StockAlpha · Updated
Privacy notice
This notice describes how the StockAlpha shoot planner and product waitlist use your information. Course purchases are currently closed; the purchase and sign-in sections apply only if you use an existing course account.
Who is responsible
StockAlpha is the trading name used for this service.
United Kingdom
Use our contact form for support, refund requests or questions about your data.
What we collect and why
- Update requests: your email address, the form you used, the updates you requested and when you signed up. We use these to record your request and send the updates you asked for, based on your consent.
- Purchases: your purchase email, order and payment references, amount, currency and payment/refund status. We use these to deliver and support your purchase and maintain necessary transaction records.
- Course sign-in: your purchase email, hashed sign-in tokens and session expiry times. We use these to authenticate you and protect paid access.
- Support: the email address, topic, message and reference associated with a contact request. We use these to answer questions, handle refunds and respond to privacy requests.
- Security: short-lived request counters keyed to a hash of the client IP address. These help limit abuse. Our hosting and payment providers may also process connection and security logs.
- Destination plans: when you select Find my shoots, your equipment/access answers, starting area, shooting window, time zone, transport, travel allowance, cost and preference are sent to our server to produce the requested recommendations. We do not save these answers in your account or lead record. Optional outing notes stay in your browser and download. Use a town or approximate starting area; a private address is unnecessary.
Providing contact information is optional when you explore the planning tool. An email address is needed to save an update request, reply to a message or recover a course purchase. We do not ask you to upload photographs to use the shoot planner.
Our reasons for using this information
We rely on consent for requested marketing updates; carrying out a contract for purchases and course delivery; and our legitimate interests in responding to enquiries, securing the site and preventing abuse. Necessary transaction records may also be retained to meet applicable legal obligations. Privacy requests are handled to meet those obligations.
We do not sell your personal information. Browsing the shoot planner does not subscribe you to email, and contacting support does not add you to marketing. We do not use the shoot planner to make automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects about you.
Services that handle information
Railway hosts this website and its PostgreSQL database. Waitlist and contact requests are saved there. Resend is our provider for signup contacts and requested emails. Google Workspace handles mail sent to or from our support email address. Open and click tracking are disabled for StockAlpha emails sent through Resend; Stripe is used by the course purchase system when sales are enabled. Course checkout is currently closed. StockAlpha does not store full payment card details.
The current Railway application and database are hosted in its US West region, outside the UK. Provider arrangements and applicable transfer safeguards are being confirmed before the full launch. Ask through our privacy contact form for details.
You can read Resend’s privacy policy and Stripe’s privacy policy. The nearby-subject search uses OpenStreetMap Nominatim to resolve the place you enter, Wikidata for public subject records, and Wikimedia for nearby article coordinates and pageview interest signals. Pixabay library queries are used when that provider is configured. These requests are made by our server, without your email, planner notes or statistics preference. Following a research source link takes you to a separate website with its own practices.
Cookies and browser storage
Signing in sets a cookie named stockalpha_course_session. It keeps you signed in for up to seven days and is removed when you sign out. It is used for course access and cannot be read by normal page scripts.
The application does not include advertising trackers or visitor identifier cookies. If you turn usage statistics off, a cookie named stockalpha_stats remembers that choice for up to one year. It contains only the preference, not a visitor identifier. The shoot planner’s filters stay in page memory. When you save an idea, its brief ID is stored in this browser under stockalpha.shortlist.v1. This list is not sent to our servers or linked to your email. It stays on this website address in this browser until you remove the ideas or clear site data. Browser/private-mode settings can also remove or block it. A shortlist backup is a file you choose to download and import; it contains brief IDs. There is no account or automatic device sync. When you choose Save this plan in the personalised planner, your equipment, time, experience, selected settings, participants, interests, brief ID and optional notes are stored under stockalpha.personal-plan.v1. It keeps one personal plan in this browser until you replace it, remove it or clear site data. In the Home and arranged shoots route, these answers and notes are not sent to our server or linked to your email. In the Destination and opportunities route, the planning answers are processed by our server when you request recommendations, as described above. Save this destination plan stores one chosen shoot, your answers, sources and optional notes under stockalpha.trip-plan.v1, separately from the home plan. It stays until you replace or remove it or clear site data; there is no automatic account or device sync. Unsaved changes stay in the current tab. Neither route uploads photographs. Google Maps receives the starting and destination coordinates and travel mode only if you follow a route link. The separate nearby-subject search also sends the place you enter to our server. Stripe’s hosted checkout may use its own cookies under its privacy policy.
