Controller

Phinder AB is the controller for the processing described here. For privacy questions, contact [email protected].

What We Collect

• Researcher profile information derived from publicly available academic metadata and related identifiers needed to describe research expertise. A profile shown without a name is still treated as pseudonymous personal data, not anonymous data.
• Search text is processed to produce the requested matches and may be sent to the AI infrastructure used for matching. In the open beta, Phinder does not store the raw search query in its quality log or attach quota identifiers to query text.
• Budget and abuse-prevention counters. Anonymous search uses a signed first-party browser identifier and a short-lived pseudonymous network bucket. Signed-in search uses a pseudonymous account bucket. Raw IP addresses and search text are not stored in those counters.
• Feedback you send us, including the note you write and an email address if you choose to provide one.
• Claim and portal data when a researcher chooses to claim or manage a profile, such as ORCID iD, claim status, proof events, and contact preferences the researcher provides.
• Temporary verification information when ORCID is not available or not linked, such as publicly available institutional contact or researcher identifiers used only to verify profile control.
• Contact details you submit when requesting beta access, such as your email address and organisation, used to arrange access. An approved invitation can be attached only to a signed-in account with the matching verified email address.

Cookies and Local Storage

Phinder uses a necessary signed first-party cookie to keep anonymous search allowance consistent in the browser. Signing in sets a session cookie needed for login. Theme choice, saved candidates, and the last rendered search may be kept in browser storage; saved candidates are not sent to our servers. Beta invitation keys are redeemed into a verified account and are not required for ordinary open-beta searches. We do not use advertising or third-party tracking cookies.

Your Profile, Your Choice

You can ask us to correct or remove your profile without creating an account: email [email protected] and we will verify the request manually and handle it. The most reliable way to control your profile is to claim it with ORCID — then you can edit it, set your availability, or remove it yourself.

Why We Process Data

We process public academic metadata to make research expertise searchable. We process search text to provide the requested matching service and pseudonymous counters to enforce budgets and prevent abuse. We process claim and portal data so researchers can verify, manage, and control their profiles.

The legal bases are legitimate interest for profile generation from public academic metadata and proportionate service-protection controls, and performance of a requested service for search, portal, and claim workflows.

Retention

Open-beta raw search queries are not written to Phinder's quality log. Pseudonymous quota state is kept only as needed to operate the allowance and abuse backstop. Claim and contact preference data is kept while the account or claim remains active, or while needed for audit and abuse-prevention purposes. Temporary verification information is used for the claim process and is not retained for general profile generation.

Researcher profile information is refreshed or removed when source data, claim state, or a valid rights request requires it.

Your Rights

You can request access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection, or portability where those rights apply under applicable data protection law. You can also complain to Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten (IMY), the Swedish data protection authority.

Service Providers

Phinder uses hosting, database, email, and AI infrastructure providers to operate the service. Only the data needed for each workflow is sent to each provider.