Privacy Policy

Last updated:

Financepedia is built to be read without being watched. You don't need an account to read it, we run no advertising or tracking, and we never sell data. This policy explains, in detail, the limited personal data we do handle — from readers, contributors, editors, and people described in entries — why, for how long, how we protect it, and how to exercise your rights.

1. Who we are and scope

This Privacy Policy explains how the operators of Financepedia ("we", "us") process personal data in connection with financepedia.wiki, its Hebrew edition and related services (the "Service"). We act as the data controller (in Israeli terms, the "database owner") for the personal data described here.

The policy applies to four groups: readers who browse the Service; contributors who submit suggestions or corrections; editors and administrators who hold accounts; and data subjects of entries — people, such as executives or officials, who are described in encyclopedia content. It is designed to meet the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"), the Israeli Privacy Protection Law, 5741-1981 and its regulations (including the Privacy Protection (Data Security) Regulations, 5777-2017), the Australian Privacy Act 1988, and applicable US state privacy laws.

2. Our principles

  • Minimisation. Reading the Service requires no account, and we collect no more than we need.
  • No advertising. We run no ads, no ad-tech, no retargeting and no data brokerage.
  • No profiling. We do not build behavioural profiles of readers or track them across sites.
  • No sale. We do not sell, rent or trade personal data, and we do not "share" it for cross-context advertising.
  • Transparency. Every category of data we hold is listed in this policy.

3. Data we collect

Readers

When you load a page, our hosting and content-delivery infrastructure automatically processes technical data necessary to deliver it: IP address, request time, requested URL, referring URL, user-agent (browser and operating system), and response status. This data is used to serve pages, defend against abuse and diagnose faults. We do not combine it with other data to identify you.

Your browser stores small local preferences on your own device — your cookie choice and your accessibility settings (text size, contrast and similar). These stay in your browser and are not sent to us. See the Cookie Policy.

Search queries you type into the site search are processed to return results; see "Anonymous usage statistics" below.

Anonymous usage statistics

To understand which entries are read and how visitors find the site, our own servers record each page view: the page address, the external site you came from (if any), campaign tags in the link (UTM parameters), a device category derived from your browser type (desktop, mobile, tablet or bot), the country reported by our hosting network, and the time. Searches typed into the site search are recorded with the number of results. These records contain no cookie, no IP address and no identifier, so they cannot be linked to you or to each other. They are visible only to administrators.

Cookie consent records

When you make a choice in the cookie notice, we keep a record as proof of consent: a random consent ID stored in your browser, your choice, how it was made (notice, settings link, or an automatic browser privacy signal), the policy version, the page, your browser type, and a salted one-way hash of your IP address. The hash cannot be reversed to reveal your IP address.

Contributors

When you submit a suggestion or correction, we store: the text of your submission; the entry and language it relates to; the date and time; an email address if you choose to provide one; and a one-way hash of your IP address, used solely to detect spam and abuse. We ask you not to include personal data of third parties, sensitive data, or confidential information in submissions.

Editors and administrators

For account holders we store email address, a securely hashed password (we never see the password itself), authentication and session tokens, assigned roles, and an audit trail of editorial actions such as approvals, rejections and revisions, including the time and author of each action.

People described in entries

Entries about institutions and the finance sector may name individuals in their public or professional capacity — for example, the governor of a central bank, a bank's chief executive, a fund manager or a board member — and may describe their roles, appointments, public statements and publicly reported regulatory or legal matters. We derive this information from published sources such as regulator filings, official registries, annual reports and reputable news coverage, and each claim is cited. We do not publish private contact details, home addresses, identity numbers, family information unrelated to public role, health information or other sensitive data.

4. Purposes and legal bases

We process personal data only for specified purposes, each with a legal basis:

  • Delivering and securing the Service (technical logs, security tokens) — legitimate interests in operating a reliable, safe website; for account holders, performance of our agreement.
  • Reviewing submissions (submission text, optional email) — legitimate interests in maintaining an accurate encyclopedia; where you provide an email, to respond to you.
  • Preventing spam and abuse (hashed IP address) — legitimate interests in protecting the Service and its users.
  • Editorial accountability (editor audit trail) — legitimate interests and, where applicable, legal obligations to maintain records.
  • Publishing reference content about public figures — legitimate interests and the public interest in freedom of expression and information, including the journalistic, academic and artistic purposes recognised in GDPR Article 85 and corresponding national exemptions.
  • Legal compliance — responding to lawful requests, enforcing our Terms, and establishing or defending legal claims.

