Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

This Privacy Policy explains what personal information Praeter ("Praeter", "we", "us", "our") collects, why we collect it, who it is shared with, and what choices you have. It applies to the Praeter website and web application at praeters.co (the "Platform").

Praeter is an independent, student-run project and is not an official Northwestern University service. Praeter uses virtual cents only; there is no real money anywhere in the Platform and no payment processor is integrated. See our Legal Notice for details.

By creating an account, you agree to the handling of your information as described here.

2. Who is responsible for your data

The operator responsible for the personal information described in this policy is:

Praeter is operated by Northwestern students as an independent student project.
Privacy contact: contact@praeters.co

3. Who may use Praeter

Praeter is intended for current Northwestern University students who sign up with an @u.northwestern.edu email address.

Contact us at contact@praeters.co if you think someone else has entered the platform and we will delete the account and its data.

4. Information we collect

4.1 Account information

When you register, our authentication provider (Supabase) collects:

• your email address
• your password, which is stored only as a cryptographic hash by Supabase and is never stored in plaintext or held in Praeter's own database
• account status information, including whether your email address has been confirmed

Email confirmation is required before you can sign in. A password reset flow is also available; both send email through Supabase's mail delivery.

4.2 Profile information

Praeter's own database stores, for each account:

• Username
• Major
• First and last name
• Role
• Onboarding status
• Last-active timestamp

4.3 Activity data

As you use the Platform, we store:

• Ledger entries — an append-only record of every virtual-cent transaction on your account (signup bonus, weekly activity bonus, trade purchases and sales, market payouts, refunds, oracle rewards and penalties, and manual administrative adjustments). This ledger is the sole record of your balance.
• Trades — the market, outcome, quantity, price, and side (buy or sell) of each trade you place.
• Market upvotes — which user-proposed markets you have upvoted.
• Oracle votes — when a market closes, your vote on the outcome, together with any source URL and free-text notes you submit as evidence.
• Market proposals — markets you submit for review, including the question text, category, resolution rules, source, and any image you upload.
• Early-close claims — claims you submit that a market's outcome has already effectively occurred.
• Uploaded images — cover images you upload for markets you propose.

4.4 Technical data collected by our infrastructure providers

Praeter itself does not run analytics software. However, like any hosted web application, our hosting and database providers automatically log standard technical information when you use the Platform, including IP addresses, request URLs, timestamps, browser and device information sent by your browser, and error logs. This happens at the infrastructure level and is described further in Section 7.

4.5 Information you send us directly

If you email us for support or to report a problem, we receive your email address, the content of your message, and anything you attach.

5. What is visible to others

Some information is visible to any signed-in user:

• Your username on the public leaderboard. If you have not set a username, the part of your email address before the @ is displayed instead — for Northwestern addresses this typically contains your full name and graduation year. Set a username if you do not want this shown.
• Your major, if you have set one.
• Your net worth in virtual cents.
• Your first and last name may appear as a display-name fallback if you entered one and never set a username.

Markets you propose, and the question text, resolution rules, sources, and images attached to them, are visible to other users once approved.

Uploaded images are stored in a publicly readable storage bucket. Anyone who has the direct URL to an image can view it, whether or not they have a Praeter account and whether or not the associated market is still live. Do not upload anything you would not want to be public.

Your email address, ledger, individual trades, and role are not shown to other users. Administrators can access account data as needed to review market submissions, resolve markets, investigate abuse, and operate the Platform.

6. How we use your information

We use the information described above to:

• create, authenticate, and maintain your account, and keep you signed in;
• operate the Platform's core features — markets, trading, virtual-cent balances, payouts, upvotes, oracle voting, and early-close claims;
• calculate and display leaderboards and net worth;
• determine eligibility for the signup grant and the weekly activity bonus;
• review user-proposed markets and moderate submitted content;
• send you account-essential email such as confirmation links and password resets;
• respond to your support requests;
• investigate and prevent abuse, manipulation, duplicate accounts, and other violations of our rules;
• maintain the security, integrity, and reliability of the Platform; and
• comply with applicable law and respond to lawful requests.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

7. Service providers

We rely on the following providers to run the Platform. We do not otherwise share your personal information with third parties, except as described in Section 8.

Supabase— provides authentication, the Postgres database holding all application data described in Section 4, and file storage for uploaded images. As our database and authentication provider, Supabase's infrastructure necessarily processes all of the data described above. Our Supabase project is hosted in West US.

Vercel— hosts and serves the web application. Vercel's infrastructure logs standard technical and request data, including IP addresses, as part of delivering and monitoring the site.

We do not use analytics or product-usage tracking, advertising networks or ad pixels, session-replay tools, or any payment processor.

8. Other disclosures

We may disclose personal information:

• to courts, law enforcement, or other authorities where legally required;
• where necessary to defend legal claims or investigate suspected violations of our rules;
• to Northwestern University in response to a legitimate request relating to misuse of university email addresses or university-related content.

9. Cookies

The Platform sets only the authentication session cookies used by Supabase's session library. Their sole purpose is to keep you signed in across page loads. They are strictly necessary for the Platform to function.

We do not set advertising cookies, analytics cookies, or any other tracking identifiers, and we do not permit third parties to set cookies through the Platform. Because we use only strictly necessary cookies, we do not display a cookie consent banner.

Blocking or deleting these cookies in your browser will sign you out and prevent you from logging in.

10. Data retention and deletion

We retain your account data for as long as your account exists. There is currently no automatic deletion of inactive accounts.

Deleting your account. You can delete your account yourself at any time from Profile → "Delete my account". Deleting your account removes your authentication record, which in turn deletes your profile and the associated data, including your ledger entries, upvotes, oracle votes, and early-close claims.

One restriction applies. Deletion is blocked while you hold an open (unsold) position in a market that has not yet resolved, been voided, or closed, or while a market you created is still active. This is to keep markets and balances consistent for other participants. Once your positions are sold or the relevant markets resolve, the block clears and you can delete your account.

After deletion, residual copies may persist for a limited time in provider backups and in infrastructure logs held by Supabase and Vercel until those are rotated in the ordinary course. We may also retain limited information where necessary to comply with law, prevent repeat abuse, or defend legal claims.

If you want your account deleted and cannot do so yourself, email contact@praeters.co.

11. Security

We use technical measures appropriate to a project of this size, including database-level access controls that limit what each account can read and write, server-side enforcement of all balance-affecting operations, and password hashing handled by Supabase.

No system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. Use a password you do not reuse elsewhere.

12. Your rights and choices

You can:

• view and change your username, major, and name from your profile at any time;
• delete your account as described in Section 10;
• request a copy of the personal information we hold about you, or ask us to correct or delete it, by emailing contact@praeters.co.

Illinois does not have a general consumer privacy statute, and Praeter is well below the size and revenue thresholds that would bring it under laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act. We honour access, correction, and deletion requests from any user regardless of where they live, and we will not treat you differently for making one.

If your account data is affected by a security breach, we will notify you as required by the Illinois Personal Information Protection Act.

To make a request, email contact@praeters.co from the address associated with your account. We may ask for additional information to confirm your identity.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the updated version on the Platform and change the "Last updated" date above. If the changes are significant, we will notify you by email or through the Platform.

14. Contact

Questions about this Privacy Policy, or requests relating to your data:

Email: contact@praeters.co