1. Introduction
Welcome to DVForge. We are committed to protecting your personal information and your right to privacy. If you have any questions or concerns about this policy or our practices with regard to your personal information, please contact us.
2. Information We Collect
We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you register on the platform, express an interest in obtaining information about us or our products and services, or otherwise contact us.
3. Google Authentication
When you sign in using Google Authentication, we collect your basic profile information such as your name, email address, profile picture URL, and a unique Google identifier. This is used solely to authenticate you and set up your DVForge profile.
4. Email & Password Accounts
If you register using an email and password, we securely store your email address and a hashed representation of your password. We do not store plain-text passwords.
5. User Profiles
We store information you provide to build your public developer profile, including display name, handle, college/company, coding statistics (solved counts, XP), rank, bio, and custom earned badges.
6. Experiences
Any interview experiences you share on DVForge are saved in our database. When you post an interview experience, it is associated with your handle and is visible to all registered users of the platform.
7. Comments
Comments you post on interview experiences are saved in Firestore and associated with your user identity to enable dynamic discussion threads.
8. Likes
We record experience likes (upvotes) associated with your user ID to prevent duplicate upvotes and calculate trending posts.
9. Follows
We record follow relationships between users in Firestore. This list is kept private and is only used to personalize your left sidebar feed and filters in real-time.
10. Reports
Reports submitted regarding problematic posts or behavior are recorded securely in Firestore and accessible only to DVForge administrators for moderation purposes.
11. Cookies & Local Storage
We use local storage to persist interface settings (such as dark mode preferences and code drafts) and local session states to ensure a seamless developer experience.
12. Firebase Services
We use Google Firebase (Authentication, Cloud Firestore, and Cloud Functions) to securely host, authorize, and run backend transactions for our platform services.
13. Data Security
We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information. All communications are encrypted using secure protocols (HTTPS/TLS) and backend operations are guarded by Firestore Security Rules.
14. Data Retention
We retain your profile data, progress, and posts for as long as you maintain an active account on the platform, or as needed to provide our services to you.
15. Account Deletion
You have the right to request deletion of your account and personal profile data at any time. When deleted, all profile details are permanently purged from our databases.
16. User Rights
You have the right to access, correct, or request deletion of the personal data we store. Feel free to use the contact page to submit any such requests.
17. Contact Information
If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, you can reach out to the moderation and administration team via the Contact Page.
