What this site keeps about you, and why.

Who is responsible

This website is run by Meta Mahal, a partnership firm registered in Telangana, India, the owner of Metamahal, 4-178/30/2, Eshwaripuri Colony, Road No. 5, Nagole, Hyderabad, Telangana 500068, India. For anything about your personal data, use the contact form or write to info@metamahal.org.

When you read this site

• Server logs. Like most web servers, ours records standard technical details of each request — IP address, time, page and browser — to keep the site secure and working. These logs are kept by our hosting provider for a limited time.
• Typefaces. This site loads its typefaces from Google Fonts. When your browser fetches them, Google receives your IP address and browser details. See Google’s privacy policy.

Nothing else is collected while you read.

When you ask for a quote

The quote form collects what you type — your name, e-mail address, organisation, the kind of object, its size and your message — and your agreement that we may keep them to answer you. With them we store the time, your browser’s identifier and a one-way hash of your IP address, which we use only to stop automated abuse.

We use these details only to answer your request and to keep a record of what we agreed with you. They are kept in a private file on our server, outside the public website, and sent by e-mail to the team that answers requests.

When you use the chat assistant

The chat button opens an automatic assistant. It is not a person: it looks up answers in the pages of this website, and a person at Metamahal replies to anything it cannot answer. The questions you type are matched against our pages and are not stored by us. They stay in your browser tab only, so the conversation can carry on if you open a link from an answer, and they are removed when you press “Start again” or close the tab.

If you choose “Leave a message here” and tick the consent box, we receive and keep your name, your e-mail address or phone number, your message and the last question you asked, with the time, the page you were on and a one-way coded version of your connection’s IP address. We use these only to reply to you. They are kept in a private file on our server, outside the public website, and sent by e-mail to the team that answers. The same coded address also limits how many questions one connection can ask in a short time.

When you apply to join the editorial board

The application form collects what you type — your name, e-mail address, ORCID iD, affiliation, country, the section you would like to edit, an optional link to a public profile and a short note — and your agreement that we may keep them to consider your application. With them we store the time, your browser’s identifier and a one-way hash of your IP address, which we use only to stop automated abuse.

We use these details only to consider your application and to write to you about it. They are kept in a private file on our server, outside the public website, and sent by e-mail to the team that reads applications. If you join the board, your name, affiliation and ORCID iD are published on this site; that is part of the role, and the application page says so.

When we invite you to join the board

We may write once to a researcher whose published work is in the area of one of our sections and whose e-mail address is public on their own ORCID record. We find the work in OpenAlex, a public index of research, and read the public e-mail address from the person’s ORCID record through ORCID’s public service. We take addresses from nowhere else: not from papers, not from university web pages.

We keep, in a private file outside the public website: the name, ORCID iD, e-mail address, country and institution on that record, the section we wrote about, the title, year and DOI of the work we mentioned, and the date we wrote. We write once and send no reminders. Every message carries an unsubscribe link in its header, which most mail programs show as an “Unsubscribe” button, and replying “no thanks” works as well. Your address then goes on a list of people we never write to; if you ask us to delete the rest of your record, that list is the one thing we keep, so that we do not write again.

The one cookie

The quote page, the editor application page and the message form in the chat window set one cookie, mm_form. It holds a random number that lets us check that a request really came from our form. It is strictly necessary for that, is set on no other page (the chat window sets it only when you open its message form), and is deleted when you close your browser; the matching record on our server expires after about two hours.

What we never do

• Sell or rent your details, or share them with anyone except as needed to answer you.
• Add you to a mailing list because you asked for a quote or applied to the board.
• Write to you about the board more than once, or after you have asked us to stop.
• Track you across other websites.

How long we keep it

The hashed IP address that limits repeat sending is kept for one hour; a copy stays in the saved enquiry or application, like the rest of it. Enquiries are kept for as long as we need them to answer you and to keep a record of what we agreed, applications for as long as we need them to consider them and to run the board, and invitation records for as long as we need them to be sure we write only once; each is then deleted.

Your rights

You can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it or delete it, and object to how we use it. Write to us through the contact form or at info@metamahal.org. You can also complain to the data-protection authority where you live.

Version 2 · 23 October 2026