Privacy Policy

AetherForge AI ("AetherForge AI", "we", "us" or "our") operates the website www.aetherforgeai.co.nz and provides AI-generated market intelligence and portfolio-monitoring tools. We are the "agency" responsible for your personal information under the Privacy Act 2020.

We are committed to protecting your privacy and handling your personal information openly, transparently and in accordance with the thirteen Information Privacy Principles.

We only collect personal information that is necessary for our lawful functions and activities, and we collect it directly from you wherever possible, by lawful and fair means:

• Account information — your name and email address when you register, and authentication details managed by our sign-in provider.
• Portfolio data — the tickers, share quantities, purchase prices and notes you choose to add to monitor your own holdings.
• Billing information — subscription plan, status and payment identifiers. Card details are processed directly by Stripe and are never stored on our servers.
• Technical information — IP address, browser and device type, and usage analytics collected automatically to keep the service secure and reliable.

When we collect personal information from you, we take reasonable steps to ensure you are aware of why it is being collected, who will receive it, and that you have a right to access and correct it.

We use your personal information only for the purposes for which it was collected, including to:

• create, secure and manage your account;
• generate AI market-intelligence reports based on the holdings you add;
• process subscription payments and manage your plan;
• send you service updates, security notices and daily briefings you have subscribed to;
• respond to your support enquiries; and
• maintain, protect and improve the security and performance of the service.

We will not use your personal information for a new, unrelated purpose without your consent, unless permitted under the Privacy Act 2020.

AetherForge AI uses third-party large-language-model providers to generate market analysis. The holdings and prompts you submit may be transmitted to these AI providers solely to produce your reports. We do not use your personal financial data to train third-party AI models, and we do not make automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you. AI-generated content is informational only — see our AI Disclaimer.

We do not sell your personal information. We may disclose it only:

• to trusted service providers who help us operate the service (for example hosting, payment processing with Stripe, and AI analysis), bound by confidentiality obligations;
• where you have authorised the disclosure;
• where required or authorised by law, including to comply with a lawful request from a New Zealand court, regulator or enforcement agency; or
• in connection with a business restructure, merger or sale, where the recipient agrees to protect your information consistently with this policy.

Some of our service providers (including cloud hosting and AI providers) are located outside New Zealand. Where we disclose personal information overseas, we take reasonable steps to ensure it is protected by comparable safeguards to those under the Privacy Act 2020, or we rely on an exception permitted by IPP 12 (such as your authorisation).

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your personal information against loss, unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure. This includes encryption in transit, access controls, and scoping every portfolio, report and conversation to your own account. No system is completely secure, but if a notifiable privacy breach occurs we will notify affected individuals and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner as required by the Privacy Act 2020.

We keep your personal information only for as long as it is required for the purposes set out in this policy or as required by law. When information is no longer needed, we securely delete or de-identify it. You may delete your holdings at any time, and you may request deletion of your account.

Under the Privacy Act 2020 you have the right to request access to the personal information we hold about you, and to request correction of any information that is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete or misleading. You can update much of your information directly in your account settings, or contact us to make a request. We will respond within the timeframes required by the Act (generally 20 working days).

Before using or disclosing your personal information, we take reasonable steps to ensure it is accurate, up to date, complete, relevant and not misleading. Please help us by keeping your account details current.

We assign internal account identifiers solely to operate the service. We do not require you to disclose unique identifiers assigned by other agencies (such as an IRD number) and we do not use such identifiers as our own.

We use essential cookies to keep you signed in and to secure the service, and limited analytics to understand usage. You can control cookies through your browser settings, although disabling essential cookies may affect functionality.

If you have a question, wish to exercise your privacy rights, or want to make a complaint about how we have handled your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer at privacy@aetherforgeai.co.nz. We take privacy complaints seriously and will work with you to resolve them.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (New Zealand): www.privacy.org.nz · 0800 803 909.

We may update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or the law. The "last updated" date above shows when it was last revised, and material changes will be notified through the service.