Privacy policy
At TradingBeasts.com we are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This policy explains what information we collect, why we collect it, who it is shared with, how long we keep it and what rights you have.
Who we are
This website is operated by Michal Kuchar (known on this site as Michael Kuchar), Čechovy sady 405, 280 02 Kolín, Czech Republic, IČO 04882881, who is the controller of the personal data described in this policy, except where we state that a third party service acts as its own independent controller. In this policy, "TradingBeasts", "we", "us" and "our" refer to Michal Kuchar as the operator of the website.
You can reach us about anything in this policy at [email protected].
What information we collect
We collect only what we need to run the site. In practice this means:
- Analytics data. Approximate geographic location, language, device type, browser, screen resolution, the pages you view, how you arrived at the site and which outbound links you click.
- Your IP address. This is used to determine the country you are visiting from and to protect the site from abusive traffic, as described below.
- Cookie identifiers. Randomly generated identifiers, such as those set by Google Analytics, that allow a browser to be recognised across visits.
- Your email and message. Only if you choose to contact us.
- Broker reporting data. Statistics and, for some brokers, pseudonymous records about accounts opened through our links. This is described in the section on affiliate links below.
Our legal bases
Under the GDPR we rely on the following legal bases:
| Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Analytics cookies and measurement | Your consent |
| Country detection from your IP address | Legitimate interest in applying restrictions on promoting brokers, primarily to visitors from the UK and the European Economic Area |
| Responding to your email | Legitimate interest in answering your enquiry |
| Verifying commission on referred accounts | Legitimate interest in confirming amounts owed to us by brokers |
| Security and abuse prevention | Legitimate interest in keeping the site available and free of fraudulent traffic |
Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time. Where we rely on legitimate interest, you can object. Both are covered in the rights section below.
Country detection
We use the MaxMind GeoLite2 Country database to determine which country your IP address is associated with. This lookup is carried out locally on our own server using a database file we download from MaxMind, so your IP address is not sent to MaxMind or to any other third party. We determine only the country, never a city, address or household. This product includes GeoLite data created by MaxMind, available from https://www.maxmind.com.
We check the country of every visitor, but we use the result primarily for visitors from the UK and the European Economic Area, where specific rules apply to promoting brokers and where we may limit which broker links are shown or display notices about local rules. Detection based on an IP address is not always accurate, for example when you use a VPN, and this is an aid only. It is not a confirmation that a particular broker, product or promotion is available to you, and you should always check directly with the broker before opening an account.
The detected country is kept on our server for the duration of your visit, linked to the session cookie described in the cookies section below, so that we do not have to repeat the lookup on every page you open. It holds a country only. It does not identify you, and it is not used to recognise you across other websites or to build any kind of profile. When your visit ends it is discarded, and if you return later we simply run the lookup again. We do not keep any record of your previous visits.
Website security and delivery
Our website and our email run on a server we rent from a hosting provider based in Germany. The provider supplies and maintains the server but acts only as our processor, so the data on it stays within the European Union and is handled on our instructions. Like most web servers, ours may keep technical access logs, which can include IP addresses, for a short period for security and troubleshooting purposes.
Our website is delivered through Cloudflare, which sits in front of our server. Every request to the site passes through Cloudflare before it reaches us, which means Cloudflare processes your IP address, the pages you request, your browser and device type and the country you are connecting from. Cloudflare acts as our processor and handles this data on our instructions under its own data processing terms.
We use Cloudflare to keep the site available and to filter automated and abusive traffic. Requests that match our security rules may be blocked or presented with a challenge before the page loads. A sample of request data, including IP addresses, is visible to us in the Cloudflare dashboard for a short period so that we can investigate attacks and false positives. We do not have raw request logging enabled and we do not export or store this data ourselves.
Cloudflare sets its own cookies as part of this, including __cf_bm for bot management and cf_clearance where a challenge has been passed. These are necessary for the security of the site and are set regardless of your cookie choices. You can read how Cloudflare handles this data at https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics 4 to measure how the site is used. Google Analytics uses your IP address to determine your approximate location and to detect spam and bot traffic, then discards it. Your IP address is not logged or stored by Google Analytics. It does set a cookie containing a randomly generated identifier so it can recognise your browser on return visits, and it records the pages you view and the outbound links you click. You can read how Google Analytics handles data at https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11397207.
