for advertising, marketing to third parties, automated profiling, or any purpose unrelated to the educational mission of the Site.
3. How We Share Your Information
We do not sell, rent, trade, or share your personal information with third parties for their commercial purposes. We may share information with service providers who assist in operating the Site (hosting, email delivery, CDN), as required by law, legal process, or government request, and to protect the rights, safety, or property of Pathway to Medicine, our users, or the public.
4. Data Retention
Account information is retained while your account is active. If you delete your account, personal information is deleted within 30 days. Discussion comments you authored remain published but are attributed to “Anonymous” after account deletion. Cached text-to-speech audio files are retained until the corresponding page content is updated, then automatically replaced. Server access logs are retained for 90 days, then deleted. Anonymous aggregate analytics data may be retained indefinitely.
5. Data Security
We implement reasonable security measures including encrypted HTTPS connections via Cloudflare, secure password hashing (WordPress bcrypt), IP-restricted administrative access, web application firewall (Cloudflare WAF), server-side page caching with logged-in user bypass (Nginx fastcgi_cache), SELinux mandatory access control, regular security updates, and XML-RPC and unauthorized PHP execution blocking.
No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security.
6. Children’s Privacy
Pathway to Medicine is an educational resource for students of all ages, including middle school students (ages 11 and older). All content is educational and age-appropriate.
Account registration: You must be 13 or older to create an account. Everything public on the Site can be read without an account, so younger students can use it freely. For account holders, we collect only the minimum information needed for account functionality: display name, username, email address, and password. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.
Social login: Accounts, including social login accounts, are only for users 13 and older. Social login providers also set their own minimum ages.
Parental rights: Parents or guardians may contact us at admin@pathwaytomedicine.com with the subject line “COPPA Request” to review, modify, or delete their child’s account information. We will respond within 10 business days.
If we learn that a child under 13 has created an account or given us personal information, we will delete that account and information promptly. Parents or guardians who believe this has happened can contact us as described above.
7. Your Rights
You may access, update, or correct your account information through your profile page. You may delete your account by contacting admin@pathwaytomedicine.com. You may unlink social login providers from your account at any time. You may request a copy of your personal data. Residents of jurisdictions with data protection laws (GDPR, CCPA, CTDPA) may have additional rights. Contact us to exercise them.
8. International Users
The Site is hosted in the United States. If you access the Site from outside the United States, your information may be transferred to and processed in the United States, where data protection laws may differ from your jurisdiction.
9. Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy. Material changes will be noted at the top of this page. Continued use after changes constitutes acceptance.
10. Contact
Pathway to Medicine, Inc.
Email: admin@pathwaytomedicine.com
Subject: Privacy Inquiry
Connecticut | EIN: 41-4916973