Privacy policy
Effective September 28, 2026
Ladder is a social platform for public-market investors, operated from the United States. This policy describes what we collect, what is public, and the choices you have. We have tried to write it the way we write everything else: plainly.
What we collect
Account information. When you create an account we collect your email address. If you sign in with Google, Google shares your name, email address, and profile picture with us. If you sign in by phone, we collect your phone number. You choose a username, which is public.
Content and activity. Posts, comments, chat messages, and reports you submit, and votes you cast. If you report a post or comment, your report and its reason go to Ladder’s reviewers.
Searches. When you search Ladder we log the query, the result you open, and a random key kept in your browser for 30 days, so we can see which searches find nothing and improve them. If you are signed in, your account is attached to the entry for 30 days and then removed. Search logs are deleted after 90 days.
Portfolio verification. If you connect a brokerage account to verify your portfolio, we receive what is needed to confirm your capital range and whether you hold a position in a given security. This is the heart of Ladder, so the promise is worth stating precisely: your portfolio scale appears only as a range unless you choose to show an exact figure, position disclosures are shown without direction or size, and you can hide them entirely. We do not receive the ability to trade or move money in your brokerage account.
Technical basics. Like most services, we receive standard technical information such as IP address and browser type when you use Ladder. We use privacy-focused analytics to understand aggregate usage; we do not use advertising trackers.
What is public and what is private
Public: your username, your posts and comments outside private rooms, your profile, aggregate vote counts, and, if you have not hidden them, your disclosed portfolio range and position disclosures.
Private: your email address and phone number, how you individually voted (only totals are ever shown), your reports to Ladder’s reviewers, your brokerage connection and everything in it beyond the disclosures described above, and hidden or undisclosed portfolio details.
Room owners. A member room’s owners see, for their room only: its posts and comments, including a private room’s; for 90 days, excerpts of posts and comments that were removed from it or reported in it, even if the author later deleted them, with the rule applied and any automated review; that an item was reported and what Ladder decided (Ladder never tells them who reported it); requests to post or join; who is approved to post and who belongs to a private room; bans, with any note the owners wrote (the banned member never sees that note); invitations to co-own the room and their answers; a record of the owners’ actions that names the members involved; and counts of followers, follows and unfollows. In a public or restricted room, owners never see who follows it. If the owners make a room private, everyone following it at that moment becomes a member they can see. Owners never see your email address, phone number, individual votes, chat messages or activity outside their room.
How we use information
To run Ladder: operating accounts and sign-in, showing content and vote totals, verifying portfolio disclosures, moderating content, including an automated first read of new and edited posts, comments and chat requests, and of reports, before a person decides, sending transactional email such as sign-in links, and keeping the service secure. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not show ads.
Who we share with
Service providers that run Ladder’s infrastructure on our behalf: Supabase (database and authentication), Vercel (hosting and analytics), Postmark (transactional email), Twilio (text-message sign-in codes, only if you sign in by phone), Anthropic (automated review of posts, comments, chat requests and reports, and room suggestions for new posts), and Google (only if you sign in with Google). Each receives only what its role requires. Beyond that, we share information only if the law requires it or to protect Ladder and its users.
Cookies
We use cookies and similar storage to keep you signed in, remember preferences such as your theme, and control access during our private beta. If you sign in with Google, we also store your name, email address, and profile photo on your device for up to 60 days so the sign-in screen can recognize you. If you tick Remember this device when you enter a code, we store a random token on that device for 30 days so it can skip the code. We do not use third-party advertising cookies.
Retention and deletion
We keep your information while your account exists.
You can delete your account yourself from Account settings. Your account closes for good and you are signed out everywhere. We delete the list of people you follow and who follow you, the rooms and posts you follow, your saved posts, drafts, notifications, notification settings and other saved settings, the list of devices and places you signed in from, your remembered devices, the devices you turned on push notifications for, your room approvals, requests to post or join and co-owner invitations, your chat settings and blocks, and the searches still linked to your account. When you delete your account yourself, we also remove from it your email address, phone number, password, two-factor authentication and the sign-in methods you linked, such as Google, along with the name and picture Google shared with us. Your email address, phone number and Google account can then be used to open a new account.
Some things stay. Your posts and comments stay as you wrote them, shown under the name “member” instead of your username. Edits you made to a room’s wiki also stay, shown under “member”. Your profile page and the posts you reposted to it are no longer shown. Comments on those reposts, yours included, stay and are listed with the repost’s title. Images and videos you uploaded are kept, and those shared outside private rooms can still be opened by anyone who has their link. Your votes and poll votes stay in the totals, and how you voted stays private. Chat messages you sent stay with the people you sent them to, shown as from a deleted member. A chat request they had not accepted can no longer be accepted. Reports you made are kept. If you owned a room, you leave its team and the room stays.
Your username is held for one year from the day you delete your account, so nobody can take it, including a new account you open. After that, anyone can choose it. Links to your profile stop working at once, including links from usernames you used before.
We keep a locked record of the closed account so it cannot be signed in to again. With it we keep: the usernames it used (one may have been made from your name or email address when you signed up); a log of the notifications we sent it, which names the devices it signed in from and the changes made to the account; the history of rooms it followed; the chat conversations it was part of; records of actions our staff took on it; and moderation records, including reports about your posts and comments.
Our sign-in provider also keeps its own security log of sign-ins and account changes for a limited time, which can include your email address, phone number and IP address. If we close an account ourselves, including at its owner’s request, we also keep its email address, phone number and linked sign-in methods with the locked record, so they cannot be used to open a new account.
When you delete a post, its body is no longer shown, but its title and the comments under it stay. When you delete a comment, its text is no longer shown. We keep a copy of both, and earlier versions of posts you edit.
Search logs are kept for 90 days, and your account is removed from each entry after 30 days. A room’s record of its owners’ actions, such as an approval or a ban, keeps the username a member had when an action named them, even after they change it or close their account. Where you took the action as an owner, the record shows your current username, or “member” once you close your account.
To ask us to delete anything else, contact us at the address below.
Your choices
You can edit your username at any time from your profile, and delete your account from Account settings. Depending on where you live, you may also have legal rights to access, correct, or delete your personal information; contact us and we will honor them.
Security
We work to protect your information with access controls and encryption in transit. No service can promise perfect security, so we do not.
Children
Ladder is not for anyone under 18.
Changes
If this policy changes materially, we will post the new version here and update the effective date.