Privacy Policy

1. Summary

• We collect the minimum information needed to run a subscription product: an email address, billing metadata from Stripe, and basic server logs.
• We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for behavioral advertising.
• Market data shown on the Service is built from publicly available sources: posts on X (Twitter) and StockTwits, SEC filings, congressional disclosures, analyst ratings, options flow, earnings reports, and public price data. We don't pull anything private.
• The Service is informational only. It is not financial advice, and we are not a broker-dealer, investment adviser, or financial planner. See our Terms of Service for the full disclosure.

2. Information we collect

Information you give us

• Account credentials. You may sign in via Google Sign-In (which passes us your verified email, display name, and profile photo URL) or via a passwordless magic link sent to your email address. We do not see your Google password and we do not store passwords of any kind.
• Date of birth. At signup we collect your date of birth so we can confirm you are at least 18 years old. We store the date you submitted along with the timestamp at which you cleared the age check, so we can demonstrate compliance with our minimum-age requirement. We do not share your date of birth with third parties.
• Subscription email. When you subscribe, Stripe shares the email you used at checkout so we can grant access and contact you about your subscription.
• Portfolio and watchlist selections. If you use the Portfolio or Watchlist features, we store the tickers and investors you choose to track, associated with your account email.
• Search input. When you submit a handle, ticker, or URL through the search box, we use that input to fetch the corresponding public data.
• Support correspondence. If you contact us by email, we keep the message and reply.

Information Stripe collects on our behalf

Payments are processed by Stripe, Inc. We do not see or store your full card number, CVV, or bank credentials. Stripe sends us a customer ID, subscription status, and the email used at checkout. Stripe's own privacy practices apply to their handling of your payment information.

Information we collect automatically

• Server logs. Standard request logs (timestamp, request path, response code, IP address, user agent) for security, debugging, and abuse prevention. Logs are short-lived.
• Access cookie. A single signed cookie ("ot_access") that carries your subscriber email so we don't have to ask you to log in on every page. The cookie is signed with a server-side secret; it is not a tracking cookie and is not shared with third parties.

Information we do not collect

• We do not run third-party advertising trackers, fingerprinting scripts, or social-media pixels. We use Mixpanel for product analytics (page views, feature usage) to improve the Service; Mixpanel does not serve ads and is not used for behavioral targeting.
• We do not collect government IDs, brokerage logins, account numbers, holdings, or trading activity.
• We do not request location data.

3. Public information about analyzed accounts and market data

Podchat aggregates publicly available data from multiple sources. This includes: publicly filed SEC documents (13F institutional holdings, Form 4 insider transactions), congressional stock-trade disclosures (STOCK Act), analyst ratings and price targets, options-flow data, earnings reports, and publicly available price data. We process this data using automated extraction and classification systems, including large language models.

Social media content used by the Service is, by its nature, already public. We treat the underlying post text, timestamps, linked tickers, and resulting analysis as factual reporting of public statements and public filings. We do not claim copyright over original posts or filings. Public figures appearing on the Service (X creators, institutional filers, analysts, insiders, or members of Congress) are not customers of Podchat merely by virtue of having data displayed. An analyzed X creator can request removal at any time. See Section 9.

4. How we use information

• Provision access to the Service and the leaderboard / per-creator views.
• Process payments and manage subscriptions through Stripe.
• Send transactional emails (receipts, password-reset analogues, security notices, material policy changes).
• Monitor and protect the Service from abuse, fraud, and unauthorized access.
• Improve the Service. Debugging, capacity planning, performance optimization.
• Comply with applicable law and respond to legal requests.

We do not use your personal information to train large language models or to sell to data brokers.

5. Third-party processors

We rely on a set of vendors to operate the Service. Each receives only the information needed to perform its function.

• Resend. Sends transactional sign-in emails (including magic links) on our behalf. Resend's Privacy Policy applies.
• Stripe, Inc.. Subscription billing. We do not see or store your full card number, CVV, or bank credentials.
• Google Cloud. Hosting, storage, and scheduling.
• Mixpanel, Inc.. Product analytics (page views, feature usage) to improve the Service. Mixpanel's Privacy Policy applies. No data is shared with Mixpanel for advertising purposes.
• Market-data and AI providers. We source public market and company data from third-party financial-data providers and use automated and AI/ML services to classify, grade, and summarize it. These services receive only public market data, never your personal information.

6. Cookies

We use a single first-party cookie, "ot_access", to maintain your signed-in subscription state. The cookie is signed (HMAC) with a server-side secret, does not contain tracking identifiers, and is not shared with third parties. We use Mixpanel for product analytics; Mixpanel may set its own first-party cookies to distinguish unique users and sessions. We do not use advertising cookies.

7. Data retention

• Subscriber email and subscription status are retained for as long as your account is active and for up to 24 months afterward for tax, billing, and dispute purposes.
• Server logs are retained for up to 30 days.
• Cached analyses of public X accounts may be retained indefinitely as part of the Service's research corpus; on request from the analyzed account holder, we will remove or anonymize their profile within a reasonable time.

8. Security

We use industry-standard practices to protect the Service: TLS in transit, encrypted storage at rest via Google Cloud, least-privilege access controls, and signed session cookies. No method of electronic storage or transmission is perfectly secure; we cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, port, delete, or restrict the processing of your personal information, and to object to certain uses. To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@checkearningsiq.com. We will respond within a reasonable time and may need to verify your identity.

If you are an analyzed creator and would like your profile removed from the Service, email privacy@checkearningsiq.com from the email on your X account (or DM us from that handle), and we will remove your cached analysis within 7 business days.

You can cancel your subscription at any time from the Stripe billing portal linked from the leaderboard page.

10. Children's privacy

The Service is not intended for individuals under 16 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a minor has provided us information, contact us and we will delete it.

11. International users

The Service is operated from the United States. If you access the Service from another jurisdiction, you understand that your information will be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States. Where required by law, we rely on appropriate transfer mechanisms.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be announced on the Service and, where appropriate, by email at least 7 days before they take effect. The "Effective" date at the top of this page reflects the latest version.

13. Contact

Questions about this policy? Email privacy@checkearningsiq.com.