Privacy and what this site does with data

Calculators run in your browser

Every calculator on this site runs in the browser, and the numbers you enter are never sent to a server. That includes position size, margin and pip-value inputs: they are used on your device to produce the result and are not stored by us or transmitted anywhere. There is no account to create and no form that sends your trading figures back to the desk.

This is a deliberate choice rather than a technical accident. The figures a reader types into a gold calculator say something about their position size and their capital, and there is no editorial reason for this desk to hold that. Keeping the calculation local is the simplest way to make sure we do not.

Traffic counts and local storage

We count traffic in aggregate only: how many visits a page receives, not who visited it. We do not build profiles of individual readers and we do not sell or share visitor data. The aim is to know which pages are read, so that the useful ones can be improved and the rest reworked.

Local storage in your browser holds your own preferences, such as settings you have chosen on the site. That storage sits on your device and is there for your convenience; clearing your browser data removes it. It is not a copy of anything we hold on a server, because we do not hold one.

Analytics, the Measurements Deliberately Left Out, and Children Using This Site

Karoo Picks uses a lightweight traffic count rather than a full behavioural analytics suite, and it deliberately does not measure individual trading behaviour, calculator inputs, scroll depth or cross-site journeys. The site does not build a profile of which instruments you research or which broker pages you visit after leaving. Aggregate page views help decide which explainers to expand, but they are not tied to a person, an account or a device fingerprint.

This site is intended for adults who are considering trading and is not directed at children. Karoo Picks does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18, and because the calculators and content require no account, there is no registration gate that a child could pass through. If you believe a child has submitted personal information to the site, use the contact route on the site so it can be removed; in practice the site holds so little that the main step is clearing the browser's local storage.

Changes to this privacy policy are announced by updating this page and changing the date shown at the top of it, so the current version is always the one you are reading. Material changes, such as a new third party or a new category of data, are flagged in a short notice on the page rather than buried in the text. There is no email list to notify because the site does not run one; checking this page is how a returning reader stays current.

What Leaves Your Browser When You Follow a Broker Link

When you click a broker link, the broker receives a standard HTTP request that includes your IP address, the page you came from, your browser and device details, and any affiliate identifier placed in the link. That request is made by your browser directly to the broker, not routed through Karoo Picks, so from that point the broker's own privacy policy and cookie practices govern the data. Karoo Picks does not attach the numbers you typed into a calculator to that request.

The affiliate identifier tells the broker that a visit originated from Karoo Picks, which is how any commission is attributed. It does not carry your name, your email address or your calculation inputs, because the site does not collect those things in the first place. If you have previously accepted cookies on this site, your consent choice is stored locally and is not forwarded to the broker; the broker will typically set its own cookies once you arrive on its domain.

Following a broker link may also expose you to the broker's own analytics and advertising tags, which are outside Karoo Picks' control. South African readers should note that FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC, and an FxPro entity holds an FSCA licence in South Africa — check which entity your own account is opened with, because the data handling and trading terms can differ by entity. Reading the broker's privacy notice before registering is the practical step.

How Long Anything Is Kept and What Actually Deletes It

Retention on this site is short by design: preference data lives in your browser until you clear it or your browser expires it, and correspondence you send us is kept only as long as needed to answer you and meet any legal record-keeping duty. Nothing typed into a calculator is retained at all, so there is no retention period to state for it. Affiliate cookies follow the broker's expiry schedule rather than ours. There is no archive of reader activity on our side to age out, because no such archive is created.

The most effective deletion tool is in your hands, not ours. Clearing cookies and site data in your browser settings removes the preference and affiliate records immediately, and using a private or incognito window means they are discarded when you close it. If you have sent us a message and want it deleted, ask and we will remove it unless a legal obligation requires us to keep it, in which case we will tell you which obligation applies. We do not keep backups of reader correspondence beyond ordinary operational needs.

