Privacy Policy

Calculators run in your browser

All calculators on Rand Bullion, such as a gold margin calculator, run entirely in your web browser. The numbers you enter, like account balance or trade size, are never sent to our server or stored by us. When you close the page, that data is gone unless your browser has cached it locally.

This means we cannot see what you typed, and we cannot accidentally leak it. We built the calculators this way on purpose, because we do not want to hold any personal financial information.

What we collect

We collect only aggregate traffic counts, such as the number of visitors to a page or the country of origin in broad terms. We do not track individual users, and we do not use cookies for analytics on our own site. If we ever change this, we will update this policy first.

We use local storage in your browser to remember your own preferences, such as dark mode or the last currency you selected. This data stays on your device and is not sent to us. You can clear it at any time by clearing your browser data.

Broker cookies and policies

When you click an affiliate link to a broker, such as FxPro, that broker may set its own cookies and collect data under its own privacy policy. We have no control over that, and we do not receive any personal data about you from the broker. Your relationship with the broker is separate from your relationship with us.

We encourage you to read the broker's privacy policy before opening an account. We only link to brokers that we have reviewed, but we cannot guarantee their data practices. If you have concerns about a broker's use of your data, contact that broker directly.

What Rand Bullion stores and what it never sees

Rand Bullion stores only the bare minimum needed to keep the site working: your consent choice for cookies and any calculator inputs if you explicitly save them for later. If you do not save a calculation, the numbers are held in your device's memory only until you close the tab, and then they are gone. There is no database of your trading activity, no record of which instruments you looked at, and no profile built from your browsing on this site. The site does not require an account, so there is no username, password, or personal dashboard stored on our servers at all. This is a deliberate design choice to limit what could ever be exposed in a breach.

The site never sees your broker login details, your funded account balance, or any live trading positions you might hold with FxPro. Those details live inside the broker's own systems, not on Rand Bullion. When you click through to FxPro, you leave this site entirely, and everything after that click is between you and FxPro under its own privacy policy. Even the calculator results you generate here are not transmitted back to us; they are computed by JavaScript running in your browser. That means the server hosting this page does not receive the lot size, the gold price you typed, or the margin figure shown on your screen. Only your device knows those numbers.

There is no persistent local storage used for tracking. Rand Bullion does not place any files on your device beyond the cookies described in the next section, and those cookies carry only a random identifier or a simple yes-or-no preference. We do not use browser fingerprinting, canvas fingerprinting, or any technique that tries to identify you across sites without your knowledge. If you choose to block all cookies, the calculators still work because they do not depend on any stored data. Your privacy is not a feature we bolt on; it is the default state of this site.

Cookies: which ones exist and what each one does

Rand Bullion sets a single first-party cookie to remember whether you have accepted or declined optional cookies. It stores only the word accepted or declined, nothing else, and it expires after 12 months. This cookie is not used for advertising, profiling, or cross-site tracking. Without it, the cookie banner would reappear on every visit, forcing you to make the same choice repeatedly. The cookie does not contain any personal information, not even an IP address, so it cannot be read by any other website. You can delete it at any time through your browser settings, and the site will simply ask you again next time.

A second first-party cookie, used only when you save a calculation, stores the values you entered and the result you saw. It is named saved_calc and holds a short text string like lot=0.10, price=4275.0, margin=85.50. This cookie is set only after you tap a save button on the calculator page; it is never placed automatically. It expires after 30 days or when you clear your browser data, whichever comes first. The purpose is purely functional: to let you come back later and see the same calculation without retyping it. No other site can read this cookie because it is tied to the randbullion.co.za domain.

There are no third-party cookies placed by Rand Bullion itself. However, when you click an affiliate link to FxPro, the broker may set its own cookies on your device to record that you arrived from our site. Those cookies belong to FxPro, not to Rand Bullion, and their lifespan is controlled by FxPro's cookie policy. We do not read or receive the contents of those cookies. They exist only so that FxPro can attribute any account you open to our referral. If you visit FxPro directly, without clicking our link, no such cookie is placed by us, and we gain no information about your visit.

Affiliate tracking: exactly what is recorded and why

Rand Bullion earns a commission from FxPro when someone opens a trading account after clicking a link on this site. To make that possible, the link contains a unique affiliate ID that tells FxPro the click came from Rand Bullion. That ID is a string of letters and numbers, not your name or email. When you click, FxPro's server logs the ID, the time, and your IP address, then sets a cookie so it can recognise you if you return to FxPro within a set window. This is standard affiliate tracking used by thousands of financial websites, and it does not reveal your identity to us.

