Sparky's Coffee Fund

Sparky's Coffee Fund

Privacy Policy

The short version.

A privacy policy usually has to explain a lot of things a company collects about you, and a lot of decisions about what they do with it. This one's short because the answers are short.

Your dashboard is a Google Sheet that lives in your own Drive. I don't have access to it, I can't see what you do there, and I have no interest in trying. The only signals that reach me from the Sparky's Coffee Fund workflow are the content of any suggestion you choose to submit through the Actions tab, and a record of when a Review Tab is opened. That's it.

No accounts, no emails, no names, no demographics, no profiles, no third-party advertising integrations. The suggestions carry an anonymous identifier - a randomly-generated GUID - that lets me credit a suggestion back to whoever submitted it, with no connection to your name, your email, or anything else about you. The Review Tab opens are captured by standard Google Analytics traffic measurement, the same kind that runs on most websites.

What follows fills in the details.

1.Your dashboard is your spreadsheet

Your dashboard is a self-contained Google Sheet in your own Google Drive. It's yours. I don't have access to it. I can't read it, can't search it, can't pull data out of it, and have no mechanism for doing any of those things even if I wanted to. The only parts of it I see are the parts you actively choose to share with me by hitting the Send button on the Actions tab.

That means everything else stays where you put it:

  • The positions in your portfolio.
  • The tickers in your watchlist.
  • Any private notes you keep in your dashboard.
  • Your name, your email, your IP address, your browser, your device - none of which the dashboard collects in the first place.
  • Anything else in your Google account, your Drive, or your Google session.

Your relationship with Google for the Sheet itself is governed by Google's terms and privacy policy, not mine.

2.What does come back to me when you send a suggestion

When you submit a suggestion through the Actions tab, the following travels from your dashboard to me:

  • The content of the suggestion - the ticker or sector you're suggesting, the rationale you write, and any related fields you fill in.
  • A GUID - a randomly-generated identifier unique to your dashboard spreadsheet, attached so I can mark an analysis as "suggested by you" on the dashboard that suggested it.

Nothing else. Not your name, not your email, not your IP address, not your browser, not your device - none of it.

3.The GUID, in detail

When you first open a copy of the dashboard, it generates a random GUID and stores it inside your spreadsheet. The GUID is not derived from anything about you - not your account, not your name, not a hash of your email. It's a fresh random string.

I use it for one purpose: to mark an analysis as "suggested by you" on the dashboards that originally suggested it. If you make a fresh copy of the dashboard template, you get a new GUID, and your prior suggestions are no longer linkable to your new copy on your end.

This is a deliberate choice. I could have asked for an email address. I chose not to. Anonymous attribution lets me do the one useful thing - credit a suggestion back to whoever suggested it - without collecting an identifying info that I don't want or need.

4.What I collect from your use of the Review Tab

The Review Tab is the web page that opens when you click into a published analysis. It's instrumented with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) so I can see how often analyses are being opened.

GA4, with its default settings, records: pages visited and the order of visits; the geographic location of the Google data center where the review tab was generated; browser and device metadata (operating system, browser version, screen size, language); referrer (which site or search you arrived from); and cookies that let GA4 distinguish one visitor session from another.

This data is pseudonymous, not strictly anonymous - Google treats individual visitors as units of measurement, even though I see only aggregate reports. I haven't enabled any custom tracking, demographics inference, advertising integration, or audience-building features beyond the GA4 defaults.

5.What I do with what I collect

Operational use only. Specifically:

  • I read suggestions to decide whether to dismiss them or promote them into analysis jobs.
  • I use the GUID-to-suggestion association to mark published analyses on the dashboard of whoever suggested them.
  • I look at which analyses are being opened to understand which ones are landing and which aren't, which helps me decide what to keep working on and what to set aside.

That's the whole list. I don't build profiles of individual users. I don't run advertising or share data with advertisers. I don't sell, rent, lease, or trade information about you to anyone. I don't combine what comes back to me with any other dataset.

