Privacy Policy

Sec.01Introduction to how we treat your data

This policy explains what personal data AtomCreek collects when you use the atomcreek.lat website, why we collect it and the choices you have about it. We are a small engineering company and we treat the principle of care the same way we treat a research record: plainly, honestly and with the expectation that the person on the other end can ask us anything and get a straight answer. The site does not exist to harvest data. It exists to describe our services, let you reach us and let a few agreements with you live somewhere clear.

Because we help laboratories manage instrument readings, sample histories and custody logs, some of what we touch belongs to those laboratories rather than to you as an individual. We are careful to explain that difference throughout this document. The rules below divide the world into a few simple ideas: information you give us, information we collect quietly while you browse, and information we handle on behalf of a research partner. If any sentence in this policy is unclear, contact us at info@atomcreek.lat before you rely on an assumption.

Sec.02Who we are and who this policy covers

This privacy policy is published by Atom Creek, LLC, a limited liability company organized in the United States, with a registered business address at 5995 Greenwood Plaza Blvd Ste 110, Greenwood Village - 80111, United States (US). The company trades its research instrumentation and data systems work under the developer name AtomCreek. Where this document uses the word the company, the phrase Atom Creek, LLC, or the short name AtomCreek, all of these refer to the same legal entity and to the developers who act for it.

The policy covers a few distinct audiences. It covers visitors who simply read the public pages of this website. It covers individuals who contact us through the website form, by email to info@atomcreek.lat or by phone at +6285640110537. It covers research laboratory staff and directors whose organisations have asked us to build or maintain software. It also covers people whose names appear in documentation we receive from a laboratory, for example a named instrument operator, a responsible sample collector or an approving supervisor. You do not have to fall into a neat category for this policy to apply to the data we keep about you; the spirit is that whoever you are, if we hold data that identifies you, the protections here should give you a clear and reasonable expectation of how it is handled.

Sec.03The scope of the practices we describe

This policy applies to the website we operate at atomcreek.lat and to the contact and service activities that flow from that site. It applies when you browse, when you send us a message and when we begin an engagement that started from a conversation here. It also applies to the software systems we build that handle personal and research data on behalf of our clients, because the choices we make in those systems determine how much personal data ever touches our hands.

The policy does not cover the privacy practices of any laboratory that is our client. A laboratory that collects biological samples, manages human research or runs an accredited facility remains responsible for its own obligations and for explaining its own practices to its own users and participants. When we build software for a laboratory, our contracts require that laboratory to hold and to obtain every permission the law demands. We describe the boundaries of that responsibility in the section below on research projects. If a website belonging to one of our clients links here or is discussed here, that site privacy statements, not this one, governs how that site treats its visitors.

Sec.04Information we collect

We keep the amount of personal information we collect deliberately small, and we collect it only for purposes we can explain in one sentence each. The main categories are these. First, information you give us directly. When you use the contact form on this site, you give us your name, your email address, a subject line and the body of your message. If you telephone us, we may note your number and a summary of the call so we can follow up. If you email us, the message itself and its headers describe who you are.

Second, information we receive about you as part of an enquiry. When you ask about a specific instrument, station or project, you may tell us names, roles or organisational details in the natural course of describing your work. We treat those details as information you have chosen to share and we store them only for as long as they help us answer you well. Third, information we generate as records. When we speak with you, quote for a project or build software for your laboratory, our records naturally contain names, dates, email addresses and sometimes telephone numbers, because an engineering engagement without a point of contact would not function.

What we generally do not collect is information we do not need. We do not ask you for exact geolocation, for sensitive health details unrelated to your laboratory data, for financial card numbers through this website, or for government identification numbers. If an unusual situation ever demands such information, we will ask for it directly and explain exactly why before you provide it.

Sec.05Website data and automated signals

As with almost every website, our server records some technical data when you load a page. That data typically includes your Internet Protocol address, the kind of browser you used, the device type, the rough region you connected from, the page you arrived from and the pages and buttons you clicked while you were here. The hosting service that carries atomcreek.lat keeps these log-type records for operational reasons, chiefly to keep the site running, to detect faults and to defend against abusive traffic and simple denial-of-service disturbances.

We do not build profiles about individual visitors from this technical data, and we do not sell or trade those browsing signals with advertising networks. We use the aggregate shape of the data, such as which country requests come from and which pages get read, to understand broadly whether the site is useful to the audience it attracts. The site does not run invasive trackers, and the animated and decorative features on the pages are pure styling rather than pixel beacons that report your visit to a third party. Where we ever enable an optional analytics instrument, we will name it clearly in the cookies section below and give you a way to decline it.

