Privacy policy

1.1This policy covers the public pages of Market Watch.

1.2It sets out what the site records, what it does not record, and how long anything is kept.

2.1When a page is opened, we add one to a tally. The entire record is the path of the page, the date in Maldives time, and a number. For example: /company/BML, that day, 143.

2.2Your address on the network is not stored. Nothing is written to your browser to recognise you by, and no identifier of any kind is attached to the tally.

2.3The tally cannot tell us who visited, what any one person read, or whether the same reader came back. It tells us which pages are worth writing more of, and that is all it is for. How many separate browsers visited is a different record, described in article 3.

2.4Because nothing distinguishes one caller from another, these numbers include automated traffic. We read them as a rough sense of interest rather than as an audience figure.

3.1Besides the tally, we count how many different browsers open the site each day. The tally cannot tell one caller from another, so this needs a second record, kept as thin as the first.

3.2For each day there is a random key, made when the day begins and deleted when it ends. When you open a page, your network address and the kind of browser it reports — Safari on an iPhone, Chrome on Windows — are run through a one-way hash together with that day's key, and the result is kept once for the day. The address is not written anywhere, and nothing more precise than the kind of browser goes into the hash.

3.3The result cannot be turned back into an address. Once the day's key has been deleted it cannot be produced again by anybody, including us, so a row from one day cannot be matched to a caller on another. The record can say how many different browsers visited on a given day. It cannot say which, what any of them read, or whether a browser seen today is one seen yesterday.

3.4It is a count of browsers, not of people. Two people on one connection with the same kind of browser count once; one person on two devices counts twice; and like the tally it includes automated traffic. We read it as a rough size of the readership rather than as a census of it.

4.1The newsroom can see how many tabs have the site open at this moment. That needs something neither record above can give, which is a way to tell one open tab from another right now, so there is a third and deliberately thin record.

4.2While a page is open, the tab makes a random identifier for itself and reports that it is still there every twenty seconds. That identifier lives in the tab's memory only. It is never written to a cookie, to local storage, or anywhere else on your device. Closing the tab ends it, and opening the site again makes a fresh one that cannot be joined to the last.

4.3On our side it is held in memory and never written to the database: a list of identifiers, and the last time each was heard from. An entry is discarded a minute after a tab goes quiet, and the whole list is lost whenever the server restarts.

4.4No page, no address and no browser details travel with it. It can count how many tabs are open. It can never say whose, or what is being read in them.

5.1If you switch between the light and the dark theme, that choice is saved in your own browser's local storage so the site does not forget it between visits. It stays on your device, is never sent to us, and clearing your browser data removes it.

5.2No cookie is set for readers. The one cookie this site can issue signs a member of staff in to the administration area. If you have never been given an account, it is never set for you.

6.1No analytics service, advertising network, social widget or tracking pixel is embedded in these pages. Nothing loads from another company's server as you read.

6.2Sponsor images are hosted by us. A sponsor learns nothing about you unless you choose to click one.

6.3Links out, including links to the exchange, are ordinary links. Once you follow one you are on that site's terms and its privacy policy rather than ours.

7.1The site runs on infrastructure operated by a hosting provider, which may keep the standard technical logs that every web server keeps, typically including network addresses, for reliability, security and the prevention of abuse.

7.2Those logs belong to the provider and are kept under the provider's own retention policy. We do not use them to analyse readers, and nothing in them is combined with the page counts in article 2.

8.1A staff account holds a name, an email address and a password. The password is stored only as a hash and cannot be read back by anybody, including us.

8.2Signing in creates a session, recorded as a hash of an opaque token, which is deleted when that person signs out.

8.3Editorial actions are recorded against the person who took them, so that changes to what the site publishes have an author. This applies to staff and not to readers.

9.1This site is written for a general audience and is not directed at children. It collects nothing from anyone, of any age.

10.1Because the site holds nothing that identifies a reader, there is in almost every case nothing for us to give you a copy of, to correct, or to delete.

10.2If you believe we hold something about you, write to the publisher at the address at the foot of this page and we will look.

11.1If what the site records ever changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top moves.

11.2Anything materially different from the opening paragraph would be said plainly, rather than slipped into a clause.

12.1Questions about this policy, or about anything the site holds, go to the publisher at the address at the foot of this page. In most cases the honest answer is that we hold nothing about you to give.

12.2The terms on which the site is published are set out in our terms of use.