Privacy Policy

1. Information we collect

We collect the following categories of information when you use the Service:

• Account information you provide: your name, email address, password (stored in hashed form), organization or lab name, and any profile information you choose to add.
• Content you submit to the Service:samples, prep recipes, etchants, micrographs and other images, studies, equipment records, notes, and any other lab data you enter (collectively, your "Content").
• Communications you send us, including support requests, bug reports, and feedback.
• Information collected automatically when you use the Service: your IP address, browser type and version, device and operating-system information, referring and exit pages, pages and features accessed, sign-in events, timestamps, and similar diagnostic, analytics, and security logs.
• Cookies and similar technologies necessary to authenticate your session and to operate the Service securely. We do not use third-party advertising cookies or behavioral-advertising trackers.
• Activity and audit records: we log security and administrative events in your organization, including sign-ins, role changes, edits to lab data, and exports. Administrators of your organization can view this audit log for security, support, and compliance purposes; non-admin members cannot.

2. How we use information

We use information for the following purposes:

• to provide, operate, maintain, secure, support, and improve the Service;
• to authenticate you and protect the integrity of accounts, Content, and the Service;
• to develop new features, products, and services;
• to respond to your support requests and other communications;
• to send you transactional and operational messages, including account, security, billing, and product updates;
• to detect, investigate, and prevent fraud, abuse, security incidents, and violations of our Terms of Use or applicable law;
• to comply with our legal obligations and to enforce our agreements; and
• to inform Pace Technologies' product development, marketing, and sales activities, as further described in the next section.

3. Pace Technologies and Materials Prep

Pace Technologies Corporation, the company that operates Materials Prep, also designs, manufactures, and sells metallography sample preparation equipment, consumables, and related products. The same Pace Technologies that operates Materials Prep also operates that hardware business; they are not separate companies, and there is no transfer of information between separate legal entities involved.

We may use the information described in Section 1, including account information and Content, to inform Pace Technologies' product, marketing, and sales activities. Specifically, we may use this information to:

• understand which equipment, consumables, materials, and methods are commonly used across our user base, in order to inform our product development and roadmap;
• consider how you use Materials Prep when deciding which Pace Technologies products, resources, or guidance might be useful to share with you, and when; and
• guide our customer-support and customer-success efforts.

This use is internal to Pace Technologies. We do not disclose your information, your Content, or any insights derived from them to any third party for that third party's own use, and the limits in Section 4 apply.

In practice, we keep direct outreach occasional and try to make it relevant to the work you do. If you receive a commercial email from Pace Technologies, you can unsubscribe at any time using the link included in that message. Unsubscribing does not affect transactional and operational messages necessary to provide the Service.

4. How we share information

We do not sell, rent, lease, or trade your information. Other than through public-sharing features you choose to use (described below), we do not share your information or your Content with any third party for that third party's own purposes, including for that party's own marketing, advertising, analytics, or model training. We do not co-market with anyone using your information.

Public sharing you choose to make. The Service includes features that allow you to publish portions of your Content to other users of the Service, such as the global atlas. Publishing is opt-in at the level of the individual entry; nothing is published unless you affirmatively choose to publish it. When you publish, the published entry becomes visible to other users of the Service and is attributed to your lab or organization by the name you have configured. Ownership of the published Content transfers to Pace Technologies at the moment of publication, as described in Section 4 of our Terms of Use. Aside from the contributor name shown for attribution, no personal information about you is displayed alongside published entries.

The only parties outside Pace Technologies that process your information do so as our service providers, under written contract, solely on our behalf and only to the extent necessary to operate the Service. They are not permitted to use your information or your Content for their own purposes. Our current service providers are:

• Supabase: database, authentication, and file storage.
• Vercel: application hosting and content delivery.
• Resend: transactional and operational email delivery.
• Stripe: subscription billing and payment processing for paid plans and add-ons.
• Anthropic: large-language-model inference for the Metallogic AI (Mai) add-on. Used only when your organization has the add-on enabled. See “AI features” below for what is sent and how it is handled.
• Sentry: server- and client-side error and performance monitoring. Receives error stack traces, request paths, and a lab identifier tag when an exception occurs. We have explicitly disabled Sentry's default PII collection: IP address, user-agent, request bodies, and signed-in user identity are not sent. Session replay is off. Not used for product analytics or marketing.