Usage statistics and your choice
We collect daily counts to understand which public pages are useful, whether people use the planning tools, click the published resource downloads, or follow links to the waitlist. These counts help us improve the website and signup journey. The counters contain a public page path, a fixed traffic-source label, an approved campaign label, an action name and a total for the UTC day. We do not store visitor IDs, browsing histories, raw referrer URLs, full query strings, entered places, planner answers, notes or email addresses in these counters. These counters do not support advertising attribution or cross-site profiling.
Traffic labels come from recognised referring sites or approved campaign tags. The label is kept in page memory for the current document and is not saved as a visitor profile. A first product signup can add a counter after the request has been committed; repeat submissions are not counted as new product signups. Your email request is stored separately so we can honour it even when statistics are off.
Counts omit supported browser privacy signals, recognised bots and browsers that opt out. Visits are document entries rather than unique people; repeated actions can count more than once. We keep daily aggregate totals for one year and remove older totals during statistics processing. Short-lived abuse counters use an IP hash to limit requests; they are not linked to statistics.
Usage counts help us improve StockAlpha. How statistics work.
Turning statistics off affects future counts in this browser and does not affect the planning tools, your saved plans or your email preferences. We also honour Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control when they are available to the browser or sent with the request.
Archive worksheets and preparation calculator
The archive, travel, nature and portfolio worksheets are files you download and edit on your own device. They do not send your entries or photographs to StockAlpha. The preparation cost calculator uses the figures you enter in the current page’s memory; it does not save them or send them to our server. Reloading clears the figures. Aggregate page and allowed resource-download counts, when enabled, remain separate from worksheet contents and calculator inputs.
Agency referral links
Some guides contain advertising links, marked “Ad”, to stock agencies. StockAlpha earns a commission or referral payment when the stated agency conditions are met. Following one of these links takes you to the agency, which may use its own referral cookies and process your visit under its privacy policy. We do not add your email or a visitor identifier to these links, and our aggregate statistics do not record external referral clicks or match them to your signup.
How long information is needed
Signup requests are kept while needed for the updates you requested, unless you withdraw the request or the purpose ends. Order records are needed while we provide purchased access and for any applicable accounting, refund or dispute obligations. Support records are kept while handling the request and any related complaint or dispute. These records are managed separately from provider contact lists and backups.
Destination lookup responses, including the entered area and resolved location, are cached in bounded server memory for up to one hour to reduce repeated provider requests. They are not a saved trip history. Optional free-library count responses are cached for up to 24 hours. The destination planner does not log the request body. Sign-in links expire after 15 minutes and sessions after seven days. Expired token records are removed during subsequent sign-in requests. Rate-limit counters expire after their short request window and are cleared during subsequent checks. Expiry and deletion from storage are separate events.
Your choices and rights
You can withdraw consent for marketing at any time using the unsubscribe link in an update email or by submitting an email-preference request. Existing unsubscribe preferences are not automatically reversed when you submit another signup. Withdrawing marketing consent does not cancel a course purchase or necessary access emails.
Depending on applicable law, you may ask to access, correct, delete, restrict or obtain a copy of your information. You may object to direct marketing at any time and to processing based on legitimate interests where applicable. We may need to verify your identity before changing or disclosing records. Some information may need to be retained to meet a legal obligation or resolve a claim.
You can complain to the data protection authority in your country. For UK data protection concerns, information is available from the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Changes to this notice
The date above identifies this version. If we introduce a materially different use of personal information, we will explain it before that use and seek consent where required.