Privacy Policy | StableBet

1. Who we are

StableBet (“we”, “us”, “our”) operates the website at stablebet.co.uk. We are the data controller for the personal information described in this policy. If you have any questions about it, or about how we handle your data, please contact us at brett@stablebet.co.uk.

Most of this policy is about people who visit the site. If you work in the betting industry and we hold your professional contact details, section 9 is written for you.

2. What data we collect

We collect a small amount of data about visitors, and we have built most of it so that it cannot identify you.

Analytics data, collected only if you accept analytics cookies: pages visited, time on page, referring URL, browser type and device type, collected via Google Analytics. See section 4.
Affiliate link activity, recorded on our own server: when you click a bookmaker link, or when one of our offer panels is displayed to you, we record which partner and which placement was involved, the page you were on (the path only, with any query string stripped), a randomly generated reference for that event, the approximate country of the request as reported by our content delivery network, a coarse device category such as mobile or desktop, and whether our automated checks flagged the request as likely to be a bot. When you click a link, we also keep the full user agent string your browser sends for 90 days, so that we can separate our own test clicks from real ones, and then delete it. We do not record your IP address, and we set no advertising or cross-site tracking cookie for any of this.
Beat the Bookies leaderboard entries, recorded on our own server if you play the game and submit a score: the nickname you choose, a random device token the game generates and keeps in your browser’s local storage, your run and its results, the approximate country of the request, and a coarse device category such as mobile or desktop. Your nickname appears on the public leaderboard, so please do not use your real name if you would rather not be identifiable.
Contact data: if you email us, we receive your email address and the contents of your message.
Delivery data: Vercel, which hosts this website, necessarily processes your IP address to deliver pages to you, and may hold it briefly in its request logs.

We do not run account registration, comment systems, newsletter sign-ups or payment processing. We never ask for your real name, date of birth, address or payment details. The only name-like information we hold about a visitor is a nickname you have chosen for yourself.

3. How we use your data

We use the data we collect to:

Understand how visitors use the site so we can improve it
Measure which bookmaker offers people click, and check that against the reports our commercial partners send us
Identify and filter automated traffic, so that our partners are not sent bot clicks stamped with our affiliate account
Run the Beat the Bookies leaderboard, and stop a single device claiming multiple places on it
Respond to enquiries sent to us by email
Monitor technical performance and diagnose errors

We do not sell your data. We do not use it for direct marketing, and we do not build advertising profiles.

A small number of service providers process data on our instructions, under data processing terms that bind them: Vercel (website hosting), Amazon Web Services (our database server, located in London), Google (analytics, only with your consent) and Anthropic (the AI features described in section 8). Where one of them handles data outside the UK, the transfer is covered by the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses, or by the UK extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

4. Google Analytics

This website uses Google Analytics 4 to collect usage statistics. We have implemented Google Consent Mode v2: until you accept analytics cookies via our cookie banner, no analytics cookies are set and no identifiable analytics data is sent to Google. If you accept, Google Analytics uses cookies to distinguish users and sessions, and the information collected (including your truncated IP address) is transmitted to and stored by Google.

Google Analytics data is processed in accordance with Google’s Privacy Policy. You can change your preferences at any time using the “Cookie Preferences” link in the footer, or opt out entirely by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

5. Cookies and browser storage

We set analytics cookies only after you accept via the cookie banner. Three things are set without asking: one cookie that protects our commercial partners from automated traffic, and two pieces of browser storage whose only job is to show you less. Everything else stays on your own device.

sb_seen (a first-party cookie, set without asking): set when you view a page. It holds a single fixed value and contains no identifier of any kind. When you later click a bookmaker link, the presence of this cookie is what tells us the click came from a real browsing session rather than a crawler arriving cold. It lasts 30 days, is marked secure and httpOnly so page scripts cannot read it, and it is never used for analytics or advertising.
Google Analytics cookies (_ga, _gid, _gat): used to distinguish users and limit request rates. These are analytics cookies and require your consent, and nothing is set until you give it.
sb_pv_v1 (session storage) counts how many different pages you have opened in this tab, so that a bookmaker offer is never put in front of someone who has just arrived. It holds page addresses on this site and no identifier, it is not sent anywhere, and your browser discards it when you close the tab.
sb_interstitial_v1 (local storage) records that you have already been shown, or already closed, a bookmaker offer, so you are not shown another for at least a day. It holds the bookmaker name and a timestamp, and it is not sent anywhere.
sb_consent_v1 (local storage) remembers the cookie choice you made so we do not ask again. It never leaves your device.
Beat the Bookies storage (local storage): your saved runs and the device token described in section 2. The token is sent to us only when you submit a score.
My Stable horse tracker (local storage): the horses you follow, your notes and your tags are stored on your device only. They are never sent to us and we cannot see them.

