Security & Data Protection
Version 1.1 · Last updated: July 31, 2026
This page is maintained by the operator of The Gold Congress to answer common security and privacy questions about the website, the registration flow and the Newsletter. It describes the controls that are actually in place today, in plain language, so you can judge what happens to the details you give us.
Not a certification. This is self-reported, app-owner content — not an audit report, independent verification, or a claim of SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS or any other certification. We describe platform capabilities we rely on and practices we follow; we do not claim regulatory compliance outcomes we have not been assessed for.
- Data we store
- Registration details (name, email, optional company and message, ticket tier), Newsletter details (optional name, email, frequency, chosen interest topics, active status) and contact enquiries (name, email, topic, message).
- Data we do not store
- No passwords, no card or bank details, no government ID, no portfolio or holdings data, no precious-metal transactions. We are not a dealer and never ask what you own.
- Encryption
- HTTPS/TLS for all traffic to and from this site; encryption at rest is provided by our managed database platform.
- Database access
- All three tables are private. There are no public read, write or delete rules — the anonymous and signed-in web clients cannot query them at all. Rows are written only by our server, using a server-side credential that never reaches your browser.
- Abuse protection
- Registration, Newsletter and contact submissions are rate limited per connection (five submissions per ten minutes) and screened by silent bot checks — a hidden decoy field and a minimum form-completion time. No CAPTCHA, no third-party tracking scripts and no behavioural profiling are used.
- Form handling
- Every submission is validated on the server against a strict schema (field types, length limits, allowed values) before it touches the database, in addition to the checks you see in the browser.
- Secrets
- Server credentials live in the hosting platform's encrypted secret store, are injected at runtime, are never committed to source control, and are never rendered into pages or logs.
- Payments
- No card data passes through this site. Paid delegate tiers are handled by manual invoicing outside the website.
- Contact
- security@thegoldcongress.com · privacy@thegoldcongress.com
1. How the site is built
The site is a server-rendered web application. Anything that touches personal data runs on the server, not in your browser: the browser posts a form, a server function validates it, and only the server writes to the database. The browser is never given a credential that can read the registration or subscriber tables.
Content you read — articles, lessons, the schedule, the glossary — is static and involves no personal data at all. Live metal prices are fetched server-side from a public market data feed; that request carries no information about you.
2. Data minimisation
We ask for the least we need to admit you to an online congress and to send you what you asked for. Company and message fields on the registration form are optional. The Newsletter needs only an email address; a name and interest topics are optional and used purely to make editions relevant.
We do not enrich your record from data brokers, we do not build advertising profiles, and we do not sell, rent or trade personal data. Full detail in the Privacy Policy.
3. Access control
Access to stored submissions is limited to the people who operate the congress and need it for delegate administration or sending the Newsletter. Access is on a least-privilege basis and is removed when a role ends. The database tables enforce this at the platform level: with no public access rules in place, a request that is not our trusted server is refused outright rather than filtered.
4. Infrastructure and subprocessors
We use a small number of providers to run the service: an edge hosting and CDN provider to serve the site, a managed Postgres platform to store registrations and subscribers, an email provider to send confirmations and Newsletter editions, and a streaming provider for the live congress. Each is bound by a data processing agreement and processes data only on our instructions.
Where a provider processes data outside your region, transfers rely on the safeguards described in the Privacy Policy, which also lists the categories of recipients. The named entities are confirmed and published as each contract is finalised — we do not list providers we have not engaged.
5. Retention and deletion
Registration records are kept for the lifecycle of the congress edition you registered for, plus the period required for accounting and legal defence where an invoice was issued. Newsletter records are kept until you unsubscribe, after which we retain only the minimum needed to honour your opt-out and prevent re-adding you.
You can ask us to delete your data at any time by writing to privacy@thegoldcongress.com. Newsletter subscribers can opt out instantly on the unsubscribe page, and every edition will also carry a one-click unsubscribe link. Concrete retention periods are set out in the Privacy Policy.
7. Incident response
Suspected incidents are investigated as soon as they are reported. Where a personal data breach meets the threshold of Art. 33/34 GDPR, we notify the competent supervisory authority within 72 hours of becoming aware and inform affected individuals without undue delay, describing what happened, what data was involved and what you should do.
We do not claim breaches are impossible. We claim that we plan for them, keep the blast radius small by storing very little, and tell you promptly.
8. Reporting a vulnerability
Report security issues to security@thegoldcongress.com with steps to reproduce and, where relevant, a proof of concept. Please give us a reasonable window to remediate before public disclosure, do not access or modify data belonging to others, and do not run denial-of-service or spam tests against the site.
We will acknowledge good-faith reports, keep you updated on remediation, and will not pursue researchers who follow these rules. We do not currently operate a paid bounty programme.