Privacy Policy

Effective: December 5, 2024

Thank you for visiting https://seekingalpha.com or using our app (together: the "Site"), both operated by Seeking Alpha.

We are committed to protecting your privacy. This privacy policy ("Privacy Policy") describes our practices with respect to the collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains:

  1. Who are we

  2. Personal information we collect

  3. How we use personal information 

  4. Personal information we disclose  

  5. Cookies and other tracking technologies

  6. Children's Privacy 

  7. Security 

  8. U.S. data subjects’ privacy rights 

  9. European privacy information 

  10. Israel's privacy information 

  11. Updates to this privacy policy

  12. How to contact us 

1. Introduction

Seeking Alpha is a crowd-sourced content service website for financial markets. Our products and services empower investors to make the best investing decisions by leveraging our independent and balanced stock research, fundamental analysis tools, news and market data.

For more information about us, please see the “About Seeking Alpha” section of our Site at https://about.seekingalpha.com/.

2. Personal Information Seeking Alpha Collects

When you visit our Site or register for our products and services (including as a subscriber or an analyst), Seeking Alpha collects personal information about you. We use this personal information to provide you with our products and services and market our products and services and those of third parties. This includes enabling customization of content on our site.

You are not obligated to provide us with any personal information, but without it, we will not be able to provide you with the full range of our services and products which may adversely impact your user experience.

The table below describes the categories of personal information we collect from users and visitors to our Site and the ways in which we collect this personal information: 

Personal Information Description

Sources

Identifiers: This includes, for example, your name, nickname, username, email address, phone number, postal address (including ZIP code), internet protocol address, device identifiers, cookies, or other identifiers that we or others have assigned to uniquely identify you.

We obtain this information when you provide it to us or otherwise automatically in the course of your interactions with our products and services.

We may also obtain this information from service providers with whom we engage.

Demographic information / Characteristics of protected classifications under U.S state or federal law: This includes information such as age (including date of birth).

We may obtain this information when you provide it to us or upon registering as an analyst on our Site.

Commercial Information: This includes Stocks, ETFs and other securities you include in your Seeking Alpha portfolio, list of authors you follow, broker information, payment information (for example, bank account details, to enable payments to you when you register as an analyst).

We obtain this information directly from you or otherwise automatically in the course of your interactions with our products and services or from third-party vendors who provide us services.

Internet or other electronic network activity information: This includes, for example, device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, device configuration, your interactions with our Site and preferred language used to display our Site.

We obtain this information automatically in the course of your interactions with our products and services.

Geo-location data: This includes your country location (based on your IP address).

We obtain this information when you provide it to us or otherwise automatically in the course of your interactions with our products and services.

Audio, Video and other Electronic Data: This includes information we collect via audio, video, photos, recording, electronic engagement, visual or similar information and any information provided by an interaction that you may have with us or with other users (such as for customer service purposes) as well as your profile photo. It also includes any information you submit in forums, chat, comments or message boards, and feedback, review or testimonials you provide about our products and/or services.

We obtain this information when you provide it to us or otherwise automatically in the course of your interactions with our products and services, and also by attending our events or third-party events we participate in.

Professional or employment-related information: This includes your job title, education information, CFA status, and other biographical information including professional interests, experience and areas of expertise.

We obtain this information when you provide it to us upon registering as an analyst.

Profiles and Inferences: This includes inferences drawn from any of the information identified above to create a profile reflecting preferences, characteristics, predispositions, behaviour, and attitudes.

We obtain this information automatically in the course of your interactions with our site.

As mentioned, we collect personal information from service providers who provide services to us or on our behalf such as those used to fulfil orders, process your payments, verify your information, monitor activity on our products and services, provide analysis and analytics, maintain databases, administer and monitor emails, administer and send mobile messages, serve ads (including through the use of Meta, Google and other platforms) and provide consulting services.

For EU specific information on the categories of data we collect for each purpose, and our legal basis for doing so, please see section 9 below.