Rand Bullion does not see any personal details about you from this tracking. We never learn your name, your FxPro account number, your deposit amount, or whether you traded gold or another instrument. The only information we receive from FxPro is an aggregate report showing how many clicks, how many account openings, and how many qualifying trades occurred in a given period. That report cannot be tied to any individual visitor. We use it solely to understand whether our content is useful enough to earn its keep, not to build marketing lists or target you with ads.

You can avoid affiliate tracking entirely by typing fxpro.com directly into your browser instead of clicking a link on Rand Bullion. If you do that, FxPro will not know you came from us, and we will not earn anything from your account. The calculators and all the educational content on this site remain free to you regardless. There is no obligation to use our links, and we do not hide them or disguise them. Every link that leads to FxPro is clearly marked as an affiliate link in the surrounding text, so you always know when a click could result in a commission.

Third parties that receive data from this site

Rand Bullion uses a single analytics service, Plausible Analytics, to measure basic traffic patterns. Plausible is a privacy-focused service that does not use cookies and does not store your IP address in full; it records only the country and city derived from the IP, then discards the IP itself. The data we see is aggregated: total page views, top pages, referral sources, and device types. No individual visitor can be identified. Plausible's servers are located in the European Union, and the service is GDPR-compliant. We chose it specifically because it respects the principle of data minimisation.

The only other third party involved is FxPro, and only when you click an affiliate link. At that moment, your browser sends a request to FxPro's servers, which includes your IP address, user agent, and the affiliate ID. FxPro processes that data under its own privacy policy, which you can read on its website. Rand Bullion does not control what FxPro does with that information, but we have reviewed its policy to ensure it meets basic standards. Apart from FxPro and Plausible, no other company receives any data from this site. There are no ad networks, no social media pixels, and no data brokers involved.

Rand Bullion does not sell, rent, or trade any data with any third party. We have no list of email addresses, no cookie matching with advertisers, and no cross-device tracking. The site is hosted on a server in South Africa, and the hosting provider has access only to standard server logs, which are rotated and deleted every 14 days. Those logs contain IP addresses and page requests, but they are not used for analytics and are not shared with anyone. If you want to confirm this, you can inspect the site's source code or use a browser extension like uBlock Origin to see all network requests. You will find only randbullion.co.za, plausible.io, and fxpro.com.

Your rights under POPIA and how to exercise them

As a visitor from South Africa, you have rights under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). Because Rand Bullion holds almost no personal data about you, most requests will be simple to resolve. You have the right to ask what personal information we hold, to request a copy of it, to ask for correction or deletion, and to object to processing. You can exercise any of these rights by emailing privacy@randbullion.co.za. We will respond within 30 days, as POPIA requires. If we cannot verify your identity, we may ask for a copy of your ID, but that copy is deleted immediately after verification.

The only personal information we are likely to hold is your IP address in server logs, and even that is deleted within 14 days. If you have saved a calculation, that data is in a cookie on your own device, not on our servers, so you can delete it yourself by clearing your browser cookies. If you want us to confirm that we hold nothing else, send an email and we will provide a written confirmation. There is no fee for a first request. If you believe we have mishandled your data, you can complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa, whose contact details are on their official website. We will cooperate fully with any investigation.

To use your rights effectively, be specific in your email. State which right you are exercising, for example: I request access to all personal information Rand Bullion holds about me under POPIA. Include the approximate date and time of your visit if you want us to check server logs. We do not use automated decision-making or profiling, so there is nothing to object to on that front. If you ask us to delete data, we will delete any log entries containing your IP address to the extent technically possible, though those logs are already short-lived. Your rights are not diminished by the fact that we hold so little data; they are simply easier to satisfy.

Data retention: what is kept, for how long, and what deletes it

Rand Bullion's default retention period for server logs is 14 days. After that, logs are automatically overwritten by the hosting provider's rotation system. The logs contain IP addresses, timestamps, and requested URLs, but they are not used for analytics or any other purpose. The cookie that stores your consent choice lasts 12 months, after which it expires and you will be asked again. If you save a calculation, that cookie lasts 30 days. No other data is stored on our servers. There is no backup archive of visitor data, no long-term database, and no offline storage. If you send us an email, we keep that email for as long as needed to resolve your query, up to 12 months.

Several events trigger deletion before those periods end. Clearing your browser cookies deletes the consent cookie and any saved calculations immediately, because those live on your device. If you email us and ask for deletion, we will manually remove any log entries that contain your IP address and delete your email thread. The analytics data in Plausible is aggregated and cannot be tied to an individual, so there is nothing to delete there. If the site changes its analytics provider, all historical data from the old provider is deleted within 30 days of the switch. We never transfer data to a new system without first checking that it meets our privacy standards.

