Legal & Privacy

Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 2026

1. Overview

This website (vaibhavdave.pages.dev) is a personal portfolio, technical blog, and community creative space operated by Vaibhav Dave. Your privacy is respected. This policy clearly outlines what information is collected, why it is gathered, and how you can request its complete deletion.

2. Information We Collect

We collect minimal, necessary data exclusively to provide platform functionality, maintain security, and prevent abuse:

  • Authentication Data: When you sign in with GitHub or Google OAuth to sign the guestbook, post comments, or submit a doodle, we receive your public profile name, public avatar URL, and email address via Better Auth.
  • Public Submissions: Guestbook messages, blog comments, and digital drawings (doodles) you submit are stored to be displayed publicly on the website.
  • Abuse & Spam Prevention Data: To prevent visitors from spamming or abusing services and APIs, comment submissions temporarily process IP addresses. IP addresses are encrypted at rest using AES-256-GCM before storage and are never displayed publicly or shared with commercial entities.
  • Avatar Hashes: If you enter an optional email address for comments, a one-way cryptographic SHA-256 hash is generated to retrieve your public avatar from Libravatar / Gravatar. Your raw email address is never stored or revealed.
  • Analytics: This website uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to measure high-level performance and traffic without using client cookies or fingerprinting visitors. We do not use tracking pixels, Google Analytics, or commercial tracking beacons.

3. Purpose of Processing

We collect and process this data strictly to:

  • Prevent visitors from spamming, exploiting APIs, or abusing public forms.
  • Maintain platform security, rate limiting, and DDoS mitigation.
  • Authenticate authorized site administrators and verified community contributors.
  • Render community features (guestbook signatures, discussions, doodle gallery).

4. Cookies & Local Storage

Cookies are small text files saved on your computer, containing various information required by the page. The most prominent example is keeping you logged in without the need to authenticate every once in a while.

This website uses the following strictly necessary cookies:

  • Authentication Cookies: We use Better Auth to manage user sessions securely, which requires cookies to keep you logged in.
  • Security Cookies: We use Cloudflare cookies for DDoS protection and to ensure the security of our platform. For more details, see Cloudflare's cookie policy.

Since we only use strictly necessary cookies, they cannot be individually withdrawn. However, you may block or delete these cookies through your browser settings, which may impact your ability to log in and use the service.

5. Third-Party Infrastructure

This website relies on reputable infrastructure providers to deliver services securely:

  • Cloudflare: Edge hosting, DDoS protection, D1 database, KV storage, and Turnstile bot protection.
  • GitHub & Google: OAuth 2.0 authentication providers for optional account sign-in.
  • Akismet: Automated spam detection for user-submitted comments.
  • jsDelivr: Public CDN delivery for logos and static assets.
  • Libravatar: Open-source avatar lookup via SHA-256 hash.

6. Data Removal & Your Rights

You have the right to request the complete removal of your personal data, comments, guestbook entries, or doodle submissions at any time.

To request data deletion, email me directly at vaibhavprajeshchandradave@gmail.com.