6.Third parties involved in delivering the system

The system relies on a handful of third-party services to function. Here's who, and what they get:

  • Google (Drive, Sheets, Forms, Apps Script, Analytics). The dashboard runs on Google's infrastructure. Your copy of the template lives in your own Drive. Suggestions you submit travel through a Google Form before reaching me. Google sees this activity under your Google account; their use of that information is governed by Google's terms and privacy policy. Google Analytics, as described in Section 4, runs on the Review Tab.
  • Anthropic (Claude API and claude.ai). When I promote a suggestion to an analysis job, the content of the suggestion (the ticker, your rationale, any related fields) is included in the prompt I send to Anthropic as part of producing the analysis. The GUID is not sent. Anthropic's handling of that content is governed by Anthropic's own policies.
  • Substack. I publish writing and may eventually host community discussion on Substack. Activity on Substack-hosted pages is governed by Substack's own privacy policy, not by this one. If you have or create a Substack account or subscription, that's between you and Substack.
  • Affiliate networks (Amazon Associates and similar). If you click an affiliate link from the dashboard's Books or Talks tabs or from a Substack post, the destination merchant sees the click-through and may set their own cookies. I receive aggregate referral reports from those networks; I do not receive personal information about individual purchasers.

7.Cookies and similar technologies

The dashboard itself, being a Google Sheet, uses Google's standard session cookies - nothing additional that I set there.

The Review Tab sets GA4 cookies for traffic measurement. Most browsers let you block cookies, clear them, or surface a prompt before they're set. If you block GA4 cookies, the Review Tab will still work; I just won't see the visit in the analytics.

Cookies on the Substack pages, where I publish writing, are set by Substack and governed by Substack's own policies.

8.How long I keep what I collect

Suggestions you submit are retained indefinitely as part of the system's operational history. Old suggestions sometimes turn out to be relevant later, and the history of who suggested what helps me understand patterns of interest over time.

GA4 retains visit-level data from the Review Tab according to its default retention window. Aggregate analytics persist beyond that.

The GUID exists for as long as your copy of the dashboard exists. If you delete your copy of the dashboard from your Drive, your local GUID is gone. The suggestions you previously submitted under that GUID remain in my operational records, but they're no longer linkable to any active dashboard.

If you want me to delete the suggestions associated with your GUID from my operational records, see Section 9.

9.Your rights and how to exercise them

Because the system doesn't collect anything that identifies you, the usual privacy-rights regimes - California's CCPA/CPRA, the EU's GDPR, and various other state and national privacy laws - apply in a limited way here. I'll honor the spirit of those regimes regardless of whether they technically reach a small, free publisher like me:

  • The right to know. Reach out (see Section 12) with your GUID and I'll tell you what I have associated with it.
  • The right to delete. Send me your GUID and ask me to delete the suggestions associated with it. I'll do so within a reasonable time and confirm when it's done. You can find your GUID in the footer of your dashboard.
  • The right to correct. If something you submitted contains an error you'd like fixed, let me know.
  • No sale, no sharing for cross-context advertising. I don't do either of those things, so there's nothing to opt out of.

You don't need to give a reason, and exercising any of these rights doesn't affect your continued ability to use the system.

10.Children

The system is intended for adults thinking about their own money. It is not directed at children under 18 and is not designed for use by children under 13. I do not knowingly collect any information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has somehow submitted information through the system, contact me and I'll delete it.

11.Changes to this policy

I may revise this policy from time to time. When I do, I'll post the revised version on this site and update the "Last updated" date at the bottom. Material changes will be flagged on the dashboard's Overview tab when feasible. Your continued use of the system after a change takes effect means you accept the revised policy.

12.Contact

Questions, requests under Section 9, or any other privacy-related correspondence can reach me at privacy@sparkyscoffeefund.com.

Effective date: May 26, 2026 · Last updated: May 26, 2026