Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 14, 2026

The Short Version

We're a small business that cares about privacy. We collect the minimum data needed to run your website. We don't sell your data, share it with advertisers, or track you across the internet. The analytics on your TradeForge website are first-party and cookie-free. On our own marketing site (mytradeforge.com) we use Google Analytics to understand visitor traffic — see Section 4.

1. What We Collect

Account Information

When you sign up, we collect your business name, email address, and payment information. Your password is stored hashed, not in plain text.

Content You Upload

We store everything you put into your website: project photos, descriptions, testimonials, hero images, etc. This is your content — we just host it.

Visitor Analytics

When someone visits your TradeForge site, we record anonymous analytics: page URL, referrer, device type, browser, and search terms (when the search engine shares them). We do not use cookies, fingerprinting, or third-party tracking scripts. Visitor identity is derived from a daily hash of IP + User-Agent + date, which can't be reversed.

Lead Submissions

When someone fills out your contact form, their submission (name, email, phone, message) is stored in your tenant database. This is lead data that belongs to you.

Server Logs

Our servers keep standard access logs (IP, timestamp, request) for 14 days for security and debugging. These are not used for analytics or marketing.

2. What We Don't Collect

  • No cookies for tracking or advertising
  • No third-party analytics or ad trackers added to your customer website (no Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, etc.)
  • No cross-site tracking
  • No device fingerprinting
  • No browsing history outside your TradeForge site

3. How We Use Your Data

  • To provide the service: hosting, SSL, email delivery, backups
  • To communicate with you: service updates, billing, support responses, major product changes
  • To improve the product: aggregate usage patterns (e.g., which layouts are popular) — never individual-level
  • For security: detecting abuse, unauthorized access, or malicious activity

We don't send marketing emails unless you explicitly opt in.

4. Third-Party Services

We use a minimal set of third-party services to operate TradeForge:

  • Payment processor (Stripe): handles your billing info. We never store your full credit card number.
  • Hosting provider (InnoScale): runs the servers your site lives on.
  • Let's Encrypt: issues your SSL certificates.
  • Domain registrar: if you buy a domain through us (we may add this later).
  • Google Analytics 4: used only on our public marketing site (mytradeforge.com) to measure visitor traffic. It is never added to customer websites — those use our own first-party, cookieless analytics.

The AI content writer runs on our own self-hosted infrastructure — your prompts and generated content are never sent to OpenAI, Anthropic, or any other third-party AI provider.

5. Data Security

We take reasonable steps to protect your data: encrypted connections (SSL everywhere), hashed passwords, daily backups, isolated tenant containers, and regular security updates. No system is perfectly secure, but we take this seriously.

6. Data Retention

While your account is active, we keep your data indefinitely. If you cancel, we keep it for 30 days in case you come back, then permanently delete it. You can request earlier deletion by emailing privacy@mytradeforge.com.

Anonymous analytics data is aggregated after 90 days and individual records deleted.

7. Your Rights

You can:

  • Access your data: everything you've uploaded is visible and exportable from your admin panel.
  • Correct your data: edit anything anytime through the admin panel.
  • Delete your data: cancel your account or email us to delete immediately.
  • Port your data: export your content in standard formats (JSON, images) to move to another platform.

California, EU, and UK residents have additional rights under CCPA and GDPR. Email privacy@mytradeforge.com to exercise them.

8. Your Site Visitors' Privacy

As a TradeForge customer, you're responsible for your own site's privacy practices toward your visitors. The analytics we provide are privacy-friendly and don't require a cookie banner in most jurisdictions, but you should still have a basic privacy policy on your site if you collect contact form submissions.

9. Children

TradeForge is for businesses, not for children under 13. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 13.

10. Changes to This Policy

If we make material changes to how we handle your data, we'll email you at least 30 days before they take effect.

11. Contact

Privacy questions? Email privacy@mytradeforge.com. We'll respond within 5 business days.