Privacy Policy

Last updated 13 August 2026

DermaDock is a non-commercial academic research tool. It takes a chemical structure and reports which of 35 dermatological protein targets the molecule might engage, and whether it could plausibly cross skin. This policy explains exactly what the service stores, why, and what it will never do.

What we collect

• Your Google account email address and basic profile name, received through Google Sign-In when you log in. We request only the openid, email and profile scopes. We never request access to your Gmail, Drive, Calendar, contacts or any other Google service, and we could not read them if we tried.
• The chemical structures you submit, as SMILES strings, together with the results computed from them: docking scores, predicted binding poses and predicted skin permeability.
• Basic usage records: when you signed in, and when each calculation was submitted and finished. These are what enforce the daily submission limit and let us report how much the service is used.

We do not use analytics trackers, advertising cookies or third-party scripts. The only cookie set is the session cookie that keeps you signed in.

Why we collect it

For three purposes, and no others:

• To run and develop the DermaDock application — to return your results to you, to keep them associated with your account so that you and only you can see them, and to find and fix defects.
• To report aggregate usage figures — how many people use the service, and how many calculations are performed per week, per month and per year. These are counts only. No figure we publish or share identifies a person, and none discloses a submitted structure.
• To improve the predictive models — submitted structures and their computed results may be used to refine the platform's models and calibration. This happens entirely on the same server.

Who can see your molecules

Only you. Structures you submit are visible to your account alone. They are not shown to other users, not listed publicly, and not attached to your name anywhere in the interface. If two people happen to submit the identical structure, the stored result is reused to avoid recomputing it — but neither person is shown anything about the other, and no user is ever identified as the source of a structure.

The molecules visible to everyone in the application are the published validation compounds and benchmark structures described in our manuscript. Those are approved drugs and public crystal structures, not user submissions.

Where the data lives

On a single server operated by the research group, in a local database and local files. There is no cloud storage, no external database, no third-party processor and no backup outside that machine. Google receives nothing from us — the sign-in flow works the other way round, with Google confirming your identity to us.

How long we keep it

Account records and submitted structures are retained while the service operates, because results are meant to remain available to you when you return. You may ask for your account and all structures you submitted to be deleted, and we will do so.

Your choices

• Ask what is stored about you, and receive a copy.
• Ask for your account and submitted structures to be deleted.
• Withdraw access at any time from your Google account permissions page.
• If your work is confidential enough that it should not touch a shared machine at all, the entire platform is open and can be run locally.

Children

DermaDock is a research instrument for professional and academic use and is not directed at anyone under 18.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, the updated date above will change and the revised text will appear here before the change takes effect.

Contact

Questions, access requests and deletion requests: [email protected]