We may update this list as our infrastructure evolves; the categories of permitted recipients (operational service providers acting on our behalf) will not change without notice.

AI features (Metallogic AI). Metallogic AI is an optional add-on. When a user in your organization sends a message to Mai, the content of that message, any attached images, and a structured snapshot of the relevant sample (material, hardness, mount type, analysis goal, recent journal entries, and the lab's owned consumables and matching recipes) are transmitted to Anthropic to generate a response, and the response is transmitted back. We do not use your prompts, images, or responses to train any model. Anthropic processes the request-response cycle under their data processing terms and does not train on API traffic. Conversations are stored in our database under the same row-level-security model as the rest of your lab's data and are visible only to the user who created the thread (and to owners for support / audit purposes). Mai's recommendations are advisory; you remain responsible for validating any recipe before using it for QA-graded or regulated work. Organizations without the Metallogic AI add-on enabled never have any data sent to Anthropic.

We may also disclose information if we reasonably believe disclosure is required by law, legal process, or governmental request, or is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of Pace Technologies, our users, or the public, or to investigate suspected fraud, abuse, or violations of our Terms of Use. If Pace Technologies, Materials Prep, or substantially all of the assets of either is acquired by or merged with another entity, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction; we will notify you in advance of any such transfer.

5. Data retention and deletion

We retain your information for as long as your account is active and for a reasonable period thereafter to satisfy backup, audit, security, and legal requirements. Backups and operational logs may persist for additional time after deletion in accordance with their retention schedules. We may also retain de-identified or aggregated information indefinitely.

Organization owners can delete their entire organization and all of its data at any time from organization settings; the deletion runs immediately and cascades through every lab, sample, recipe, study, atlas entry, equipment record, and uploaded image owned by the organization. Members who are not organization owners, and individual users, may request deletion of their account by emailing us at the address below; we will process the request within a reasonable time. The audit log for an organization is retained immutably for the lifetime of the organization, and is exportable to CSV by an organization owner at any time before deletion. Backups and operational logs may persist for additional time after deletion in accordance with their retention schedules. Some information may be retained where required by law or to protect our legal interests.

6. Security

We protect information using TLS in transit, encryption at rest, row-level security in our database, signed URLs for stored images, and access controls within Pace Technologies. No system or method of transmission over the internet is perfectly secure, and we cannot and do not guarantee the absolute security of your information.

Notification of security incidents. In the event of a security incident that materially affects your information, we will notify affected users without undue delay and in accordance with applicable law. Our sub-processors are contractually required to notify us of confirmed security incidents on short timelines so that we can investigate and respond before notifying users.

7. Active development; risk of data loss

The Service is in active and ongoing development. Data formats, storage layouts, and features change frequently, and bugs, regressions, migrations, and outages can result in unintended changes to or loss of Content. You are responsible for maintaining your own backups and exports of any information you cannot afford to lose. Lab admins can export their lab's data, and organization owners can export every lab's data at once, from settings inside the Service. We disclaim, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, liability for any loss or alteration of Content.

8. Your choices

You may review and update most account information by signing in to the Service. Lab admins can export their lab's data at any time from lab settings; organization owners can export every lab's data at once, and delete the organization and all of its data, from organization settings. Members who are not organization owners, and individual users, may request account deletion by emailing pace@metallographic.com. You may unsubscribe from non-essential commercial email at any time using the link included in any such message.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under applicable privacy law (such as rights to access, correct, port, or delete your information, or to object to certain uses). You may exercise any such rights by emailing us at the address below.

9. International users

Materials Prep is operated from the United States. If you access the Service from outside the United States, you understand that your information will be processed in the United States and other jurisdictions where we and our service providers operate, which may have data protection laws that differ from those of your country.

10. Children

Materials Prep is not directed to anyone under 16, and we do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has provided information to us, please contact us so we can delete it.

11. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will provide notice through the Service or by email before they take effect. The "Effective" date above will always reflect the current version. Your continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes your acceptance of the updated Privacy Policy.

12. Contact

Pace Technologies Corporation
pace@metallographic.com