Aggregated visit counts are kept in a form that does not identify individuals, so there is nothing personal to delete from them once they are recorded. Hosting logs containing technical request information are retained for a limited operational period and then overwritten in the normal course of running the service. We do not promise a specific number of days here because the period depends on the provider's configuration, and stating a figure we have not been given would be a guess. If you need certainty for a specific concern, ask us and we will confirm the current setting.

Your Rights Over Data From This Site and How to Exercise Them

Under South African data protection law, which follows the Protection of Personal Information Act, you have the right to be told what personal information is held about you, to ask for it to be corrected or deleted, and to object to processing. In practice, Karoo Picks holds almost nothing about you, so the most common honest answer to an access request is that we hold no record identifying you. Where a record does exist, such as correspondence you sent us, you can ask to see it, correct it or have it removed.

To exercise a right, contact the site through the contact route published on the site and describe what you want: access, correction, deletion or an objection to a specific processing activity. Because we do not run accounts, we may need you to identify the browser or the message you are asking about, and we will tell you honestly if we cannot locate anything. Requests are handled within the time the law allows. There is no fee for making a request, and making one will not affect your access to any calculator or page.

Some rights sit with the broker rather than with us once you have followed a link and opened an account. If you want to see, correct or delete trading account data, deposit records or identity documents, that request goes to the broker entity named on your account, and the FSCA-licensed entity question matters here because the responsible party follows the entity. You can also complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa about how a responsible party has handled your information. For broker-held data, start with the broker's own complaint route first.

The Cookie Types This Site Uses and What Each One Is For

Karoo Picks uses three practical cookie categories: strictly necessary ones that let pages load and keep a session working, preference ones that remember your calculator inputs and display choices, and affiliate attribution ones that record which outbound broker link you clicked. Necessary cookies cannot be switched off without breaking basic page behaviour. Preference cookies only affect your own experience and can be cleared from your browser at any time. Affiliate cookies exist for one purpose, which is to let a broker know a visit came from here, and they are described in the next section.

The necessary cookies carry no advertising purpose and are not used to build a profile across other websites. They typically hold a session identifier and a security token so that a page request is recognised as coming from the same browser that just loaded it. Preference cookies are the ones that keep a gold lot size or a pip value setting in place when you move between calculator pages, so you do not retype it. Neither category is used to infer your income, your trading results or your intentions, and neither is shared with a data broker.

Affiliate attribution cookies are set when you click a link to a broker and are read by that broker's tracking system, not by us, once you arrive on their site. They usually carry a reference identifying Karoo Picks as the referring source plus a timestamp, and they expire on the broker's own schedule, which we do not control. You can block or delete them through your browser settings and the site will still work normally; you will simply arrive at the broker without a referral reference. Nothing about your trading on the broker's platform is visible to us through this cookie.

What Karoo Picks Stores and What It Deliberately Does Not

Karoo Picks stores only what is needed to run the pages and remember your display choices, and nothing that identifies you as a person. That means items such as your chosen calculator settings and a small preference record held in your own browser, not on our servers. We do not store your name, identity number, bank details, card numbers, trading account credentials or position history, because the calculators are tools for planning, not a record of your trading. Anything you type into a calculator field stays where you put it and is not filed away as a profile of you.

Karoo Picks does not store the numbers you type into the gold calculators, and it does not store any trading account information because it never asks for it. There is no login, no account creation and no upload of a portfolio. The site has no facility to receive a deposit, so no ZAR amount, EFT reference or card detail ever reaches us. If a page asks you for nothing, it cannot lose what it never held. That is the design choice behind the whole privacy position here: collect little, keep less.

Karoo Picks keeps no marketing profile of you and does not sell, rent or trade any reader data, because there is no reader database to sell from. The only persistent items are the technical ones described in the cookie section below, plus whatever your own browser caches to make pages load faster. If you clear your browser storage, the site forgets your preferences immediately and you return to default settings. Nothing needs to be requested from us to achieve that, because we hold no copy to delete on your behalf.

