CiteMate Privacy Policy

CiteMate ("CiteMate", "we", "us") is a browser extension and companion web dashboard that helps students generate citations and log research assistance acknowledgments. This policy explains what information CiteMate collects, how it's used, and the choices you have.

Information we collect

CiteMate collects only what it needs to provide citation and project management features:

• Account information — if you choose to sign in, your email address and authentication credentials are handled by Google Firebase Authentication. We never see or store your password.
• Profile information — your name, company/unit, class year, and class list, as you enter them.
• Citations and projects — the projects you create and the citations you save, including the source page's title, author, publisher, publication date, and URL.
• Acknowledgments — entries you create to log assistance received, which may include the name, rank, and unit of a person who helped you, or the name/version of an AI tool used, plus your description of the assistance.
• Page metadata — when you open the extension on a page, it reads that page's title, author, publish date, and similar citation metadata from the page content. This only happens on pages you actively visit while using the extension; CiteMate does not monitor or log your general browsing activity.

How we use this information

• To generate and format citations on your behalf.
• To store and organize your projects, citations, and acknowledgments.
• To sync your data across your devices if you sign in, via the CiteMate web dashboard at citemate.vercel.app.

We do not sell, rent, or share your information with third parties for advertising or marketing. CiteMate does not run ads and does not use analytics or tracking scripts to profile your browsing behavior.

Where your data is stored

If you use CiteMate without signing in, your data stays only in your browser's local storage on your device. If you sign in, your profile, projects, citations, and acknowledgments are stored in Google Firebase (Cloud Firestore and Firebase Authentication), operated by Google under its own security and data-processing terms.

Your choices and controls

• You can use CiteMate fully offline without creating an account.
• You can delete individual citations, acknowledgments, or entire projects at any time from the extension or web dashboard.
• The "Reset everything" option in Settings permanently deletes all local and synced data and signs you out.
• To request full deletion of your account and associated data, contact us at the email below.

Permissions the extension requests

• Read and change data on all sites you visit — used only to extract citation metadata (title, author, date, etc.) from the current page when you use CiteMate. No data is collected from pages unless you actively interact with the extension there.
• Storage — used to save your profile, projects, and citations locally on your device.

Children's privacy

CiteMate is intended for students and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by updating the "Last updated" date above.

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