3.  How Seeking Alpha Uses Personal Information 

We use personal information collected for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy and/or disclosed to you in connection with our products and services. For example, we may use your information to:

  • Create your account.

  • Provide and deliver the products and/or services you request.

  • Send you service-related information updates, alerts, and/or support and/or administrative messages.

  • Send you marketing communications and enable customized content such as articles and news about the stocks you wish to follow, and/or articles by authors you follow.

  • Send you marketing materials that promote third parties we collaborate with.

  • Respond to your inquiries.

  • Enable you to send and receive messages to us and to other registered users and analysts and post comments, reviews, and other feedback.

  • Carry out analytics and improve the quality and relevance of our Site.

  • Survey your opinions such as through surveys or questionnaires.

  • Conduct advertising using Meta, Google and other platforms to serve relevant ads to you and to other potential subscribers, measure the effectiveness of advertising, and improve ad delivery and customization. 

  • Protect the integrity of our products and/or services and/or enforce our Terms of Use and other applicable terms, including to detect and prevent fraud and unauthorized activities, to ensure the security of our systems, products and services, and prevent activities that may violate our policies. 

  • Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent or illegal activity, and prosecute those responsible for that activity.

  • We may use personal information we collect from or about you to create aggregated or de-identified data that does not specifically identify you. 

If you do not wish to receive promotional communications or to be a part of our marketing efforts, you may notify us at any time by sending an email to privacy@seekingalpha.com or adjusting your preferences in your account settings.

4. Personal Information Seeking Alpha Discloses 

We share personal information with our subsidiaries who help us to provide you with products and services.

We also share personal information with third parties for the business purposes of providing our products and services, marketing our products and services and third party products and services to existing and potential users and serve ads on various platforms on our behalf (including Meta, Google and other platforms). 

The categories of these third parties with whom we share personal information include, but are not limited to:

  • Hosting and infrastructure providers, such as AWS. 

  • Email service providers, e.g. Sailthru.

  • Advertising partners, such as Meta.

  • Payment processors, e.g. Stripe.

  • Customer relationship management system like HubSpot.

We may also share personal information with the following:

  • Competent law enforcement bodies, regulators, government agencies, courts and/or other third parties where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, (ii) to exercise, establish and/or defend our legal rights, and/or (iii) to protect your vital interests and/or those of any other person(s), (iv) to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, cybersecurity threats, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person and violations of this policy, (v) cooperate with governmental requests.

  • Actual and/or potential buyers (and/or their agents and/or advisers) in connection with any actual or proposed purchase, merger or acquisition of any part of our business, provided that we inform the buyer it must use your personal information only for the purposes disclosed in this Privacy Policy.

  • Other parties where you have given your consent.

  • With respect to our users in the U.S.- in the preceding 12 months, we have disclosed the following categories of personal information described above for the business purposes described in this Privacy Policy:

    • Identifiers such as those set forth above.

    • Internet and/or other electronic network activity information.

    • Demographic information / Protected Classification Characteristics.

    • Commercial Information.

    • Geo-location data.

    • Audio, Video and/or other Electronic Data.

    • Professional or employment-related information; and

    • Profiles and Inferences.

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020, (CCPA), "sale" is defined very broadly and includes a wide array of data sharing. As the term is defined by the CCPA, we conclude that we do not "sell" your personal information.

5. Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies

We use cookies (small blocks of data created by a website and placed on your computer or device by your web browser) and similar tracking technology (e.g. web beacons) on our website and marketing emails to collect personal information about you, perform device fingerprinting and also:

  • Make sure our Site functions as it should.

  • Recognize you when you return to the Site.

  • Understand how you arrived at our Site and used it.

  • Present you with customized options relating to your interests, based on your previous use of the Site.

  • Create aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so we can offer better Site experiences and tools in the future.

You can read more about cookies in our cookie notice here: https://seekingalpha.com/page/cookie-notice

6. Children's Privacy

In accordance with our Terms of Use, the Site is not designed for use by individuals under the age of 18. Accordingly, we do not intend to or knowingly collect personal information from anyone we know to be under 18 years of age. If you believe we have collected personal data from anyone under 18, please contact us at the email address listed below.

