SymptomSense is an AI-powered symptom information application built using Python, Flask, JavaScript, and the Gemini API.

Because users may provide health-related information, the application follows basic security and privacy practices to reduce unnecessary data exposure, protect API credentials, validate user input, and reduce automated API abuse.

The main security objectives of SymptomSense are:

• Protect the Gemini API key.
• Protect the Flask application secret.
• Validate user input on the server.
• Limit the size of incoming requests.
• Limit excessive symptom-analysis requests.
• Avoid unnecessary persistent storage of user information.
• Avoid exposing internal application errors.
• Keep sensitive configuration outside the source code.
• Minimize unnecessary sensitive information in application logs.
• Provide safer defaults for production deployment.

The Gemini API key is stored in an environment variable rather than being hardcoded into the application.

Example:

GEMINI_API_KEY=your_gemini_api_key