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TickerWhale

Privacy

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This page describes what TickerWhale actually stores — in your browser and on its servers — rather than what a service of this kind usually stores. TickerWhale is operated by an individual. Research data is assembled from approved sources and is never sold as personal data.

What is stored in your browser

Everything TickerWhale sets itself is first-party — set by tickerwhale.com, readable only by tickerwhale.com. Meta's advertising measurement script also sets two cookies of its own, on the pages named under Advertising measurement below. You can switch that off there; doing so deletes both of them and stops anything further being sent.

  • Sign-in. Our authentication provider sets the session cookies that keep you signed in, including a short-lived session token and __client_uat, a timestamp the page reads to tell whether a session exists. Without these you cannot sign in.
  • tw_anon — 12 months. A random 32-character identifier generated in your browser. It contains no name, email, address or device fingerprint; its only job is to let repeat page views be counted as one visitor rather than several, and to join the visits before you signed up to the account you create. It is written only while product analytics is switched on (below).
  • tw_attribution — 90 days. Which campaign or link brought you here, stored on your first visit only and never overwritten afterwards: the utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content, utm_term and ref values from the address you arrived on, the path you landed on, the hostname of the site that linked to you (never the full referring URL), and a marker recording that it has been attached to your account. Campaign tags only — it cannot follow you to any other site.
  • tw_signup_opt_in — until you close the tab. One word, written only if you tick the newsletter box while creating an account: whether you asked for the Pre-Market Brief. It exists because the tick has to survive the sign-up steps, and it is deleted the moment the answer reaches your account. Unticking the box deletes it immediately.
  • tw_rail — 12 months. One word: whether you collapsed the sidebar. A layout preference, nothing else.
  • tw_labs_rail — no expiry. The same one word for the sidebar on our prototype pages under /labs. A layout preference, nothing else.
  • tw-theme — no expiry. Light or dark, kept in your browser's local storage. It never leaves your device.
  • tw_ads_consent — 6 months. One word: whether you have switched advertising measurement off. It is your answer and nothing else — no identifier, and no record of what you were reading when you gave it. While it says off, no advertising script runs at all.
  • _fbp and _fbc — 90 days each. Set by Meta's script on the pages named below. They let Meta recognise a later visit as the same browser, so that an advert we paid for can be credited with bringing you here. _fbc exists only if you arrived from one of our adverts. Switching the measurement off below deletes both.

Clearing these in your browser is enough to reset them: deleting tw_anon gives you a new anonymous identifier, and deleting tw_attribution forgets the campaign. Blocking cookies entirely leaves the research surfaces working; only sign-in needs them.

Product analytics

TickerWhale keeps basic, first-party usage analytics so we can see how the product is used. There is no third-party analytics service and no session recording; no keystrokes, mouse movements or device fingerprints are collected, and your IP address is never stored with these records. The only third-party script on the site is the advertising measurement described below, which you can switch off.

These usage records are retained and are not removed when an account is deleted.

Traffic measurement

An analytics service counts page views for us. Both the script and the measurement it sends are served from tickerwhale.com itself: it sets no cookie, stores nothing in your browser, and cannot recognise you on another site. It reports to us as aggregate counts — page, referrer, country, and broad device and browser type — never as a profile of a person, and processes it on our behalf under our instructions.

Advertising measurement (Meta)

We advertise, and we would like to know which adverts bring people here. A script from Meta — the company behind Facebook and Instagram — runs on our front page, pricing, methodology, this page, the terms, the target page, the Market Brief archive, the sign-in and sign-up screens, and the Brief. It runs unless you switch it off, and the switch is at the end of this section. Meta is named here rather than described, because somebody deciding whether to leave it on is entitled to know which company receives it.

On those pages it is told the address of the page you opened, the site that linked you to us, and the technical details every web request carries, such as your IP address and browser. Once, when you create an account, it is also told that an account was created, with a random identifier generated for that one event. That identifier is not your account number, your email or a code derived from any of them, and it identifies nothing else, ever.

It is not loaded anywhere else. On a stock page, a ranking board, a theme, a basket, Ask Willy or your account page the script is never put on the page at all, so Meta is not told which stocks you look at, what you search for, what you keep in a basket, or anything you ask Willy — and it is never given your email address or your name. Addresses carrying anything but a campaign tag are refused too, so a link that names a page you were sent from is not passed on either.

Switching it off tells Meta's script to stop, deletes the two cookies it set, stops anything further being sent from this browser, and is remembered so that nothing loads on your next visit either. You can switch it back on just as easily. An ad blocker, or a browser that blocks third-party scripts, has the same effect, and every part of TickerWhale works either way.

Your account

Signing in creates an account record holding your sign-in provider identifier, email address, whether that address is verified, an optional display name, your plan, and the first-touch campaign described above. Your baskets and your Willy conversations are stored against it so they are there when you return.

Your data, your controls

The Account page lets you export a copy of your account, baskets and conversations at any time, and delete the account. Deletion is immediate and irreversible: it erases your baskets, your Willy conversations, your usage records, your subscription record and your email preferences, and asks our sign-in provider to delete your identity, so the account can no longer be signed in to.

Two things deliberately survive it, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. A minimal closed-account record keeps your email address and sign-in identifier, so that a past purchase can still be reconciled and the address cannot silently inherit a former account's history. And a newsletter subscription is a separate list keyed by your email address — unsubscribe from any digest email if you want that removed too. For anything this does not cover, write to us and we will handle it by hand.

Newsletter

Subscribing to the Market Brief stores your email address, its double-opt-in status and the times it changed, and the campaign that brought you. Every email carries a one-click unsubscribe link; unsubscribing stops all sends. The address is used only for the digest — never sold or shared for marketing.

Payments

Pro subscriptions are handled by a payment processor acting as merchant of record. TickerWhale never sees or stores card details; it receives only the subscription status and the e-mail address needed to match the purchase to your account.

Who else sees it

A small number of processors, each for a single job and each under contract to us: an authentication provider for sign-in, a payment processor for subscriptions, a cloud hosting provider for the site and the traffic counts above, an e-mail delivery provider for the messages you ask for, and — when you use Willy — an AI processing service, which receives your question and the recent conversation it belongs to in order to answer it, and nothing else about you. The database itself runs on a server TickerWhale operates. Nothing is sold and nothing is shared with data brokers; Meta receives only what the advertising measurement section describes, and nothing at all if you have switched it off.

Contact

Privacy questions and requests: support@tickerwhale.com.