7. Security

We have implemented various security policies, rules and technical and organizational measures to protect and safeguard the personal information that we collect and process about you. These measures are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your personal information.

While these security procedures reduce the risks of unauthorized access, they cannot guarantee absolute security. Therefore, cannot guarantee that the Site and the systems in which the information is stored will be completely impervious to unauthorized access to the processed information.           

8. U.S. Data Subjects Privacy Rights

If you are a visitor to our Site from the United States, the following information also applies to you and supplements the information contained in this Privacy Policy.

  • Right to Know: You have the right to request that we disclose to you the personal information we have collected, used, disclosed and sold over the past 12 months, and information about our data practices.      

  • Right to Access: You have the right to confirm whether or not we are processing your personal information and access such personal information.  Please note this right might be subject to certain limitations.

  • Right to Request Deletion: You can also request that we delete personal information about you.  Although you may request deletion, we are allowed, under laws of various U.S. states to retain certain personal information. You can submit a request to delete by writing to the designated mailbox privacy@seekingalpha.com.    

  • Right to Opt-Out of "Sale" of Personal Information: We do not sell your personal information, so we do not at this time offer an opt-out option. 

  • Right to Correct Inaccurate Personal Information: Taking into account the nature of the personal information and the purposes of the processing, this right provides you with the ability to seek to correct or update personal information that you consider incorrect.

  • Right to Non-Discrimination: We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights. 

You may exercise any of these rights by contacting us at privacy@seekingalpha.com and providing us with your name, email address and address (including zip code) or by submitting a request to us through your Seeking Alpha account.  We may verify your identity by asking you to submit a request through your password protected Seeking Alpha account and by providing us with your zip code or other proof of residency in your state. 

You can also authorize an agent to submit a request on your behalf.  An authorized agent must have your signed permission to submit a request on your behalf or provide proof they have your power of attorney in accordance with laws of the state in which you reside. Authorized agents that are business entities must be registered with the Secretary of State to conduct business in your state of residence. Where you use an agent, we will ask for verification of your authorization, namely a copy of your written authorization for the agent to submit the request on your behalf.

We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.  

We may deny certain requests, or fulfil a request only in part, based on our legal rights and obligations. 

Your request must:

  • Provide sufficient information for us to reasonably verify that you are the person about whom we collected personal information or an authorized representative of such person; and

  • Describe your request with sufficient detail for us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

9. European Privacy Information

If you are a visitor to our Site from the European Economic Area, United Kingdom and certain other jurisdictions in Europe, the following information also applies to you and supplements the information contained in this Privacy Policy.

(a) Data Controller

The data controller of your personal information (which should be read to mean 'personal data' in the EU/UK) is Seeking Alpha Ltd, located at 47 Hanesiim Street, Ra'Anana, 43583 Israel.

(b) Representatives

If you are located in the UK, please contact our UK representative, Lionheart Squared Limited, at: seekingalpha@lionheartsquared.co.uk 

If you are located in the EU or elsewhere in the EEA and/or Europe, please contact our EU representative, Lionheart Squared (Europe) Ltd. at: seekingalpha@lionheartsquared.eu 

(c) Data Subject Rights

You have the following data protection rights:

  • Right to access, correct, or request deletion: You may be able to do some of this in your Seeking Alpha account or by contacting us.

  • Right to object or ask us to restrict processing: In certain circumstances, you can request that we stop processing your personal information.

  • Right to request portability: In certain circumstances, you can request that we transfer personal information you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format.

  • Right to opt-out of marketing communications: You can exercise this right as follows: (1) opt out of emails- by clicking on the “unsubscribe” or “opt-out” link in the marketing e-mails we send you or by contacting us or adjusting your account settings; (2) Opt out of other communications - by contacting us or adjusting your account settings.

  • Right to withdraw your consent: You can withdraw your consent at any time if you previously gave us consent for the processing of your personal information. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect the processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.

We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws. If you would like to exercise any of these rights or would like further information, please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below. 

