Privacy Policy

The short version

You can draw a card, browse the whole deck and read every verse without an account and without telling us who you are. When you do that, nothing we keep identifies you. An account is optional, and the only thing it needs is an email address.

We run no advertising, and nothing here follows you from site to site. We do count page views, in aggregate, and the service that counts them stores nothing on your device — which is why you are not asked to accept anything. The rest of this page is the detail behind those two paragraphs.

1. Who we are

metta.cards is published by Mettā Publications, Aotearoa New Zealand ("Mettā", "we", "us", "our"). This policy covers the metta.cards website and app. You can reach us at support@metta.cards.

We handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020 (New Zealand).

2. What we collect when you are signed out

Nothing that identifies you, and no account is required to use the deck. A few ordinary technical things happen, and they all stay on your device:

• A language cookie (NEXT_LOCALE) records which language you are reading in. It expires when you close your browser and is not used to identify or track you.
• A copy of the deck is kept in your browser's local storage (metta.deck.v2) so the cards open quickly and keep working offline. It holds card text and image references — no personal information.
• The date of your first visit is kept in local storage too (metta.install.v1), with whether you have dismissed the offer to install the app. It is only there so that offer is not made more than once, and it is never sent to us.

Like any website, our hosting provider processes the technical details a browser must send to receive a page — IP address, browser type, the page requested and the time. These are used to serve the site and to keep it secure, not to build a profile of you.

We also count page views, in aggregate, using PostHog (section 5). A page view records which page was opened and when, along with the same ordinary technical details — the kind of device and browser, and the IP address your browser sends. The IP address is used to work out an approximate location and is then discarded rather than stored with the record. Nothing is kept on your device to recognise you, so a second visit is not knowable as the same person, and no profile is built.

3. What we collect if you create an account

An account is optional. If you create one, we hold:

• your email address;
• authentication details — a securely hashed password, or, if you sign in with Google, the account identifier and email Google returns to us. We never receive your Google password.
• a sign-in session cookie, which is the thing that keeps you signed in;
• anything you later choose to save to your account, and the date you saved it.

4. How we use it

We use the information above only to:

• show you the deck and keep it working offline;
• create your account and keep you signed in;
• show you what you have saved;
• send you the emails an account needs — confirming your address, resetting your password;
• keep the service secure and prevent abuse;
• meet our legal obligations.

We do not sell your information, we do not share it for advertising, and we do not use it to train machine-learning models.

5. Who else is involved

We use a small number of providers to run the service. They process information on our instructions only:

• Vercel — hosting and delivery of the website.
• Supabase — the database and authentication behind accounts. Our data is stored in the Sydney, Australia region.
• Resend — sending account emails.
• Google — only if you choose to sign in with Google, and only for that sign-in.
• Cloudflare — DNS, and a check that guards the sign-up form against automated abuse.
• PostHog — counting page views, on servers in the European Union. It receives the page you opened, the time, your device and browser type, and your IP address, which it uses to work out an approximate location and then discards instead of storing. It sets no cookie and stores nothing in your browser, and we do not ask it to identify you.
• metta.pub — our own publishing site, which serves the card artwork and the deck listing. Loading a card means your browser requests an image from metta.pub, so its server logs see the same ordinary technical details described in section 2.

Some of these providers are outside New Zealand. Where that is so, we rely on their contractual commitments to protect your information to a standard comparable to the Privacy Act 2020.

6. How long we keep it

Account information is kept for as long as your account exists. If you delete your account, we delete the personal information held with it, except anything we must keep to meet a legal obligation. The deck copy in your browser is yours to clear at any time, and clearing your browser data removes it.

7. Your rights

Under the Privacy Act 2020 you may ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it if it is wrong. You may also ask us to delete your account. Write to support@metta.cards and we will respond as soon as we reasonably can, and in any case within 20 working days.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (privacy.org.nz).

8. Security

We take reasonable technical and organisational steps to protect personal information: encrypted connections, hashed passwords, and access controls at the database so that one account cannot read another's data. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. Children

metta.cards is suitable for general audiences. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us their information, write to support@metta.cards and we will delete it.

10. Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page. If the change is significant and you have an account, we will tell you.

11. Contact

Questions about this policy, or about the information we hold: support@metta.cards.