Security & data
Your data, kept safe
Forge Ledger holds the future of your finances — we take that responsibility seriously. Here's how your account is protected, in somewhat plain English... aka the boring, but reassuring part:
Passwords are never stored in plain text
Your password is run through bcrypt (the industry-standard one-way hash used by NHS Digital, GOV.UK, and most major banks) before it ever touches our database. Even we can't read it. We also check every new password against the Have I Been Pwned breach database, so you can't reuse a password that's been leaked elsewhere.
Every connection is encrypted in transit
All traffic between your browser and our servers runs over TLS 1.3 (HTTPS) — the same encryption your online banking uses. We enforce HSTS, meaning your browser refuses to ever connect over plain HTTP, even by accident.
Session security designed for real life
Login sessions use httponly, secure cookies — they can't be stolen by a malicious browser extension or a script on another tab. If you suspect a device was compromised, the Log out everywhere button in `/account/settings` → Security invalidates every active session instantly across every device.
Your card details never touch our systems
When you pay for one of our upgrade tiers, the checkout form is hosted entirely by Stripe — a PCI-DSS Level 1 payment processor. Forge Ledger only ever sees a session ID; your full card number, CVV, and expiry stay inside Stripe's vault. If our database were ever breached, no card data would be exposed because none of it lives here.
Encrypted-at-rest on a managed database
Your transactions and account balances live in MongoDB Atlas (managed in the UK / EEA region), which encrypts every disk block with AES-256 and runs daily automatic backups with point-in-time restore. We don't host your data on a laptop in a cupboard — promise.
Defence in depth at the application layer
Rate limits on every endpoint (so brute-force login attempts get blocked), strict security headers (preventing clickjacking, MIME-sniffing, and referrer leakage), CSRF-safe cookies, and a brute-force lockout after 5 failed logins on the same account. None of this is the headline of a finance app — but the absence of any of it is why other services get hacked.
Your data is yours — and easy to leave with
From `/account/settings` → Privacy & data you can download a complete JSON snapshot of everything we hold for you, anytime. Under UK GDPR that's your Right of Access (Article 15), and we make it a one-click button instead of a 30-day email request. If you delete your account, we hold the data for 30 days (in case you change your mind — log back in and it's restored automatically) and then hard-delete every row across our entire database. That's the Right to Erasure (Article 17), genuinely fulfilled.
No bank scraping, no selling your data
Forge Ledger currently doesn't connect directly to your bank — you enter transactions yourself or import via CSV. That means we never need your banking password, and our breach risk has nothing to do with your money in the bank. We also don't sell, share, or rent your financial data to advertisers or data brokers, full stop. Once Open Banking for the Titanium tier starts being built we will comply with all related laws and security protocals.
If something here is unclear, or you're a security researcher with a finding you'd like to disclose, please use the contact us section at the bottom of our pages. We aim to reply within 5 working days, and we read everything.