Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 20, 2026

PaperPicks ("we", "us") is a simulated trading app. This policy describes what we collect in the app and on this website (paperpicks.app), why, and what we never do. The short version: no real money moves through PaperPicks, we don't want your personal information, and we don't sell data to anyone.

What the app collects

• An anonymous account. On first launch the app creates a random account identifier stored in your device's Keychain. No email, phone number, or name is required to play. Your username is auto-generated and can be changed in Settings.
• Sign in with Apple (optional). If you choose to claim your record, we store the anonymous Apple identifier so your record can follow you across devices. We do not receive or store your email or name — we request neither.
• Your paper trading record. Simulated balances, positions, trade history, chat messages you post, your profile (username, bio, visibility choice), and who you follow. This is the product.
• Push token. The app registers your device for notifications so settlement alerts, updates on markets you star, and refill reminders can reach you. Until you turn on alerts, iOS delivers them quietly to Notification Center, with no banners or sounds. We store the device's push token together with its current notification setting and the app version. If you turn notifications off in iOS Settings, we stop sending them. Turning notifications off changes nothing else.
• Usage analytics. We use PostHog to understand which features are used (screens viewed, trades placed, purchases). Analytics are tied to the anonymous account identifier, never to a real-world identity.
• Purchases. In-app purchases are processed entirely by Apple. We never see your payment details. To credit purchases correctly and handle refunds, we keep Apple's signed record of each purchase: the transaction ID, product, price and currency, App Store country, dates, and any refund. Apple also sends us these records directly when a purchase or refund happens. Each record is linked to your anonymous account identifier.
• Referral abuse prevention. When you enter an invite, we use Apple's DeviceCheck service to mark your iPhone as having used one, so invites can't be farmed by reinstalling the app or making new accounts on the same phone. Apple stores two yes/no flags for the device; we never receive or store a device identifier. If you've signed in with Apple and a referral reward is earned, we also retain a one-way hash of Apple's anonymous identifier so the same person can't collect again with a new account. The hash cannot restore an account and is used only to prevent duplicate referral payouts.

This website

We use PostHog's cookieless analytics to count visits to paperpicks.app and to see which pages people read and which links they follow, so we know which guides are useful.

• No cookies, no browser storage. The website sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser's local or session storage, for analytics or anything else. That's why there is no cookie banner.
• What's recorded. The pages you view, how long you stay and how far you scroll, clicks on links and buttons (the link's text and destination), the site that referred you and any campaign tags in the link you arrived by, and general browser and device details: browser and operating system, screen size, language, and time zone.
• Counting visitors without identifying you. To tell one visitor from another for a day, PostHog combines your IP address and browser user-agent with a random value that changes every day and is then deleted, and keeps only a one-way hash of the result. The hash can't be reversed and can't link your visits across days. Your IP address isn't stored; at most, an approximate location (country or city) looked up from it is kept.
• App Store links. Our links to the App Store carry a campaign label that names the page and the button you used (for example, kalshi-demo-account-nav). Apple reports installs and downloads to us only as totals per label, never per person.
• Not on the website: session recordings or screen replays, anything you type, advertising or cross-site tracking, or any link between your visit and a PaperPicks account.
• Where it goes. Analytics requests go through our own domain to PostHog, Inc., which processes them for us on servers in the United States.

What we never collect

No real names, no emails, no phone numbers, no contacts, no precise location, no advertising identifiers, no tracking across other companies' apps or websites.

What other players can see

Your username, bio, join date, and — depending on your Profile Visibility setting — your stats. Your live bets and trade history are visible only to friends (players you follow who follow you back) and only if your visibility is set to Full. You can restrict all of this in Settings → Edit profile.

Where data lives

Game state syncs to our backend (hosted on Convex, in the United States) so your record survives reinstalls and settles while your phone is off. Live prices stream from our own price service (hosted on Fly.io, in the United States). It sees your anonymous account ID, so it can limit abuse, and your connection's IP address; it keeps no record of which markets you watch. When it's unavailable, and in older versions of the app, prices come straight from public prediction-market APIs, and those requests are not tied to your identity.

Deleting your data

Settings → Delete account erases your account, balances, history, profile, follows, chat messages, feedback, and push tokens immediately and permanently. Purchase records are financial records, so we keep them, but deleting your account removes their link to you. If a referral reward was earned, the non-reversible anti-fraud hash described above remains so the same Apple account cannot earn another new-user referral reward, and Apple's DeviceCheck flags for your iPhone stay set so the phone cannot be used for another invite.

Children

PaperPicks simulates prediction-market trading and is rated 17+. It is not directed at children under 17, and we do not knowingly collect data from them.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, we'll note it here with a new date. Questions: support@paperpicks.app.