Privacy Policy

Last updated October 18, 2026

Polybear is a play-money prediction market for the Cornell community, run as an independent student project. This policy explains what we collect, why, and the choices you have. We don't sell your data and we don't run ads.

What we collect

• Your Cornell email address, used only to verify you're part of the Cornell community and to send sign-in codes. It is never shown to other users.
• Profile details you choose: username, college, and class year. These appear publicly on leaderboards and your profile.
• Activity on Polybear: trades, positions, balances, comments, likes, suggestions, and reports. Trades, positions, and comments are public and tied to your username.
• Usage analytics: pages viewed, the referring site, whether you're on a phone, and steps in sign-up (for example, requesting a code). This is linked to a random identifier stored in a cookie. We do not store your IP address in our analytics.
• Technical logs kept briefly by our hosting provider (such as IP address and browser type) to run and secure the service.

Cookies

We use two first-party cookies: one keeps you signed in, and one is the random analytics identifier described above. We don't use third-party advertising or tracking cookies.

How we use it

• To run your account, process trades, and show markets, leaderboards, and comments.
• To prevent abuse, such as duplicate accounts, spam, and attempts to break the service.
• To understand which features people use and where sign-up gets stuck, so we can improve it.

Who we share it with

We share data only with services that help us run Polybear, under their own privacy and security terms:

• Vercel (website hosting)
• Supabase (database)
• Resend (sending sign-in emails)

We may disclose information if required by law or to protect the safety of our users. We never sell or rent personal information.

Retention and deletion

We keep account data while your account is active. Analytics events are kept for up to 12 months. You can ask us to delete your account and associated personal information at any time by emailing support@polybear.live from your Cornell address. Public trades may remain in aggregate market history without your username.

Your rights

You can request a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Depending on where you live (for example California), you may have additional rights under local law; we honor these requests for every user.

Security

Sign-in codes and session tokens are stored only as one-way hashes, all traffic is encrypted, and our database is closed to public access. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information.

Children

Polybear is intended for Cornell students and community members 18 and older.

Changes and contact

If we change this policy, we'll update the date above. Questions? Email support@polybear.live.

Polybear is not affiliated with or endorsed by Cornell University.