Privacy Notice

If you apply or contact us through the form on this site, we collect the name, email address, Telegram username (if you give one), experience level, interests and message you provide. That is the only personal data we ask for.

If you message our Telegram assistant, we receive your messages along with the name and username on your Telegram account.

We collect anonymised, aggregated usage statistics — pages viewed, approximate region, device type — to understand what people find useful. This is not used to identify you.

To respond to your enquiry, and to keep a record of correspondence. Our lawful basis is legitimate interest in operating and responding through our own website.

Your message reaches the relevant desk. Membership applications are also sent to the desk on Telegram, so that your request to join the Signal Desk can be matched to your application. We use Resend to deliver email, Vercel to host the site, and Upstash to hold application details for that matching; each processes data on our behalf.

Messages sent to our Telegram assistant are processed by an AI provider (OpenAI or Anthropic) to draft a reply, which a member of the desk may review before it is sent. We do not share your details with anyone else, and we do not sell them.

Enquiry correspondence is retained for 24 months from your last contact with us, then deleted.

Application details held for matching Signal Desk requests are deleted automatically after 60 days. Telegram conversation history used to follow a conversation is kept for 48 hours, and drafted replies for 7 days. We keep a log of the most recent 500 questions the desk answered by hand, so we can improve the assistant.

You can ask for a copy of what we hold, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Email support@hcotradinggroup.com and we will respond within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.