Privacy

Is Gambling Stupid? is run by TradeHawk HQ, operated by Christopher Fry. TradeHawk HQ decides how your personal data is used and is responsible for it (the “data controller”, in UK and EU terms). You can reach us at hello@isgamblingstupid.com.

• Account: your email address, and your name and profile picture if you sign in with Google.
• Enrollment: your subject number (how you appear in research and anywhere public), an optional nickname, your age confirmation, which versions of these documents you accepted, whether you have withdrawn from research, and whether you asked for findings emails, each with the time.
• Activity: your bets, their results, your credit history, and your answers to the optional questionnaire.
• Technical: sign-in cookies that keep you signed in, and server logs (including IP addresses) kept by our host for security and troubleshooting.
• Abuse protection: to limit sign-in emails and rapid-fire bets, we count requests against one-way fingerprints of your email address and IP address. They can’t be turned back into either, and are deleted after two days.

We don’t use advertising or tracking cookies, and we don’t sell or share your data for advertising. Your unfinished bet slip stays in your own browser.

• To run your account, sign you in and grade your bets.
• To show you your own results and, if you choose, a shareable report.
• For research: your bets, under your subject number, join the published aggregate results unless you withdraw.
• To email you when findings are published, only if you ask. You can stop any time on your account page, and we send nothing else.
• To keep the site secure and fix problems.

Research results are aggregates of every participant who hasn’t withdrawn. Any research figure based on fewer than 10 people is withheld, and we add further protections so that a withheld group can’t be worked out from the others. The methodology has the details. The homepage also shows simple headcounts, such as how many people have joined and how many bets have been placed; these count everyone in the season and say nothing about any one person’s bets. Your email and name are never published. A share link shows your subject number (or your nickname, only if you choose) and your own results, and stops working when you turn it off.

If you live in the UK or the EU, the law asks us to say why we may use your data:

• To run your account and grade your bets: it’s needed to provide the experiment you signed up for.
• To include you in published research: our legitimate interest in running and publishing the experiment you joined. You can object at any time by withdrawing from research on your account page.
• To store your questionnaire answers and send findings emails: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
• To keep the site secure and limit abuse: our legitimate interest in a safe, working service.

• Neon, our database provider, stores the data above.
• Vercel hosts the site and keeps its server logs.
• Resend delivers sign-in emails, so it receives your email address.
• Google handles sign-in if you choose “Continue with Google”.

Our sports data provider receives no personal data. If we add any other service that processes personal data, we’ll list it here first.

These providers store and process data in the United States. For people in the UK and the EU, those transfers rely on the providers’ data processing terms, which include the standard contractual safeguards.

On your account page you can, at any time:

• download everything we hold about you as a file;
• withdraw from research, so you are left out of every research figure from then on;
• leave the season;
• delete your account and all its data.

Aggregate figures already published, and the daily records of them, don’t identify anyone and are not changed afterwards. If you leave a season or delete your account while the season is running, we keep a one-way fingerprint of your email address for that season, so the same address can’t rejoin it with fresh credits. It can’t be turned back into your address.

Depending on where you live, you also have the right to ask us to correct your data, to object to how we use it, and to complain to your data protection authority (in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office). For anything the account page doesn’t cover, write to us.

We keep your data while your account exists, so your results can be compared across seasons. Deleting your account removes it from our database immediately, apart from the fingerprint described above. Copies in our providers’ backups and logs expire on their own schedules, within 30 days.

The experiment is for people 18 or over who are adults where they live. If you believe someone younger has an account, tell us and we’ll delete it.

For any privacy question or request, write to hello@isgamblingstupid.com. If this policy changes, we’ll show the new date here and ask you to accept it when you next join a season.