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Privacy Policy

Last updated August 14, 2026 · Beta

Thesis is built on a simple privacy premise: we can only mishandle data we don't collect, so we collect very little. No ads, no data sales, no tracking pixels, no third-party analytics, and — importantly for a finance app — no financial data at all: we never know what you own, what you're worth, or what you trade.

1. What we collect

An account, a watchlist, and a short list of in-app research actions. That's the whole list.

  • Account: handle, display name, and a password we store only as a salted bcrypt hash. No email or phone number is required in the beta.
  • Watchlist: the symbols you choose to follow.
  • Research activity: timestamped events from a fixed list — opening the app, viewing an asset, running a search (we log that you searched, not what you typed), reading the brief, viewing your recap, adding to your watchlist.
  • Friend graph: which accounts you're connected to, and your invite code.
  • Shared research profile (off by default): you can generate a link that shows your own research — statistics first, and the full list of what you’ve read to anyone who signs up through it. It doesn’t exist until you create it, isn’t discoverable from your handle, exposes only you and never a friend, never includes your notes, and stops working the moment you revoke it.
  • Packs and notes: the lists and private notes you create. Notes are always private to you. A pack is private by default; if you set one to friends or public, its name, description, assets and your display name become visible to that audience until you change it back or delete it.
  • Session cookie: one httpOnly cookie that keeps you signed in. No advertising or cross-site cookies.

We do not collect: holdings, balances, transactions, brokerage links, contacts, location, device fingerprints, or browsing outside the app.

2. How your activity is used

To run your own features, and — only if you opt in — to power aggregate stats about your friends that can't be traced back to you.

  • For you: your streak, weekly recap, and personal stats are computed from your own events.
  • For your friends (opt-in): if you enable sharing, your events feed aggregate insights like “3 of your friends read up on NVDA.” Aggregates only appear when at least 3 of your friends are sharing, and any count shown covers at least 2 people — so a specific stat can't be pinned on a specific person. We never show individuals' viewing history, and there is no way to see “what did @sam look at.”
  • Sample group: before enough of your friends have joined and opted in, the app shows a synthetic “sample group” clearly labeled as sample everywhere it appears. It is generated data about fictional people, never presented as anyone you know — no real person's activity is ever behind a sample badge, and no sample row is ever described as a friend of yours.

You choose sharing on or off at signup, and can change it anytime in settings. Turning it off takes effect immediately.

3. What leaves our servers

Market-data requests go to data providers without your identity. Nothing about you is sold or shared with advertisers — there are none.

To show quotes and headlines, our server calls market-data sources (Yahoo Finance endpoints, CoinGecko, alternative.me, public news feeds). Those requests carry the symbol being looked up, not your identity. We don't sell, rent, or trade personal data with anyone. We would disclose data only if legally compelled, and there's very little to disclose.

4. Retention and deletion

Delete your account in settings and everything goes with it, immediately.

Your data is kept while your account exists. Deleting your account erases your profile, watchlist, events, invites, and friend links from the production database immediately (cascade delete, no soft-delete limbo). Aggregates already shown to friends aren't retroactively recomputed, but they never contained your identity in the first place. Routine encrypted backups, where used by our hosting provider, expire on the provider's schedule.

5. Security

Passwords are bcrypt-hashed, sessions are random 256-bit tokens in httpOnly cookies, and the app runs over HTTPS in production. It's a beta run by a small team, not a bank — which is one more reason we deliberately hold no financial data worth stealing.

6. Age

Thesis is for adults 18+. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 18; if that happens, tell us and we'll delete the account.

7. Changes & contact

If this policy changes materially, we'll say so in the app before the change applies. Questions or data requests: the contact option on the About page.