Data Privacy & Trust
Privacy Policy
Last updated: October 8, 2026 • Effective Date: October 8, 2026
Overview
Comrade Archives ("we," "our," or "us") is dedicated to protecting your privacy. This policy details how we collect, use, store, and safeguard your personal information when you use the Comrade Archives website (comradearchives.com) and the Comrade Archives mobile application.
1. Information We Collect
We collect information to provide, maintain, and improve our academic resource platform:
- Account Information: When you register an account, we collect your Full Name, Username, Email address, Phone number (for verification OTPs), and hashed password.
- Academic Profile: University, faculty, programme/course, and academic year to curate relevant materials.
- Platform Usage & Activity: Materials viewed, downloaded, bookmarked, and study notes created within your personal offline library.
- Device & Technical Diagnostics: Device unique identifier (for single-session device locking), operating system, IP address, and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) push tokens for notifications.
2. Google OAuth 2.0 & Google User Data
When you choose to sign in or register using Continue with Google, we access and process specific Google account information:
- Information Accessed: Your primary Google email address, verified profile name, profile picture URL, and unique Google ID token.
- Purpose of Access: To seamlessly authenticate your identity, create or link your Comrade Archives student profile, and ensure secure account access without requiring manual password management.
- Limited Use Compliance: Comrade Archives adheres strictly to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
- No Advertising or Sale of Data: We do not use Google user data for serving advertisements, nor do we transfer, sell, or disclose Google user data to third-party data brokers or advertisers.
- Human Access Restriction: No human at Comrade Archives reads your private Google data unless required for security investigations, bug fixes with explicit user consent, or compliance with applicable laws.
3. How We Use Your Information
We process your data for legitimate academic and security purposes:
- To provide secure access to past papers, revision materials, and academic notes.
- To dispatch transactional verification codes (OTPs) via WhatsApp, SMS, or Email.
- To enforce single-device active session integrity to prevent unauthorized account sharing.
- To deliver critical academic updates and exam notifications via push notifications.
- To analyze platform traffic and improve platform stability.
4. Third-Party Service Providers
We only share necessary data with trusted service providers under strict data protection terms:
- Google Identity & Firebase: Authentication, Crashlytics diagnostics, and push notifications.
- SMS & Messaging Gateways (Uwazii & WhatsApp Gateway): For the sole purpose of delivering time-sensitive OTP verification messages.
- Secure Payment Processors (M-Pesa / Daraja API): To securely process platform access subscriptions (we never store banking PINs or payment card secrets).
5. Data Retention and Account Deletion
We retain your account and academic history only for as long as your account remains active. You maintain full ownership and control over your personal data:
- Account Deletion: You can permanently delete your account and all associated data at any time by visiting our dedicated Account Deletion Page or from within the Mobile App profile settings.
- Data Removal: Upon requesting account deletion, your personal details, device tokens, and OAuth associations are immediately anonymized or permanently purged from our active databases within 30 days.
6. Security Measures
We implement comprehensive technical and organizational safeguards, including industry-standard SSL/TLS encryption for all network transmissions, salted password hashing (Bcrypt/Argon2), strict database access controls, and automated rate limiting to prevent unauthorized access.
7. Contact & Privacy Inquiries
If you have questions, feedback, or data requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our Google OAuth integration, please contact our Data Protection Officer: