How should a reader tell the public website, a gated portal, and the legal pages apart? This note maps those surfaces, using a public explanation of Microsoft's tape as the kind of thing the website is for, and it does not describe the inside of any portal.
Three surfaces, three jobs
The public website is the set of pages a visitor can read without an account. Its job on the market side is education: mechanisms, definitions, and limits. A portal, if a reader has been given access to one, is a different surface with its own credentials and its own audience. This article will not say what is inside any portal, because the public website is the wrong place to mirror gated material. The legal pages are the third surface. They are public on purpose, so the terms of using the website and the handling of personal information can be read without a login.
Confusing the three is how a screenshot becomes a policy. A sentence seen behind a login is not thereby the firm's public claim, and a sentence on an educational page is not thereby a term of use. Terms of use are the text published as terms. On this site that text is reached at /legal. The handling of personal information is reached at /privacy-policies. A market article that contradicts those pages is wrong about governance even if it is interesting about markets.
The public website educates. The legal pages state the site's terms and privacy handling. A gated portal, if one is used, is a separate surface whose contents are not republished here.
What the public side may contain
A public explanation of market data as a record, with Microsoft shares as the example, belongs on the website. It uses a public company and a public idea. It does not require the reader to sign in, and it does not become more official if the reader does sign in. The Microsoft example marks the genre. If a page needs a password before it makes sense, it is not this genre, and this genre should not hint at the missing half. Hints are how gated material leaks into the public record without its controls.
Links that leave the educational site, including any link a visitor uses to reach a broker or a custodian, are not the legal pages and are not the lesson. They should not be narrated here as if this article controlled them. The reader who wants to know what this website itself promises should stay with /legal. The reader who wants to know about cookies, addresses, or other personal information the site describes should stay with /privacy-policies. Those two readings are available to everyone. That availability is the point of putting them on the public surface.
A portal is not made public by being mentioned. This note mentions the category so readers do not treat every page with the firm's name as the same document. It does not list portal contents, credentials, or audiences. Personal data that a login would involve is exactly the kind of material that stays off a research desk and off an educational example. The Microsoft tape example needs no login and no personal field. That is a reason it can live here.
Trust the surface that matches the question
A question about how a tape differs from a market is a question for the educational pages. A question about what the visitor agrees to by using the site is a question for /legal. A question about personal information is a question for /privacy-policies. A question about what sits behind a login is not answered on this page at all. Matching the question to the surface prevents each one from being asked to do the others' jobs.
The website, the portal, and the legal pages are different rooms. The public room may explain a public tape, such as the record of Microsoft shares. It may not smuggle the other rooms' contents in by allusion. This article is in the public room.
This piece does not describe a portal, offer access, or state a status. The Microsoft tape is an example of public education only. Read /legal and /privacy-policies for the pages that govern the site.
