Privacy Policy & Legal Notice

Effective date: March 2026 · Last updated: March 2026

Who We Are

MatIntel is a materials science validation platform operated by Luc Durand, PhD, independent researcher and physicist (CEA Saclay background, coatings and surface engineering). MatIntel operates the PhysicsCheck service available at matintel.ai.

Contact: luc@matintel.ai

What Data We Collect

We collect the minimum data required to operate the platform:

Email address and name — collected when you create a free account, used solely to manage your validation quota and send you a welcome email. We do not use your email for marketing without your explicit consent.
Validation claims — the text you submit to PhysicsCheck is processed to return a physics validation result. Claims are not stored permanently or linked to your identity beyond the current session.
Analytics data — we use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to understand how visitors use the platform (pages visited, features used, errors encountered). GA4 anonymises IP addresses by default. No personally identifiable information is collected through analytics. See Section 5 for your rights.

We do not collect: payment information, device identifiers, precise location data, or any special category personal data.

Where Your Data Is Hosted

All platform data is stored on servers operated by Hetzner Online GmbH, located in Helsinki, Finland — within the European Economic Area (EEA). Data does not leave the EEA.

Hetzner Online GmbH is ISO 27001 certified. Server address: Helsinki, Finland (Hetzner datacenter HEL1).

Legal Basis for Processing (GDPR)

We process your data under the following legal bases:

Contractual necessity (Art. 6(1)(b)) — processing your email and name to provide the service you signed up for.
Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)) — analytics to improve the platform. We use privacy-preserving settings (IP anonymisation, 14-month data retention, no cross-site tracking).

We do not sell your data. We do not share your data with third parties except Google Analytics (analytics processor) and Hetzner (infrastructure processor), both operating under GDPR-compliant data processing agreements.

Your Rights

Under the GDPR, you have the right to:

Access — request a copy of the data we hold about you
Correction — request correction of inaccurate data
Deletion — request deletion of your account and associated data
Portability — request your data in a machine-readable format
Objection — object to processing based on legitimate interest

To exercise any of these rights, email luc@matintel.ai. We will respond within 30 days.

Data Retention

Account data (email, name) — retained until you request deletion or your account is inactive for 24 months.
Analytics data — retained for 14 months in Google Analytics, then automatically deleted.
Validation claims — not retained beyond the current session.

Cookies

We use two types of cookies:

Session cookie — required for authentication. Expires when you close your browser.
Analytics cookie (_ga, _ga_*) — placed by Google Analytics 4. Expires after 13 months. Used to distinguish unique visitors and measure platform usage.

No advertising cookies. No third-party tracking cookies.

Scientific Data Sources

PhysicsCheck validates claims against three open-access materials databases:

Alexandria (CC BY 4.0) — computational materials data
Open Quantum Materials Database / OQMD (CC BY 4.0) — DFT-calculated properties
Materials Project (CC BY 4.0) — inorganic materials database

And a corpus of ~700,000 scientific papers sourced via OpenAlex (open access literature). All data sources are used in compliance with their respective open-access licences. No proprietary or restricted data is used.

Contact & Complaints

For any privacy-related question: luc@matintel.ai

If you believe your rights have not been respected, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your national data protection authority. In France: CNIL (cnil.fr). In Finland (server jurisdiction): Tietosuojavaltuutetun toimisto (tietosuoja.fi).