How this ledger is kept

This page explains how the readings on this site are taken, what a reading can and cannot show, and what the ledger leaves out. (reading of 6 November 2026, First Trade App)

What a reading is

The readings were taken on 6 November 2026 (UTC) by a script that asks public pages for what a visitor sees without logging in: the Google Play pages in the South Africa view (country code ZA, English text) and App Store pages in the South Africa storefront. Saved copies of the answers are the source of every table; dates are UTC. (reading of 6 November 2026, First Trade App)

How the figures are re-checked

Before a reading is kept, a second program reads the saved files by a different route (visible text against page data, lookup against product page, star counts against the number of ratings, versions against the current version) and compares. If anything differs the reading is not written. The check was tested against planted faults: a changed rating, a swapped developer, a changed count, a dropped declaration, an edited date. (reading of 6 November 2026, First Trade App)

What was asked of each source

Requests to one host were spaced at least eight seconds apart, no more than fifty were made to any host in a day, and a refusal stops the run. The pictures on this site are drawn from the figures in the tables, not captured from the stores: the App Store answered HTTP 429 that day and Google Play had reached the night's request limit, so the pages were not loaded again. The broker's own ordinary pages answered with HTTP 403; its public text file was readable and is the only page of the broker quoted. (reading of 6 November 2026, First Trade App)

What the ledger leaves out on purpose

Everything behind a login: the screens of an account, identity checks, deposits, withdrawals, the order ticket and the fees. Reviews, which are other people's words. Scores and rankings. A rating or a declaration is reported as the page prints it, not as true. (reading of 6 November 2026, First Trade App)