Sec.06Information handled for research projects

Much of the work Atom Creek does involves laboratory instrument and data systems rather than the personal affairs of any single visitor. Still, research projects can touch personal data indirectly and deliberately. A sample log may carry the name of the person who bottled a specimen. A custody chain records who took a bottle from one shelf and handed it to the next person. An approval workflow stores the identity of the scientist who signed off a result. When a laboratory contracts us to build these systems, the names in the streams are personal data in a very ordinary sense.

In those engagements the laboratory acts as the owner and controller of the data, and we act as an engineering partner who processes the data under that laboratory direction. We build the software so that access fits the laboratory own rules, so that logs cannot be quietly edited, and so that handovers are recorded in a way a fair-minded reviewer can reconstruct. When the contract ends or a laboratory asks us to remove their material, we remove or hand back the data they own in line with the agreed retention and with this policy. We do not publish, mine or resell research data that belongs to a client, and we hold the uncommon personal records inside those systems under the same care as any other data we keep.

Sec.07How we use the information we hold

Every bit of information we hold exists for a reason we can state plainly, and we use information only for those reasons unless the law asks for more. The principal uses are these. We use contact details to respond to your enquiry, to answer a question about our services and to follow up with you about the subject you raised. We use project and contact details to prepare a proposal, to scope an engagement and to manage the working relationship if you become a client.

We use your name and role where they must appear inside custody, approval and calibration records that belong to the laboratory you work for. We use operational and technical data to keep the website and any hosted services running and secure. We use aggregated and anonymised figures to understand our own work, to improve our services and, on rare and honest occasions, to talk about the kind of systems we have built without identifying any individual or any proprietary laboratory detail.

We do not use your personal information to send marketing you have not asked for. If we ever announce a service update or a change in how to reach us, we send notices only to people who have an existing relationship with us or who explicitly asked to hear from us, and every such message gives a clear way to stop future messages.

Sec.08When we disclose information to others

We treat your personal information as yours, and we share it only in the handful of situations described here, never as a product. We share information with the small set of suppliers who help us run the business: the hosting service that carries our website, the email service that carries our messages and, where needed, the accounting and payment tools that let us bill the work we do. Each of these partners gets only the piece of data they need and receives it under an obligation to protect it.

We share your information with a laboratory that is our client when the data in question belongs to that laboratory and flows from their systems and their people. In most cases this is not really a sharing step at all; the data already lives in the laboratory systems and we are simply returning it or supporting the laboratory access. We disclose information when the law or a regulator demands it, such as a valid court order, a subpoena or a request from a body with lawful authority over us. Where we can reasonably do so and it would not obstruct an investigation or break the law, we try to tell the affected person before we hand data over.

We also disclose information in a limited way if the business changes hands. If Atom Creek, LLC is ever merged, acquired or reorganized, the personal and business records supporting the services may transfer to the successor so that our clients and the people who contacted us are not simply abandoned. We will put in the successor agreement a requirement that they continue to honour this policy or a substantially similar one.

Sec.09Storage, retention and security

How long we keep your data depends on why we have it. Enquiry correspondence is kept only while it is reasonably needed to answer you and to handle any follow-up, and then it is retired in line with our ordinary record-keeping. Business and project records are kept for as long as a business, a contract term, tax or a legal obligation reasonably requires, because engineering work may need to be explained or warranted long after it was finished. Website technical logs are kept for a short operational window and then rolled over.

We store our records with providers that apply strong transport and at-rest encryption, and we keep access to our own systems guarded by individual accounts rather than shared passwords. We do not claim that any system is perfectly secure, because no honest engineer makes that claim, but we work to a standard that treats a laboratory chain-of-custody log with the seriousness it deserves. Records are kept inside boundaries set by our contracts and by the laboratory that owns the research data, and on almost no occasion does Atom Creek ever need or want to hold the deeper personal data, such as health or genetic detail, that sits inside a sensitive research stream; when we can we design the system so that those details never pass through our hands at all.

Sec.10A special note on sample and instrument data

This site describes software for research laboratories, and it is worth being precise about what that does and does not mean for privacy. The data that lives inside an instrument log, a spectral trace or a custody chain usually describes experiments, bottles and stations far more than it describes a human person. AtomCreek builds the systems that move and store that data, and we treat it as confidential material that belongs to the laboratory. We can build a system that records exactly who handled a sample, but we do so at the laboratory request and under laboratory authority, not because we want that name for ourselves.

