PRIVACY POLICY

This Privacy Policy governs the personal portfolio and digital applications created and maintained by Vinay Gidugu ("I", "me", or "my"), accessible via this domain.

I believe that great software engineering must prioritize user privacy. This website is built as an interactive, accessible showcase of software architecture, engineering case studies, and web demonstrations. I do not monetize, sell, or rent your personal information to any third parties.

• No Cross-Site Tracking: This website does not use tracking pixels, fingerprinting scripts, or third-party advertising cookies.
• Direct Correspondence: If you choose to contact me via email (e.g. clicking the "SAY HELLO" or email links), I collect your email address, name, and any content included in your message solely to respond to your inquiry.
• Anonymous Telemetry & Hosting Logs: As with standard internet communication, hosting servers may log technical handshake metadata (such as IP addresses, browser user-agents, and HTTP request headers) solely for security monitoring, DDoS mitigation, and server integrity.
• Privacy-First Visit Statistics: Aggregate page-view counts may be measured with Cloudflare Web Analytics. It uses no cookies or local storage, does not fingerprint your device, and does not follow you across other websites. It only reports totals such as page views, referring sites and page load performance.

This site sets no cookies. The only thing it keeps in your browser is the theme colour you pick in the footer: one localStorage entry named accent holding that colour's name (for example lavender), so the site opens in it next time. It stays on your device, is never sent anywhere, and is removed when you switch back to the default colour or clear this site's data in your browser. Nothing is written to sessionStorage or any other browser storage.

• Chess Game: The chess engine runs entirely on your device, in a background thread of your browser. Your moves, settings and game results are kept in memory only while the page is open. They are never uploaded, saved or linked to you, and they disappear when you leave or reload the page. No account is needed to play.
• Sound & Haptics: Move sounds and interface clicks are generated live in your browser with the Web Audio API, and on supported phones short vibrations are triggered for feedback. Neither uses your microphone, records anything or sends data anywhere.

This website provides outgoing links to external third-party services, including:

• Developer & Social Platforms: GitHub, Instagram, LinkedIn and X.
• External Project Links: Live demonstrations and code repositories hosted on third-party domains.

Fonts are served from this website itself, so loading a page never contacts Google Fonts or any other font service.

Please note that external websites are governed by their own independent privacy policies and terms of service. I encourage you to review their policies upon visiting them.

Under global privacy frameworks including GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act):

• You have the right to request access to or deletion of any email correspondence we have exchanged.
• You have the right to opt out of any non-essential data processing.
• Because this site does not maintain registered user profiles or centralized tracking databases, no profile exists to disclose or sell.