Why does personal data have no place on a desk that is studying public markets? This note explains the separation, using a public tape of Apple shares as the example of what the desk is for, and sends privacy questions to the site's privacy page.
The subject of the work is not a person
A research file about a public market describes instruments, venues, and published documents. A person's name, account identifier, device identifier, résumé, or message is a different subject. Mixing them feels efficient and is a category error. The market file does not become more informative because a human identity is joined to it. The personal file does not become a market dataset because it was stored in the same folder. Policy keeps them apart so that a study of prices cannot quietly become a study of people.
The practical rule is refusal at the door. A dataset whose rows are people is not accepted as a market feature. A market dataset that arrives with a personal field attached is not accepted until that field is removed by someone whose job includes the removal, not by a researcher who deletes a column and hopes. Hope is not a control. The privacy page is where this website explains its own handling of personal information. Research policy does not freelance a second explanation.
Personal data is information about a person. A research desk that studies public markets does not accept it as a feature, a join key, or a text corpus.
An Apple tape needs no identity
A tape of Apple shares can be studied as a public record of quotes and prints. Nothing in that study requires the name of a visitor to a website, the identity of an applicant, or the contents of a mailbox. If a join between those worlds is proposed because both have timestamps, the proposal is rejected. Shared timestamps are not a scientific opportunity. They are how unrelated files get married by accident. The Apple tape remains the example of the work that does belong on the desk: a named public record, with a clock, without a person attached.
Website logs and research extracts should not meet inside an analyst's notebook. A log that shows someone read a page is personal data in this sense even when it feels operational. It is governed with the privacy disclosures, not with the feature-acceptance habit used for volume files. The pages to read are /privacy-policies for personal information and /legal for the terms of the site. A researcher who wants a market example uses the Apple tape. A researcher who wants a personal example is in the wrong room.
Applicants and employees are not rows in a market study. A résumé may be read by the people whose work is hiring. It is not a text corpus to be scored beside filings. That misuse would dress an employment file as alternative data. Policy forbids the costume. The public filing and the public tape are the alternative. They are already the subject of the educational notes on this site, and they do not require anyone's private document.
If the mix has already happened
If a personal field is discovered inside a research extract, the extract is treated as contaminated. The field is not analyzed first and cleaned up later. Later is how the field gets quoted in a chart. The file is quarantined, the privacy handling described on /privacy-policies is followed, and the market study proceeds only from a version that never had the field. Convenience is the usual reason people skip this. Convenience is not a basis.
Personal data does not belong on a research desk because the desk's subject is the public record, illustrated here by Apple's tape, and a person is not an instrument. The site's commitments about people and about terms are written at /privacy-policies and /legal. This note does not replace either one.
This piece does not describe a person, state a regulatory status, or turn a privacy policy into a market view. Read /privacy-policies and /legal for the site's own terms. The Apple tape is only an example of a public record that needs no identity. A timestamp shared with a personal log is still not a reason to join the two files.
