Privacy Policy
Last updated: 13 June 2026
Trade By Focus ("we", "our", "us") is a sole trader business operated by James Mitchell in the United Kingdom. We are committed to protecting your personal data in accordance with the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
1. Data We Collect
Account information: name, email address, phone number (if provided)
Trade By Focus data: MT5 account balance, equity, open positions, trade history, and live tick data received from your MT5 platform via the Trade By Focus EA. This data is used solely to power your Focus Dashboard and is not shared with third parties.
Hosted MetaTrader 5 session data: for customers using the hosted path, we collect and store only your broker server name (e.g. “VTMarkets-Live”, used for support diagnostics and broker identification); your account session details (account type — demo or live — and connected trading pairs); and your trading activity (open positions, trade history, account balance and equity) received from the hosted MT5 instance to power the Trade By Focus interface. Your MT5 broker login (account number) and password are never stored. Both are pass-through only: transmitted over an encrypted connection, passed directly to our hosted infrastructure, used to start the MetaTrader 5 session, and then released — the password is held in memory and written to a restricted-permission file for under three seconds during MetaTrader 5 startup then permanently deleted, and the account number is forwarded once and never written to our database or application logs. We retain only a one-way salted hash of the account number so we can detect when you switch MT5 accounts; that hash cannot be reversed to your account number.
Economic calendar data: economic calendar events sourced from MQL5's calendar API and stored in our database to display the calendar within Trade By Focus.
Journal and analysis data: trading journal entries, reviews, and check-ins you create within Trade By Focus, used to power your journal, focus insights, and AI analysis
Payment information: processed securely by Stripe — we do not store card details
Usage data: pages visited, features used, chat interactions with our AI support
2. How We Use Your Data
- To provide the Trade By Focus service and its features
- To manage your account and subscription
- To power your Focus Dashboard with live trading data
- To provide AI-powered support and analysis
- To send transactional and marketing emails (marketing with your consent only)
- To improve our platform and services
Lawful basis. Processing of your broker session data (including hosted MetaTrader 5 session data and broker server/account details) is carried out on the basis of performance of a contract — you have subscribed to the Trade By Focus service and provided your credentials to enable it. Marketing communications are sent on the basis of consent. Limited records retained for fraud prevention are processed on the basis of our legitimate interests.
3. Third-Party Services
- Supabase — database and authentication (hosted in the London region, AWS eu-west-2)
- Vercel — hosting of the web application
- Hetzner — hosted MetaTrader 5 server infrastructure (Falkenstein, Germany)
- DigitalOcean — Trade By Focus relay infrastructure (London, United Kingdom)
- Stripe — payment processing
- Resend — transactional email delivery
- Loops — marketing email automation
- Anthropic (Claude AI) — AI chat and analysis features
- Google Analytics (GA4) — anonymous usage analytics
- Hotjar — anonymous session recording and heatmaps
- TikTok — advertising attribution
4. Data Retention
Your account data is retained while your account is active. Specific retention periods apply to Trade By Focus and hosted MetaTrader 5 data:
- Broker password — never retained. Pass-through only; permanently deleted from the hosted server within three seconds of MetaTrader 5 startup
- Broker account number (MT5 login) — never retained. Pass-through only; used once to start the MetaTrader 5 session, never written to our database or application logs. A one-way salted hash is kept solely to detect account switches; that hash cannot be reversed to the account number
- Broker server name — retained for the duration of your subscription (broker identification only, not a credential)
- Open positions and trade events — retained for the duration of your subscription plus 90 days
- Live tick data — automatically deleted after 1 hour
- Economic calendar events — automatically deleted after 90 days
On account deletion we remove your chat history, journal entries, and stored session and trading data. A minimal record is retained for fraud prevention.
5. Your Rights
Under UK GDPR you have the right to access, correct, delete, port, or object to processing of your personal data. This includes the right to request erasure of all stored Trade By Focus and hosted MetaTrader 5 session data. Contact james@tradebyfocus.com to exercise any of these rights.
6. Cookies
See our Cookie Policy for details.
7. Security
We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures including HTTPS, row-level database security, and secure authentication.