Brokers set their own cookies

When you follow a link from this site to a broker, the broker sets its own cookies under its own privacy policy. Those cookies are outside our control, and the broker's policy, not this page, governs what they do with them. It is worth reading that policy before you open an account, particularly if you are funding it in rand from South Africa.

We do not receive the contents of a broker's cookies, and we do not pass reader data to a broker beyond what the link itself carries. If you want to know what a broker records when you arrive from an affiliate link, the broker's own documents are the place to check, and they should be read with the same care as its cost and leverage pages.

The Third Parties That Touch a Visit to This Site

The third parties involved are limited to the brokers we link to, the analytics service that counts visits, and the infrastructure that serves the pages. Brokers receive a referral reference when you click through to them and then handle your data under their own policies. The analytics service receives aggregated visit information rather than your calculator inputs. The hosting and content delivery layer processes the technical request needed to return a page to your browser. No other category of third party receives data from this site.

Brokers are the third party with the most direct relationship to you, because following a link takes you onto their platform and into their registration flow. Which entity serves you matters: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC, and an FxPro entity holds an FSCA licence in South Africa, so check which entity your own account is opened with, since the privacy terms and the regulator overseeing your account follow that entity. Karoo Picks does not control those terms.

The analytics and hosting providers are processors acting on the site's instructions, not independent owners of your data. They see the request your browser makes, including an approximate location derived from your connection, and they return a page. They do not receive your name, your ZAR amounts or your calculator entries. We choose providers that support the minimum collection described on this page, and we do not pass reader data onward to advertising networks, data brokers or list renters of any kind.

What Happens to the Numbers You Type Into the Gold Calculators

The numbers you type into any Karoo Picks calculator stay in your browser and are never sent to a server. Each calculation runs as client-side JavaScript on your own device, so the lot size, entry price, stop distance and rand values you enter exist only in your browser tab and are discarded when you close or refresh the page. Nothing about a calculation is logged, stored or associated with your visit.

No calculation result is saved to local storage or to a cookie. The only thing that persists between visits is your cookie consent choice and the lightweight traffic count described elsewhere on this page; the figures behind a margin or pip-value calculation do not persist. If you revisit a calculator later, you start from a blank state unless your browser itself restores form fields, which is a browser feature and not something Karoo Picks controls.

The worked figure on this site uses a 0.10-lot gold position and about $85.50 margin at 1:200, and that arithmetic happens entirely on your device. Because 1 standard lot of XAU/USD is 100 oz and one pip is 0.01, the calculator multiplies your inputs locally; it never transmits them to FxPro or any other party. Treat the output as an estimate only, since the actual margin and costs applied to your account depend on the entity your account is opened with and its current terms.

Affiliate Tracking, Stated Without Decoration

Karoo Picks earns money through affiliate links, which means we may receive a payment from a broker if you open an account after following a link from this site. That payment comes from the broker, never from you, and it does not change the price you pay or the spreads on your account. It is the commercial model that keeps the calculators free. We state it here plainly because a reader deciding whether to trust a comparison deserves to know how the site is funded before they click anything, not after.

Affiliate tracking records that a visit originated here and, depending on the broker's own system, may associate a later account opening with that referral. It does not give us access to your account balance, your trades, your deposits in rand, your EFT details or your personal documents. We do not receive a feed of who signed up. The broker holds that relationship and its own privacy terms apply once you are on their platform. Our interest ends at the referral reference in the link.

Editorial decisions on this site are not sold, and no broker pays for a favourable mention in our calculator explanations or risk notes. The affiliate relationship is disclosed so you can weigh it, and you are free to reach a broker directly without using our links. If you do that, you lose nothing on this site: every calculator and explanation remains available. Trading gold on leverage carries a real risk of loss regardless of which broker you choose, and no affiliate arrangement changes that fact or the margin requirement you must meet.