(d) Legal Basis 

Our legal basis for collecting and using personal information includes the following:

  • Performance of a contract: where we need the personal information (for example, identifiers as mentioned above) to perform a contract with you, such as setting up and administering your account and providing our products and services. 

  • Legal obligation: where we have a legal obligation to collect personal information from you, for example, to comply with financial, accounting and other legal obligations.

  • Legitimate interests: where the processing is in our legitimate interests and not overridden by your rights, for example to analyse and improve how our products and services are used, the quality of our Site, provide you with customer service and communicate with you, perform advertising using Meta, Google and other platforms, measure the effectiveness of advertising, and improve ad delivery.

  • Consent: where we have your consent to do so, for example, sending you marketing communications and showing you articles and news about stocks you wish to follow or articles by authors you follow, and perform device tracking.

(e) International Data Transfers

Your personal information may be transferred to, and processed in, countries other than the country in which you are resident. Specifically, our Site servers are located in the United States, our headquarters are based in Israel and we have group companies in the U.S., India and the Ukraine and third party service providers and partners who operate around the world.  This means that when we collect your personal information, we may process it in the U.S. We may also transfer data from the U.S. to the EEA and/or from the EEA to the U.S. We do so in reliance on the July 10, 2023 European Commission adoption of the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

Although legal requirements may vary from country to country, we have taken appropriate safeguards to require that your personal information will remain protected in accordance with this Privacy Policy.  In particular, the United Kingdom and the European Union recognizes Israel as a territory that provides adequate protection for personal information that is received from the EEA and/or the UK. We may transfer personal information from the EEA to Israel in reliance on the EU Commission's adequacy decision (Decision - 2011/61 - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu) and renewed Report on the first review of the functioning of the adequacy decisions adopted pursuant to Article 25(6) of Directive 95/46/EC | European Commission (europa.eu)) and from the UK to Israel as stated by the ICO: International data transfers | ICO. 

When we transfer your personal information to any other territories, we will take such measures as are appropriate to safeguard your information in accordance with applicable law. For EEA and UK residents' personal information, this may include implementing the Standard Contractual Clauses. In case of both our group companies and third party service providers and partners, we rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses as issued on 4 June 2021 under Article 46(2) used  for controller to controller and controller to processor  transfers, including the UK Addendum or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement permitted under Article 46(2) of the UK GDPR for the transfer of data originating in the UK,  for any such international transfers.

(f) Data retention

We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).  In certain circumstances, we will need to keep your information for legal reasons after our contractual relationship has ended or your account has been deleted. The specific retention periods depend on the nature of the information and why it is collected and processed and the nature of the legal requirement. For example, we keep your information when a court order is received about your account or your account is part of a regulatory ongoing investigation, to deal with and resolve requests and complaints, and for litigation or regulatory matters.

10. Israel Privacy Information 

If you are a visitor to our Site from Israel, the following information also applies to you and supplements the information contained in this Privacy Policy.

Data Controller

The data controller of your personal information is Seeking Alpha Ltd, located at 47 Hanesiim Street, Ra'Anana, 43583 Israel.

Data Subject Rights

You have the following data protection rights:

  • You have a right to access personal information held about you.

  • If your personal information is found to be inaccurate or not updated, you have the right to correct, or request deletion of such information.

We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws. If you would like to exercise any of these rights or would like further information, please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below. 

11. Updates to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in response to changing legal, technical or business developments. When we update our Privacy Policy, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the significance of the changes we make.  

You can see when this Privacy Policy was last updated by checking the “Last updated” date displayed at the top of this Privacy Policy.  

12. How to contact us

If you have any comments or questions regarding our Privacy Policy, or if you want to exercise your rights, please contact us at privacy@seekingalpha.com. If you are located in the UK, please contact us at seekingalpha@lionheartsquared.co.uk. If you are located in the EU, please contact us at seekingalpha@lionheartsquared.eu. We will address any issue to the best of our abilities as soon as possible, and respond to requests within the time required under applicable law.