What we hold, and why.

Account records

• Your name, verified email address, optional phone number and optional business or laboratory name.
• Shipping addresses you save, kept with a version history so past orders stay accurate.
• Your accepted research-use terms and the exact per-order research attestation, with its wording, version and timestamp. Research purchaser records include your typed electronic signature, individual or organization status, affiliation, research role, laboratory location, stated research objective and methods, and our review outcome and supporting evidence references. We use these records to assess research-use eligibility before payment.
• Order records: materials, lots, quantities, amounts, review state and fulfilment state.
• Recurring-plan records: the selected materials, quantities, cadence, savings, status, and payment-processor references needed to display and manage the plan.
• Rewards records: your private referral code, qualification status, and promotional account-credit activity. Other customers’ identities are not displayed in your rewards dashboard.
• Internal activity records used only to understand how orders progress. They are never sold or shared.
• Your date of birth is checked once to confirm you are 21 or older. We retain the age-verification result and birthday month and day, but not your birth year or full date of birth. The month and day may be used for birthday recognition, gifts, and offers according to your marketing preferences. You can change or remove your birthday in Account → Communications without repeating the age check.

Payment details

Checkout does not automatically collect payment at this time. You choose a delivery service and an available payment method, create an order, then send payment using that provider. We save your order, shipping details, chosen service, amount due, payment method, and payment reference. We do not receive your payment-provider password or wallet credentials.

Payment proof uploads are optional and can speed up verification; we still verify payment and process orders without an upload. Receipts and other supporting payment documents you choose to upload are stored privately with your order so authorized Matter staff can verify payment and resolve order or payment questions. Bitcoin payments also require a transaction ID; Bitcoin transactions and receiving addresses are publicly visible on the Bitcoin network. Only upload information needed to confirm your payment, and redact unrelated balances, account details, and other transactions. These payment records follow the security and retention practices below.

Address suggestions use Geoapify. When you use the address search, the text you enter is shared with Geoapify to return suggestions. You may instead enter your address manually.

Card payments and new subscriptions are currently unavailable. For any existing recurring plans, Stripe holds the payment method and handles scheduled charges; Matter stores the references and plan status needed to manage those orders. Matter does not store card details.

Service providers

We use service providers for account authentication and data hosting, payment processing, email delivery, site hosting, analytics limited to our own customer journey, and shipment fulfillment. They receive only the information needed for their function. We do not sell personal information.

Site traffic

We use privacy-limited, first-party traffic measurement to understand visits and improve the site. It records a random browser identifier, a session identifier, page paths, campaign tags, referring domain, device category, browser and operating-system family, and approximate city, region and country. When hosting metadata lacks a city, we send external visitors’ IP addresses over HTTPS to IPWhois for approximate location lookup. Staff traffic and detected bots are excluded from this lookup. We retain only the coarse location result, not the raw IP address. We do not retain complete user-agent strings, or full referring URLs in this traffic record. Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track signals disable this measurement.

If you select “Allow analytics,” we also use Google Analytics through Google Tag Manager to measure page visits, traffic sources, product views, cart additions, checkout starts, account creation, and submitted-order type. We do not send Google your name, email address, billing details, shipping address, payment-session reference, or full URL query string. Google Analytics does not load before your affirmative choice; advertising storage and ad personalization remain disabled. You can change your choice at any time through “Analytics choices” in the site footer. Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track signals keep Google Analytics disabled.

Email

Order and account emails are sent because you created an account or placed an order. Optional lifecycle messages—including welcome, browsing, abandoned-cart, incomplete-checkout, post-purchase, first-order follow-up, birthday, rewards, win-back, and customer-selected research-planning reminders—are sent only to addresses with marketing permission. We use your site, cart, account, and order activity to select and stop those messages. You can withdraw permission at any time from your account or the unsubscribe link in any marketing message. Withdrawal stops pending marketing messages; transactional order notices stay separate.

Text messages

Text messages for customer care, order and delivery notifications, and marketing/promotional offers are sent through our optional SMS program only when you separately and explicitly opt in. Consent is not a condition of purchase. Message frequency varies and message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out or HELP for help. We retain the consent wording, version, source, and timestamp so your communication choice remains auditable.

Mobile information, SMS opt-in data, and consent will not be sold, rented, or shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. We share only the information necessary with service providers supporting message delivery and operation of our SMS program. Email and SMS permissions are independent; a purchase, account registration, or email subscription does not grant SMS consent. See our SMS Terms.

Your controls

From your account you can update your details, change your password, set your email preference, download a copy of your data, and request closure. Financial and order records are retained where we are required to keep them; removable profile details are reduced.

Security and retention

We apply access controls, encrypted connections, audit records, and provider security features designed to protect account and order information. No system can promise absolute security. Order, payment, consent, fraud-review, and tax records are retained as needed for operations, disputes, and legal obligations. We preserve research purchaser declarations, order attestations, and associated review history as auditable records for at least 10 years from each record or audit event. These records include the exact signed wording, version, timestamps, purchaser information, and recorded review decisions, and remain retained after account closure. Other profile information is reduced or deleted when it is no longer needed.

Contact and requests

To ask a privacy question or request access, correction, export, or closure, use the controls in your account or email support@mattercompounds.com. We may verify identity before completing a request.