Data & Security
Research data is not like any other data. It can carry years of work, data from people who trusted you with it, or results not yet ready to be public. Software that touches it should be built with that responsibility in mind — not with a business model that depends on collecting and keeping as much of it as possible.
Built to not need your data
Most tools ask you to create an account and upload your dataset to "the cloud" before you can use them, even when there is no real reason to. ActiLab is built the other way around: whenever a feature doesn't need to see your data to work, it doesn't.
No account, no upload, for the tools that touch your research data
ProMeta and the Forest Plot Editor run entirely in your browser. Your dataset, calculations, and plots are stored locally, in your browser's own storage, and are never sent to an ActiLab server. There is nothing to sign up for, and nothing for us to lose, leak, or hand over — we never receive your data in the first place.
This also means no export limits, no subscription required to keep your analysis accessible, and no risk that a service shutting down takes your data with it.
Where ActiLab will hold some data
Being precise about the boundary matters more than a blanket claim. The Academy is the one part of ActiLab that will need a minimal account — email, name, and enrolment status — to issue and later verify a certificate; course payments will be handled entirely by a third-party payment processor, so ActiLab never sees payment details either way. When that account system is actually built, it will:
- Collect the minimum needed for the feature to work, nothing "just in case."
- Never be sold, shared with data brokers, or used to build an advertising profile.
- Be documented in full in the Privacy Policy, including exactly which third parties are involved and why.
Why this matters for research specifically
- Confidentiality: unpublished results, pre-registration data, or datasets under an embargo shouldn't have to pass through a third-party server just to be analyzed.
- Compliance: many datasets carry their own restrictions (ethics approval, data use agreements, institutional policy). A tool that never receives your data can't be the thing that puts you at risk of violating them.
- Longevity: research software has a habit of disappearing or changing pricing models. Code that runs in your browser and is open source keeps working even if ActiLab someday doesn't.
If you want to verify any of this yourself rather than take it on trust, the source code for ProMeta and the Forest Plot Editor is public: See releases or github.com.