If you are a person whose name appears in a laboratory system we helped to build, your first and most relevant conversation about that data is with the laboratory, because they own the context and the choices about it. We are always willing to help a laboratory meet a data request from one of its staff, and we will never resist a legitimate request from the rightful owner of the data. If anyone tells us they believe their details inside a client system are inaccurate, we will route the matter to the laboratory who owns the record and support the correction in the same careful, logged way we support every other change to the record.

Sec.11Privacy safeguards for children

This website and the services Atom Creek offers are directed to adults who work in laboratories, engineering and research. They are not built for children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of thirteen. If you are a parent or guardian and you believe that a child has sent us personal information through this site, please tell us at info@atomcreek.lat and we will promptly remove any such information from our records to the extent we can identify it.

Beyond the simple age rule, we take care that nothing on this site is aimed at minors in a way that encourages them to share details, and our contact form carries no incentives or games that would give a child a reason to type their name and address. Because our software sometimes runs in settings, such as classrooms or student teaching laboratories, where younger users may touch the terminals, we note that the software we build generally does not ask a user for personal information at all; a lab technician may sign into a station, but the identity belongs to the laboratory account system rather than to us. Should a genuine need ever arise to handle data about a child in a research setting, we would only do so under an agreement that carries its own lawful consent and parental notice obligations, and never casually.

Sec.12Cookies and local technology

This website is deliberately light on cookies. It does not load third-party advertising cookies, and it does not run social media widgets that report your reading habits back to a network. For the most part, atomcreek.lat is a plain set of pages styled to look like a field station, and it keeps no persistent trackers in your browser just so it can send you promotions later.

Where we may use small storage, it serves an obvious technical purpose: remembering a temporary choice you made, balancing a request across servers, or storing the small confirmations that let a page behave correctly on a repeated visit. Any storage we use is kept to the minimum a task needs, is readable by us for that task alone and does not follow you across the wider Internet. If a future feature of the site requires a cookie with a broader purpose, we will update this section to name the cookie, state what it does and set a clear default that respects your browsing choice. Nothing on this site relies on you accepting a cookie for you to read the pages or to reach us.

Sec.13Your rights over your data

You hold a set of practical rights over the personal information we keep, and we honour them without treating a request as an argument. You may ask us to tell you whether we hold personal information about you and to describe what it is. You may ask us to give you a copy of it in a readable form. You may ask us to correct information that is wrong, and we will fix it once we are sure the change is yours to make and that the record permits it.

You may ask us to delete information we hold about you, with the honest caveat that we may need to keep some records where the law, a contract or a legitimate need to defend or explain our own work requires us to keep them. You may ask us to stop a particular use of your data or to restrict how we process it while we consider your request, and in some cases you may ask to receive your data in a portable format or to have it sent onward. Every one of these rights begins with a clear message to us; you can reach the right person by writing to info@atomcreek.lat and telling them which right you want to exercise. We answer every genuine request and we keep a record that we did so.

Sec.14Rights for users in specific regions

Depending on where you live, the law may give you specific additional protections. If you are in the European Union, the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, you have the rights described above under the General Data Protection Regulation, including the rights to access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, objection and a complaint to your own supervisory authority where one exists.

If you are in a state of the United States with a comprehensive privacy law, such as California, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah or Virginia, you may have rights to know, to access, to correct, to delete and to opt out of certain processing such as targeted advertising and the sale of personal data. Atom Creek does not sell your personal information and does not use it for the cross-context behavioural advertising that those laws are written to restrain; you can exercise any state right by writing to us, and we will treat a request coming from that state according to the law that protects it. Wherever you live, the underlying promise is the same: we will plainly explain what we hold, do only what we said we would do and never hide the path to a complaint behind a wall of fine print.

Sec.15Your choices and how to exercise them

You do not have to give us any information at all to read this website. Every page is open, and reaching us by phone at +6285640110537 gives you a chance to ask questions without typing anything into a form. When you do choose to share information, you stay in charge of the basic choices. You decide how much to write in a message. You decide whether to give a work number or a personal one. You decide whether to continue a conversation about services after an initial enquiry, and a decision to step back never muzzles past work or turns friendly in tone.