Analytics is loaded only if you consent to analytics cookies.
Affiliate links and broker reporting
TradingBeasts often, though not always, earns a commission or a fee when visitors open accounts with the brokers we cover. Some links to brokers carry a tag identifying which page on our site the visit came from. When you click one of these links, you leave our site and any information you then provide is collected by that broker under its own privacy policy. We do not receive your name, email address or any account details you give a broker.
Brokers report back to us so that we can verify the commission we are owed. What they report varies:
- Aggregate reporting. Most reporting we receive consists of totals only, such as the number of visits, registrations and deposits per page and per country on a given day. These figures do not identify anyone and cannot be traced back to an individual visitor.
- Pseudonymous reporting. Some brokers also give us records relating to individual accounts. These contain an identifier assigned by the broker, the country, the dates on which the account reached certain stages, and deposit, trading and commission values. They do not contain a name, an email address or any other detail that would let us identify the person, and we have no way of connecting such a record to a visitor to our site. The broker generates this data, not us. We use it only to check the commission due to us.
We do not receive real time notifications of individual conversions, and no broker sends conversion data to our servers.
Contacting us by email
If you email us, we receive your email address, the content of your message and any other details you choose to include. We use them only to deal with your message and any follow up, and we do not add you to any mailing list. Your correspondence stays in our mailbox for as long as it may be relevant to our communication with you, and you can ask us to delete it at any time.
Cookies
We do not set any cookies that record your name, email address or other directly identifying details.
Our own cookies are cookie_consent_level and cookie_consent_user_accepted, which record the choices you make in the cookie banner so that we do not have to ask you again on every page, and PHPSESSID, a session identifier that lets our server keep track of your visit while you are browsing. PHPSESSID holds no personal details and is discarded when you close your browser. The consent cookies last around two months.
Cloudflare sets cf_clearance, and may set __cf_bm, for the security purposes described above.
Google Analytics sets _ga and a second cookie beginning _ga_, which last around thirteen months.
All of our own cookies and the Cloudflare cookies are treated as strictly necessary and are set regardless of the choices you make in the banner. The consent cookies have to exist for your choices to be remembered at all, and the session and security cookies are needed for the site to work and to stay protected. None of them identifies you or follows you across other websites. Everything else loads only with your consent.
How long we keep data
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Google Analytics data | Event data, such as the pages you view and links you click, is kept for 2 months. User level data linked to your cookie identifier is kept for 14 months, and this period restarts each time you visit again. Aggregated statistics that do not identify you may be kept longer |
| Consent preference cookies | Around 2 months |
| Email correspondence | Kept in our mailbox for as long as it may be relevant to our correspondence with you. You can ask us to delete it at any time |
| Cloudflare security and request data | Retained by Cloudflare for up to 7 days for traffic analytics and 24 hours for security event records. We do not store copies of it ourselves |
| Broker reports | Kept in each broker's own system for as long as that broker retains them, which varies from broker to broker. Any report we download is deleted once we have checked it, normally within a few days |
Cookies set by Google are retained according to Google's own policies, linked above.
International transfers
Google and Cloudflare are based outside the European Economic Area, so data they collect or process through this site may be transferred to and processed in other countries, including the United States. Both self certify under the EU US Data Privacy Framework, which the European Commission has recognised as providing an adequate level of protection. Where transfers fall outside that framework, they are covered by the Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission.
Your rights
You have the right to:
- obtain access to the personal data we hold about you
- have inaccurate data corrected
- have your data erased
- restrict how we process your data
- object to processing based on legitimate interest
- receive your data in a portable format
- withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing carried out before you withdrew it
To exercise any of these, contact us at [email protected]. We will respond without undue delay, and in any case within one month.
Please note that where the only data we hold is a pseudonymous identifier assigned by a broker, we may not be able to link a request to a specific record, since we have no way of identifying you from it. In that case we will tell you so, and you can make the request directly to the broker concerned.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. In the Czech Republic this is the Office for Personal Data Protection (Úřad pro ochranu osobních údajů), www.uoou.cz. You may also complain to the authority in your own country of residence.
Changing or withdrawing your consent
You can change your cookie preferences or withdraw your consent at any time by clicking here: Change cookie settings. This reopens the cookie banner, where you can update your choices.
You can also block or delete cookies through your browser. This guide explains how: https://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. Where changes are significant, we will make this clear on the site.
