Terms of use and privacy
Last updated 2026-10-21. Plain English, because PRISM is a learning tool, not a bank.
What PRISM is
PRISM is a practice and learning site run by students. You can build practice portfolios with pretend money, track them against real market prices, analyse their risk and research companies. No real money is involved, no real trades are placed, and nothing on PRISM is investment, financial, tax or legal advice. Prices come from free public sources (Yahoo Finance, SEC EDGAR) and can be late, wrong or missing. Don't make real decisions based on PRISM.
Who can see your portfolios
- You choose what other members see, when you sign up and any time in Settings › Privacy:
- All my portfolios are public: signed-in members can look at all your portfolios, their holdings, values and trades, from your profile page.
- Only competition portfolios are public: members can see your competition portfolios once each competition ends. Your practice portfolios stay private.
- No public portfolios: only you (and admins) can see them, and you can't join club competitions.
- A competition portfolio is never public while its competition is running, whatever you pick, so nobody can copy your trades. Its rank, value, return and number of trades are on the Leaderboard for signed-in members.
- "Public" means signed-in PRISM members only. Visitors who aren't signed in can't see your portfolios, profile or photo. Members can only look: nobody but you can trade or edit your portfolios.
- PRISM admins (the officers who run PRISM for the club) can always see every portfolio, holding, value and trade on the site, whatever you pick, along with the owner's name, username, email, school, major and graduation year. They may share results with the club, for example competition standings, and may download portfolio data to run competitions.
- Your profile page shows your photo, username and bio to signed-in members, with your competition results and the portfolios you made public. Your real name, email, school and graduation year aren't on it.
What we store
- Your account: email, a one-way scrambled form of your password (we never see or store the password itself), or the account ID from Google or Microsoft if you sign in with them.
- Your profile: name, username, school, major, graduation year, an optional short bio, and your privacy setting.
- Your profile photo, if you add one. PRISM makes a new square copy of it and keeps only that: the original file and its hidden details (camera, date, location) are not stored. Signed-in members can see it; you can remove it any time, and admins can remove photos that break the rules.
- Your portfolios, their holdings and every trade, plus when you joined and last logged in.
- Your Learning Lab progress: the lessons and quizzes you finish, your answers, your XP, rank and streak, and the questions waiting in your review.
- If you test lessons (testers and admins), the notes you write on lessons and questions, with what you answered there. Other testers and admins see them with your username, never your name or email.
- A login cookie that keeps you signed in. PRISM has no ads, sells nothing and shares no data with advertisers.
- Your IP address is used briefly to stop people guessing passwords; it isn't saved with your account.
- Your chats with the AI Assistant (in the Portfolio Workspace): your questions and its answers, saved to your account so you can come back to them. Delete one chat on the AI Assistant tab, or all of them in Settings, any time. Each question is sent to Anthropic's Claude to write the answer, along with the numbers of the portfolio it's about. PRISM also counts how many answers you get each day, for the daily limits.
- If you turn on the weekly summary, PRISM emails you your portfolios' numbers once a week. It's off unless you tick the box, and you can turn it off any time from the email or in Settings.
Your responsibilities
- Keep your password to yourself and use one you don't use anywhere else.
- One account per person. Don't try to break, overload or get around the site's limits, or access accounts or data that aren't yours.
- Keep usernames, bios, photos and portfolio names respectful, and only use a photo you have the right to use. Admins can remove photos and disable accounts that break these rules.
Your choices
- Edit your profile, photo, privacy and email settings in Settings any time.
- To delete your account and its data, ask a PRISM admin.
- PRISM is offered as is, without guarantees. It may change, pause or shut down, and data could be lost, so keep your own copy of anything important.
Terms & privacy · Practice money only. Not investment advice.