To exercise any choice, send the person who handles our records a message at info@atomcreek.lat with the action you want and enough detail for us to find the right record. We will respond within a reasonable time and, where the law sets a firm limit such as thirty days, we will meet it. We may ask you to confirm your identity before we act, because handing out someone else data would violate the very promise this policy stands on. Where your request concerns records that a laboratory owns rather than records we own ourselves, we will say so plainly and take you or the record to the right owner, because the true master of that data is not us.

Sec.16International transfers of data

Atom Creek operates out of the United States, and the infrastructure that hosts our website and our mail may sit in several regions. If you contact us from another country, your message may travel across borders so that it can be stored and answered where our services run. We choose hosting and service partners that treat data protection seriously and that sit in jurisdictions with mature rules, and we apply suitable safeguards such as standard contractual clauses where a law requires a recognised basis for the transfer.

The practical effect is that your data may be briefly at rest in a different country than the one you sit in, and that is normal for how the Internet works. We do not treat that travel as a licence to weaken care. The same encryption, the same limited access and the same retention rules follow the data wherever our partner stores it. If you would like to know which regions hold the services you rely on, we can list them, and if you are subject to a law that restricts where your data may go, we will work within your rule rather than asking you to silently accept a lower standard.

Sec.17Links to other websites and parties

From time to time the pages on this site or the messages we send you may point to websites run by other parties, such as a standards body, a client institution or a professional directory. Those links are provided for your convenience, and this policy does not govern what those external sites do. When you leave atomcreek.lat, the privacy statement of the site you land on is the one that controls your visit there.

We choose external links with a reasonable care for reputation, but we cannot answer for the practices of every organisation we mention or that mentions us. Before you hand personal information to any website, read its own privacy policy and make your own judgement, because a link from our pages is not an assurance about a third party handling. If a site we link to ever appears to misuse the AtomCreek or Atom Creek, LLC names, tell us promptly and we will look into it, since protecting the company name and the trust that sits behind it matters to us as much as protecting the data of the people who write to us.

Sec.18What happens in the event of a breach

No system is immune to failure, and a privacy policy gains its honesty from saying what a careful company does when something goes wrong rather than pretending nothing ever can. If we ever learn that personal information in our control has been exposed to an unauthorised party, our first act is to contain the problem, our second is to understand the true scope and our third is to tell the people affected and the relevant authorities in the way the law expects.

We keep records of our own systems, which usually lets us look back and say who could have been affected rather than guessing from memory. Where a breach touches laboratory data that we process for a client, we notify that laboratory promptly so that they can assess their own obligations to the people behind the data. If notification is required by regulation, we will issue it without unreasonable delay after we understand the incident. We will also review what failed and change the practice that allowed it, because one of the few comforts that follows a breach is that the next season is defended against the same mistake repeating.

Sec.19Changes to this privacy policy

The practices in this policy may need to change as the company grows, as the law moves and as the services we describe evolve. When we change this policy, we will update the date shown at the top of the page and revise the sections that changed. For a material change, such as a new reason for collecting data, a fresh category of data or a broader sharing arrangement, we will make the new version obvious on this page and, where we have a working relationship with you and a way to reach you, we will tell you directly before your data begins to be used in the new way.

We will not rewrite history to make a past act look different, and we will not quietly alter this policy to justify something we are already doing wrong. Because this page is public and dated, anyone can look back at an earlier version if they keep a copy of their own. If you disagree with a change, you are free to stop using the site and to ask us to limit or delete the data this policy covers. If you keep using the site after a material change is announced and you had a clear chance to object, the new version then applies to your later visits and messages.

Sec.20Acceptance of these practices

By reading these pages and by choosing to send us information through the contact routes this site describes, you acknowledge that you understand and accept the practices in this policy as they stand at the time you act. Reading the site alone imposes no obligation at all; this policy simply describes the quiet behaviours that follow a choice to reach out to us or to work with us.

If you do not agree with any part of this policy, the simplest answer is to pause before you send personal information and to reflect on what you want to share. Nothing about this site is coercive, and a decision not to proceed costs you nothing except the chance to talk with us, which you can take up again on your own terms another day. If any single clause of this policy is found to be unenforceable, the rest continue to stand, and if you have a question that this document does not settle, the door is open at info@atomcreek.lat or by phone at +6285640110537, and on the bench behind it a real person will answer you in the plain language this policy tries to use.

Thank you for reading. Atom Creek, LLC keeps this page as a promise that the same honesty we install in your instruments and your custody rails applies to the small but important act of trusting us with a message about yourself.