Where we rely on legitimate interests we have assessed that our interests are not overridden by your rights, taking into account the limited data involved and the safeguards described here. We do not use personal data for automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects on you.

5. Editorial tools and automated processing

Our editorial process uses software tools, including AI-based drafting and research assistance, to process published sources about entities. These tools process public information to prepare drafts for human review. Reader submissions may be processed by tools that help classify and prioritise them (for example, detecting spam). We configure our tool providers so that data we send is not used to train their general models where such an option is available, and we do not send contributor email addresses or hashed IPs to such tools.

6. Who we share data with

We share personal data only with:

  • Service providers (processors) — our cloud hosting, database, content-delivery, email and AI-tooling providers, who process data on our instructions under contractual confidentiality and security obligations.
  • Authorities — where required by law, court order or a binding request from a competent authority, and only to the extent required.
  • Successors — a successor entity in the event of a merger, acquisition or transfer of the Service, subject to this policy.
  • Protection of rights — where necessary to investigate fraud, security incidents or abuse, or to protect the rights, property or safety of Financepedia, our users or the public.

Published encyclopedia content is, by its nature, publicly available to anyone.

7. International transfers

Our providers may process data in Israel, the European Economic Area, the United States or other countries. Israel benefits from an adequacy decision of the European Commission. Where data is transferred to a country without an adequacy decision, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, and on transfers permitted under the Israeli Privacy Protection (Transfer of Data to Databases Abroad) Regulations, 5761-2001.

8. Retention

  • Current practice: records described in this policy are kept until an administrator deletes them. Fixed retention periods for each category have not yet been set; when they are, they will be listed here.
  • Editorial audit trail: kept as long as the revision it describes exists, because it is part of the encyclopedia's integrity record.

9. Security

We apply technical and organisational measures appropriate to the risk, including:

  • Encryption of data in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and at rest on our managed infrastructure.
  • Row-level access controls in our database, so that public visitors can read only published content.
  • Role-based access for editors and administrators, with roles stored separately from accounts and verified on the server for every privileged action.
  • Hashing of passwords and of submitter IP addresses; no plaintext storage of credentials.
  • Protection of forms against cross-site request forgery and of the site against common web attacks.
  • Logging of administrative actions, least-privilege access and periodic review of who holds access.
  • Immutable revision history, so that tampering with published content is detectable.

No system is perfectly secure. You are responsible for protecting your own account credentials and devices.

10. Security incidents

If we become aware of a breach of security affecting personal data, we will contain and investigate it, notify the competent supervisory authority — including the Israeli Privacy Protection Authority where the incident is a "severe security incident" under Israeli regulations — within the time required by applicable law, and notify affected individuals without undue delay where the breach is likely to result in a high risk to their rights. We maintain a record of incidents and the measures taken.

11. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

  • Access the personal data we hold about you (including under section 13 of the Israeli Privacy Protection Law).
  • Correct inaccurate or incomplete data (section 14 of the Israeli law; GDPR Article 16).
  • Delete data where there is no longer a lawful reason to keep it.
  • Restrict or object to processing based on legitimate interests.
  • Port data you provided to us, in a machine-readable format.
  • Withdraw consent at any time where processing is based on consent.
  • Opt out of sale or targeted advertising under US state laws — we do neither.
  • Complain to a supervisory authority, such as the Israeli Privacy Protection Authority, your EU/UK data protection authority, or the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

To exercise a right, use the "Suggest a correction" form on any entry, marked "privacy". We may need to verify your identity before acting, and will respond within one month (or the shorter period required by applicable law). Exercising your rights is free unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any right.

12. If you are described in an entry

If you are named in an entry, you may ask us to correct inaccurate information, add context, or remove information that is not relevant to your public or professional role. Please use the correction form on the entry, marked "privacy", or email us, and include sources where possible.

We assess each request by balancing your privacy against the public's right to accurate information about the financial sector. We will generally correct verified inaccuracies promptly; we will generally remove private information unrelated to a public role; and we will generally retain accurate, well-sourced information about public professional conduct. Where we decline a request we will explain why, and you may complain to a supervisory authority.

13. Children

The Service is a general reference work and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 16 through submissions or accounts. If you believe a child has submitted personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

Entries link to external sources. When you follow such a link you leave the Service, and the external site's own privacy practices apply. We are not responsible for their collection or use of your data. Some links may point to archive services; those services also have their own policies.

15. Changes and contact

We will update this policy as the Service evolves. The "Last updated" date shows the current version, and material changes will be highlighted on this page.

Privacy questions and requests can be sent through the correction form on any entry, marked "privacy".