Data retention is not a set-and-forget policy. We review it every six months to confirm that the periods are still justified. If a new feature requires storing more data, we will update this policy before the feature goes live and give you at least 30 days' notice on the site. The goal is simple: keep nothing longer than necessary, and let you control what sits on your own device. If you want to verify that your data is gone, you can use a browser extension to check for cookies from randbullion.co.za. There should be none after you clear them. And remember, the calculators work perfectly even with all cookies blocked.

What Rand Bullion stores on its own systems and what it never sees

Rand Bullion stores only the data you actively submit through its forms, such as your email address if you request a broker comparison, and it keeps that information solely to respond to your enquiry. The site does not operate user accounts, so there is no profile database, no password storage and no record of the calculator inputs you type. Anything you enter into a tool such as the gold margin calculator stays in your browser and is never transmitted back to Rand Bullion’s servers. That means the site cannot reconstruct a specific visitor’s gold position size or margin estimate after the page is closed, because that information is simply not collected in the first place. The only stored records are the messages you choose to send and the technical logs needed to keep the site secure, and both are handled under the retention rules described later in this policy.

Rand Bullion never sees your payment details, your FxPro account number, your trading history or the contents of any document you upload to a broker. When you click a broker link and open an account with FxPro, the application, identity verification and funding happen entirely on FxPro’s systems, not on this website. Rand Bullion may receive a referral confirmation from the broker’s affiliate network, but that confirmation contains only a limited set of identifiers such as a click ID and the fact that an account was opened, never your password, card number or live balance. The site also does not read cookies set by FxPro after you leave Rand Bullion, and it cannot match your browsing on the broker’s domain back to your activity here. This separation is deliberate: the tools and comparisons on Rand Bullion are designed to work without collecting sensitive financial data, so even if the site were compromised, there would be no stored gold trading records to expose.

The site does store some technical information that is standard for any website, including your IP address, browser type, device category and the pages you visit, but this is kept in aggregate or pseudonymised form and is not linked to a named individual. Rand Bullion does not create a persistent profile of your reading habits across multiple visits, and it does not use fingerprinting techniques to recognise your device when cookies are cleared. If you submit the contact form, your email address and message are stored in the site’s database until the enquiry is resolved, after which they are deleted according to the retention schedule in this policy. No other personal data is written to Rand Bullion’s own storage.

Cookies used on Rand Bullion and the purpose of each category

Rand Bullion sets only the cookies that are necessary for the site to function correctly, and it does not use advertising cookies that track you across unrelated websites. The first category is strictly necessary cookies, which keep your session stable while you move between pages and remember choices such as your cookie consent preference. Without these, the site would still load, but the calculators might reset and you would be asked about cookies on every visit. The second category is preference cookies, which remember display settings such as whether you prefer the gold price quoted in US dollars per ounce or in rand per gram, and these are stored only if you change a default. The third category is analytics cookies, which count visits and measure which pages are read, but they are configured to anonymise your IP address before it is stored, so the resulting data cannot be traced back to an individual.

The cookie that controls your consent choice is named rb_consent and it stores a simple yes or no value plus a timestamp, nothing more. The preference cookie for currency display is named rb_currency and it holds a three-letter code such as USD or ZAR, so the next time you open a calculator the input field defaults to your last choice. The analytics cookies are set by a self-hosted instance of a privacy-focused measurement tool rather than a third-party network, and they use a random identifier that is regenerated every 24 hours, which prevents long-term tracking. Rand Bullion does not use cookies to show you personalised ads, it does not participate in cookie matching with ad exchanges, and it does not drop cookies from social media plugins because there are no social sharing buttons on the site. Each cookie has a specific job, and none of them read your trading activity on FxPro or any other broker.

If you block all cookies, the site will still work for reading and for using the calculators, because the calculations run in JavaScript and do not depend on cookies. You will simply be asked about your consent on each visit, and your currency preference will reset to the default of US dollars per ounce. The cookie banner gives you a clear choice to accept only necessary cookies or to accept all categories, and the settings can be changed at any time from the privacy page. Rand Bullion does not use flash cookies, ETags or any other storage mechanism that survives deleting normal cookies, and it does not attempt to re-create a cookie after you have deleted it. The full list of cookie names, their expiry times and the data each one stores is available in the cookie declaration that appears when you first open the consent banner, and that declaration is updated automatically whenever a cookie is added or removed.