None of the storage set without asking identifies you or follows you between sites. We keep the two offer-limiting items outside the consent banner because declining them would mean being shown more, not less.

You can change your choice at any time using the “Cookie Preferences” link in the footer. You can also control or delete cookies and local storage through your browser settings. Declining analytics cookies will not affect your ability to use StableBet.

6. Legal basis for processing (UK GDPR)

Consent: for analytics cookies and the associated Google Analytics processing, captured via our cookie banner under PECR. You can withdraw consent at any time from the “Cookie Preferences” link in the footer.
Strictly necessary: the sb_seen cookie is set under the PECR exemption for storage that is necessary to provide the service, because it is the mechanism that keeps fraudulent automated clicks from being passed to our partners under our affiliate account.
Legitimate interests: for the affiliate click and impression records, the bot filtering built on them, and the leaderboard. Our interest is in measuring the referrals we are paid for, protecting our partners and our own affiliate accounts from fraudulent traffic, and running a game feature our readers use. We have weighed that against your interests, which is why these records carry no IP address and no cross-site identifier, why the full user agent is deleted after 90 days, and why the leaderboard uses a nickname you choose rather than a real name.
Legitimate interests: for replying to enquiries you send us by email.

7. Data retention

Google Analytics data: 26 months, the Google default.
Affiliate click and impression records: kept indefinitely. Once the full user agent has been removed, nothing left in them can identify you: they hold no IP address, no user agent and no identifier that anyone else holds.
The full user agent on a click record: 90 days, then deleted. The coarse device category stays with the record.
Beat the Bookies leaderboard entries: for as long as the leaderboard runs, or until you ask us to remove yours.
Email correspondence: as long as necessary to resolve the enquiry, and for a reasonable period afterwards.
Backups: our database server keeps daily backups for 14 days, so a deleted record or a removed user agent can survive in a backup for up to that long.

These limits are enforced by an automated job that runs every day and checks afterwards that nothing has outlived them.

8. Artificial intelligence

We use AI from Anthropic. It matters what that AI can and cannot reach, so we will be specific.

The AI features in our own systems never receive records about site visitors.They use Anthropic’s Claude API, under terms that make Anthropic a data processor acting on our instructions. They are handed a fixed set of business documents, described in section 9, and have no access to our database, so they cannot look anything else up and no prompt can make them.
We also use AI coding assistants from Anthropic to build and run the site. Like any developer tool, they can reach the servers that hold the records described in section 2 while that work is under way.
No decision producing a legal effect, or a similarly significant effect, is made about you by automated means.

9. Information for business and partnership contacts

This section is for people who work in the betting and affiliate industry and whose professional details we hold in our partnership records. We did not collect this information from you directly, so we are required to tell you that we have it.

What we hold: your name, job title, work email address, work telephone number where it is published, your LinkedIn profile URL, your employer, your general location, a role category we assign, a short summary, copies of emails between us, notes on where our conversation has reached, and a priority score we calculate ourselves.
Where it came from: your employer’s website and affiliate programme pages, your public LinkedIn profile, published industry directories and contact discovery services, and any correspondence you have had with us.
Why we hold it: to contact you about a commercial affiliate partnership between your company and StableBet.
Legal basis: legitimate interests, specifically business-to-business contact with a named professional at their work contact details. You can object at any time and we will stop.
AI processing: to draft briefing notes and answer our own questions about our partnerships, Anthropic’s Claude may be sent your name, job title, employer, work email address, role category, summary, priority score, where our conversation has reached and when we last contacted you, along with our notes about your company. Your telephone number, LinkedIn profile, location and the contents of emails between us are not sent to it.
Retention: records where there has been no contact for 24 months are flagged automatically for review, and we delete those where no meaningful engagement has taken place.
Your rights: the rights in section 10 apply, and you have an unqualified right to object to direct marketing. Email brett@stablebet.co.uk and we will remove you from our records.

10. Your rights

Under UK GDPR, you have the right to:

Access the personal data we hold about you
Request correction of inaccurate data
Request erasure of your data
Object to processing based on legitimate interests
Request that we restrict processing while an objection is considered
Lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)

One practical limit is worth stating plainly. Our affiliate click and impression records hold no name, email address, account or IP address, by design. If you ask us for a copy of them, we will usually be unable to find your rows, because there is nothing in them we can match to you. For a leaderboard entry, tell us the nickname and we can remove it.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at brett@stablebet.co.uk. For complaints about data handling you can also contact the ICO at ico.org.uk.

11. Third-party links

StableBet contains links to external websites, including bookmakers and responsible gambling organisations. When you follow a link to a bookmaker, that operator becomes responsible for the data it collects about you, under its own privacy policy. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of those sites and we encourage you to read them.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated date at the top. Continued use of the site after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

13. Contact

For any privacy-related questions or requests, please contact us at brett@stablebet.co.uk.