Privacy policy

Flare (flareground.com) is a games site for clubs: score predictors, last man standing, cups, sweepstakes and more. It is run by Flareground in the United Kingdom, which decides how your details are used and looks after them.

Questions about your details, or a request to see, correct or delete them, go to privacy@flareground.com.

The rules for using Flare, and for paying for a plan, are in our terms of service.

We only keep what the site needs to work.

Your account

• Your email address, to sign you in and send you codes, security notices, game reminders and messages from your club.
• Your first name and surname, so your Club Admin knows who is asking to join, and can check with a member who knows you if they need to.
• Your password, kept only as a scrambled code that can't be turned back into the password.
• Your time zone and display choices, so times and pages show the way you want.
• Your sign-in app, passkeys and recovery codes, if you add them, to keep your account safe.
• When you last signed in and last used the site, so the Flare team can see which clubs are active.
• Your internet (IP) address, for a short time only, to stop people guessing passwords. It is not linked to your account.

In each club you join

• Your alias: the name other players see.
• An avatar, if you add one.
• The name of someone at the club who knows you, if you give one. If the Club Admin isn't sure who you are, they may ask a club member, by email, whether they know you. That member sees your full name, never your email.
• Your games: entries, predictions, picks, points, tables, trophies, records and any name you put on a sign-up board entry.
• Payments for game entries: what you told the Club Admin you sent, what they marked as received, credit, refunds and prizes.
• Messages in your inbox and your replies to the club.

Money

Entry fees and prizes are paid between you and your club, never through Flare. We never hold stakes or pay prizes, and we never ask for your own bank or card details. Clubs that pay Flare for a plan will pay through Stripe's own secure pages, so we won't see their card details. If a club has its money back under our 14-day promise, we keep the reference Stripe gives that card (never its number), so the promise is used only once.

Club Admins

We keep the club details a Club Admin types in: how players should pay the club for entries, the club's contacts (name, email and, if given, a phone number), and how winners claim prizes.

We also keep a Club Admin's support tickets: what they write, any screenshots, and the kind of phone or computer and browser they used, to help us fix problems.

If a change to a club's Club Admins needs checking, the Flare team may phone one of the club's contacts, using the number in Club info, to confirm it is genuine. We keep a record of each such change: who asked, why, any old and new email address, and who confirmed it, and of who changed the club's payment details and when.

Why we are allowed to

We use your details to give you the service you signed up for (the law calls this a contract). We use them to keep the site safe, spot errors and keep backups because we have a genuine need to (legitimate interests), in ways you would expect.

• Other players in your club see your alias and avatar, with your games: predictions, picks, points, places in the tables, and any name you put on a sign-up board entry.
• If your Club Admin asks you whether you know someone who wants to join, you see that person's full name.
• Players see how to pay the club when they pay for a game, and the club contacts the Club Admin chooses to show. Prize winners see the email and phone or WhatsApp number the club gives for claiming prizes (or a Club Admin's email) and the Club Admin's first name.
• Your club's Club Admin also sees your full name, email, the club contact you gave, the players on your account and your payments in that club.
• The Flare team can see everything, to run the site and help clubs when something goes wrong.
• Other clubs see nothing about you.
• We never sell your details or use them for advertising, and we never send you advertising for other companies.

These companies handle your details for us, only to do their job:

• Render runs the website and its database, in Frankfurt, Germany.
• Cloudflare passes every visit on to the website, so it sees your internet address, and stores avatars, support screenshots and our backups, in the European Union.
• Brevo sends our emails, so it sees your email address and the email. Brevo counts how often our emails are opened and their links clicked, without knowing who: we never see whether you opened an email or clicked a link.
• Sentry tells us when something on the site goes wrong: which page and what broke. It is not sent your internet address or anything you typed.
• Better Stack checks the site is up. It is sent no personal details.
• Stripe takes payments when clubs pay for a plan, on its own pages. It is given the paying Club Admin's email, so it can send receipts.

We share your details with anyone else only if the law requires it.

Flare uses only the cookies it needs to work: one that keeps you signed in (for up to two weeks), one that protects the forms you send, and one that carries a short message from one page to the next. Your browser may also keep a copy of a page you just left, so the Back button is quick; it stays on your device.

There are no tracking or advertising cookies and no analytics, so there is no cookie banner to click. Our fonts and icons come from our own site, not from other companies.

One account can play for up to 5 people in a club, you included: for example members of your family. For each extra player we keep a first name, an alias, an avatar if you add one, and their games. We don't keep an email or contact details for them unless you ask for their own login (below).

Please only add someone you are responsible for, or who has agreed. Entry fees and prizes for your players are between you and the club.

If you set a PIN for switching back to your own account, we keep it only as a scrambled code, never the PIN itself.

If you remove a player, they can be brought back for 7 days; then their first name and avatar are deleted. Deleting your account deletes the details of every player on it. You can ask for a player's own login: the Club Admin sees the email you give, and we keep it only for that. It is deleted if the request is turned down or withdrawn, or if the login link runs out unused.

• Your account: until you delete it. If you are in no club and haven't used Flare for 3 months, we delete it, after emailing you a month before.
• When you delete your account, your email, names, avatars and club contacts are deleted straight away. Your games, with their payments and prizes, stay under the name "Deleted player", so everyone else's tables still add up. Support tickets you raised as a Club Admin stay with the club, without your name.
• If a Club Admin removes you from their club, you can be brought back for 7 days. Then your details in that club are deleted; only your alias stays in its game history.
• A sign-up whose email is never confirmed is deleted after 7 days.
• An email address a Club Admin invites is deleted 30 days after the invite if nobody joins with it.
• Inbox messages move to Older after a few weeks and are deleted a year after that (at most 14 months after they were sent). Replies to the club are deleted after 12 months.
• Internet addresses kept to stop password guessing, and old signed-in sessions, are deleted within 15 minutes of running out.
• If a club lists you as a contact, ask your Club Admin to remove you: deleting your own account doesn't remove it.
• A club's details, games, support tickets and records of changes are kept while the club uses Flare, and deleted 3 months after it closes, its plan ends or it goes 6 months unused on Try it free (no game running or played, and no member signing in), or sooner if it asks. A Single competition or A bigger game ends when its game finishes. Invoices for what a club paid stay with Stripe, as they must be kept for tax.

So nothing is lost if something goes wrong, we copy the database every night. The copies are locked (encrypted) and kept in the European Union, and only the Flare team's Super Admin can unlock them. We keep a copy from each of the last 30 days and one from each of the last 12 months; older copies are deleted. Render, which runs our database, also keeps its own copies for up to 7 days.

This means a deleted account can stay in the backups for up to 12 months, until the oldest monthly copy holding it is deleted. Backups are only used to put the site back after a problem.

You can ask us to:

• show you the details we keep about you
• correct anything that is wrong
• delete your details
• give you a copy of your details to take elsewhere
• stop or limit how we use them, if you object

You can do much of this yourself on your Me page: Download my data gives you a copy of everything we keep about you and the players on your account, and Delete my account deletes it. A Club Admin hands their club to someone else first.

For anything else, email privacy@flareground.com. We reply within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we look after your details, please tell us first so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

When we change this policy, we update it here and change the date at the top.