Privacy Policy

StockMates is a trading name of Intelitrade Ltd ("we", "us", "our") (company registration number 17447548), registered at 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom. Intelitrade Ltd is the data controller for the personal information described in this policy.

stockmates.ai is a fantasy stock trading game: you configure an AI trading agent ("AI Mate") that trades a virtual portfolio on your behalf in one or more games, using real market data but no real money at stake unless you win a cash prize. This policy describes the data we collect to run that service, including your account, your virtual trading activity, and — for winners — the payout details needed to pay out a cash prize.

Your AI Mate's trading decisions are generated automatically (see Data Sharing, below) and directly determine your leaderboard position and eligibility for a cash prize — the trades your Mate makes are not reviewed or approved by a person before they're applied to your portfolio. Your final result and any prize are separate from this. You can ask for a person to review your result by contacting legals@stockmates.ai within 7 days of the game closing (see our Terms of Use, Section 8.D).

We collect the following categories of personal information:

• Account information — your name, email address, and password (stored securely by our authentication provider, Google Firebase Authentication — we never see or store your raw password). We also collect your player name at sign-up. Your player name is a name you choose; it does not have to be your real name. We also collect your country (to confirm you are eligible to play, since the Services are UK only), your date of birth (to confirm you are 18 or over), and your gender, all at sign-up.
• Optional contact details: a phone number and/or postal address you can choose to add from your Profile page at any time. Neither is required to sign up, play, or receive a prize, and both are separate from the UK bank details collected specifically for a payout, below.
• Game and trading activity — which games you've joined, your AI Mate's configuration (aggressiveness, risk tolerance, position size, stop loss, take profit, sector focus), your virtual portfolio's positions, cash balance, and trade history within each game.
• Payout details: if you win a cash prize, the UK bank details (account holder name, account number, sort code, and billing address) you submit from your Account page so we can pay your winnings by bank transfer. We only ask for these when you request a cash-out, never at sign-up or when you join a game.
• ID verification documents — if you request a cash-out, the passport or driving licence image you upload for identity verification (see our Terms of Use, Section 8). These documents are reviewed manually by the small team responsible for approving payouts, to check your name, that you are 18 or over, and that you have a UK address. Once that check is complete, we delete the document image itself and keep only a record that the check was passed (or, if rejected, that it was not), for fraud-prevention and audit purposes in line with standard UK financial record-keeping practice. Access to documents still under review is restricted to that team.
• Technical data — IP address, browser type, device information, and general usage behaviour on our site, collected automatically as you use the Services.

We use the personal information we collect for the following purposes, each with the lawful basis shown under UK data protection law:

• Creating and running your account and games — including having your AI Mate make trading decisions on your behalf and updating your portfolio and the leaderboard accordingly. Lawful basis: contract (necessary to provide the Services you signed up for).
• Collecting your gender for our own internal reporting on who uses StockMates. Lawful basis: consent — given at sign-up. Providing your gender is required to complete sign-up today; you can contact us at legals@stockmates.ai with any questions about this.
• Verifying and paying out cash prizes you've won, including anti-fraud checks on payout requests. Lawful basis: contract and legal obligation (our financial and anti-fraud record-keeping duties).
• Showing your player name on public leaderboards and, for prize winners, on the Hall of Fame, to show that prizes are genuinely awarded. Lawful basis: legitimate interests. You can object by contacting legals@stockmates.ai.
• Improving our AI Mates using trading data. Lawful basis: legitimate interests. When you deactivate your account, your direct identity fields (name, country, date of birth, gender, contact phone number, postal address) are deleted, pseudonymising this data; your email address and player name are kept alongside it, for the reasons given in Data Retention below.
• Sending transactional emails about your account and games, such as trade notifications, game start reminders, and prize confirmations. Lawful basis: contract.
• Security and error monitoring via Sentry, to detect and fix bugs and keep the Services running reliably and securely. Lawful basis: legitimate interests.
• Providing live chat support via Tawk.to, on our public pages only (never on a page you have to sign in to see). Lawful basis: consent — only if you accept Live Chat cookies in our cookie banner. See our Cookie Policy for details.
• Sending optional marketing updates about StockMates. Lawful basis: consent — only where you've given it. You may withdraw this consent at any time by contacting us at legals@stockmates.ai, or by managing your notification preferences from your Account page.
• Showing advertising on our public blog pages via Google AdSense and Adsterra. Lawful basis: consent — this only happens if you accept Marketing cookies in our cookie banner; declining means neither network ever loads for you, and advertising is never shown on any page you have to sign in to see. You can withdraw this consent at any time using the "Manage Cookie Preferences" button on our Cookie Policy page. See that page for what data each network collects and your opt-out options with them directly.

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only with the following categories of trusted third-party providers, solely to deliver the Services:

• Google Firebase (Google Cloud) — hosts our application, database, authentication, and file storage.
• Anthropic — your AI Mate's trading decisions are generated by Anthropic's Claude AI model. To do this, we send Anthropic the trading-relevant data needed to make a decision (your Mate's configuration, your portfolio's current state, and relevant market data) — we do not send Anthropic your name, email address, or payout details.
• Alpaca — provides the real market price data used to run each game.
• Our business bank: we do not use a payment gateway. We pay prizes by bank transfer from our business bank account, so your payee details (account holder name, account number, sort code) are entered into our online banking to send the transfer.
• Sentry — error-monitoring, used to detect and fix bugs in the Services.
• Tawk.to — live chat support, used on our public pages only (never on any page you have to sign in to see).
• Google AdSense (Google Ireland Limited / Google LLC) and Adsterra — advertising networks, only active on our public blog pages (never on any page you have to sign in to see), and only if you accept Marketing cookies in our cookie banner. See our Cookie Policy for what each network collects and how to opt out.

We may also disclose personal data where required by law, for example to comply with a court order or to prevent fraud.

Some of the providers listed in Data Sharing, above, process personal data outside the UK and European Economic Area (EEA). Where this happens, we put in place a recognised legal safeguard before any transfer takes place.

• Anthropic is based in the United States. Data sent to Anthropic to generate your AI Mate's trading decisions is transferred under the UK International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA), or the UK-approved Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs), as appropriate.
• Google AdSense and Adsterra, the advertising networks described in Data Sharing above, may process data outside the UK/EEA when you accept Marketing cookies on our blog pages. Google participates in the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and UK Extension to it as its transfer safeguard.

Where a future provider we use is based outside the UK/EEA, we will update this section to name them and the safeguard used before any such transfer begins.

We take the security of your personal data seriously and have put in place appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect it from unauthorised access, loss, misuse, or disclosure. Our services are hosted on Google Firebase's secure infrastructure, and sensitive data is encrypted both in transit and at rest.

Whilst we take all reasonable steps to safeguard your data, no system is entirely free from risk. If you believe your data has been compromised in any way, please contact us immediately at legals@stockmates.ai.

For details on how we notify you in the event of a data breach, see our Terms of Use, Section 16, Data Breach Notification.

We retain different categories of data for the following specific periods:

• Account information: retained for as long as your account remains active. Upon account deactivation, your name, country, date of birth, gender, contact phone number, postal address and profile photo are permanently deleted, pseudonymising your account. Your email address and player name are kept for 6 years from the date of deactivation, so that if you contact us, or we need to contact you (for example about a past prize, a dispute, or a legal request), we can identify your account and respond correctly, and so that past leaderboard results and Hall of Fame entries remain genuine and traceable rather than silently orphaned for that period. After 6 years, we delete them too.
• Trading data: your trade history, leaderboard results and AI Mate configurations are kept for as long as they remain useful to us for this specific purpose: our AI Mates learn from patterns across trades and market conditions that can take several years to recur (for example, comparing how a trading signal performed in different market cycles), so this data is not deleted on a fixed schedule. You can still ask us to delete it at any time by contacting legals@stockmates.ai, and we will do so unless we have an overriding reason to keep it (such as an ongoing legal or regulatory requirement) — tied to your account and player name, even after you deactivate your account, for this purpose and for the platform's own record-keeping. We review whether this data is still useful for improving our AI Mates at least once a year, and delete data that is no longer needed. Your direct identity fields (name, country, date of birth, gender, contact phone number, postal address) are deleted on deactivation, as described above; your email address and player name are kept for the same 6-year period described above, so this data is pseudonymised rather than fully anonymised until then.
• Payout records: we keep a record of each payout (your name, the amount, the date and a reference) for 6 years for tax and audit purposes.
• Bank details: after your prize has been paid we promptly delete your full account number, account holder name and billing address from our database. We keep only your sort code and the last four digits of your account number, together with the payout record, for 6 years to deal with any payment queries or claims. Lawful basis: legitimate interests (defending against legal claims). Our bank also keeps a record of the transfer under its own legal duties, and we keep bank statements for 6 years for tax and audit purposes.
• ID verification documents — the document image itself is deleted once your identity check is complete (see above). We keep only a record of the outcome (passed or not), retained securely for 6 years after the verification request, for our financial auditing, tax tracking, and fraud-prevention record-keeping obligations.

StockMates is only for people aged 18 or over. We check your date of birth when you sign up, and again before paying any prize. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18.

If we find that someone under 18 has signed up, we will close their account and delete their personal data. If you think a child has used StockMates, please contact legals@stockmates.ai.

Under UK data protection law, you have a number of rights in relation to your personal data. You have the right to access the information we hold about you, to have any inaccuracies corrected, and to request deletion of your data where there is no compelling reason for us to continue holding it.

You also have the right to restrict or object to how we process your data, and to request that we transfer your information to another organisation. To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at legals@stockmates.ai. If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at www.ico.org.uk.

You can exercise your right to have your data deleted yourself at any time by deactivating your account from the Danger Zone section of your Profile page — this permanently deletes your name, country, date of birth, gender, contact phone number, postal address and profile photo, pseudonymising your account, and signs you out of every device immediately, without needing to contact us first. As described in Data Retention above, your email address and player name are kept for 6 years from deactivation rather than deleted immediately, and your trade history and leaderboard results are kept unless you ask us to delete them (see Data Retention above); contact legals@stockmates.ai and we will assess your request and reply within one month.

We have the right to update this Privacy Policy at any time, to reflect changes in the law, our business practices, or the services we offer. When we do so, we will revise the date shown at the top of this page.

We encourage you to review this policy periodically. Where changes are significant, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you directly.