The short version
- A child’s account is created and supervised by a parent, guardian, or coach — not by the child alone.
- We collect the minimum needed to teach chess: a name, a username, an email address, and how the child does at puzzles and classes.
- We show no advertising to children, ever. We do not profile or track children for advertising, and we never sell or rent their data.
- A child’s email address is never shown publicly. Only the username is, and only on leaderboards and content the account publishes.
- A parent or guardian can see, correct, export, or delete everything we hold about their child at any time, and can withdraw consent and close the account.
1. Who counts as a child
Different countries draw the line differently, so we apply the strictest rule to everyone. Under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, a child is anyone under 18. Under the United States’ Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) it is anyone under 13. Under GDPR Art. 8 in the EU and UK it is anyone below the local digital-consent age, between 13 and 16. Wherever a child lives, the protections in this notice apply to their account.
2. How a child gets an account
ChessBinder is not designed for children to sign themselves up. A child account is intended to be created by a parent or guardian, or by a coach or academy that has the parent’s permission, and to stay under that adult’s supervision. Whoever creates the account confirms that they are an adult and that they are authorised to provide consent for that child.
If we learn that a child has created an account without an adult’s involvement, or that a coach set one up without parental permission, we will contact the adult on record to obtain consent and will delete the account and its data if consent is not confirmed. If you believe this has happened to your child, tell us through the contact form and we will act promptly.
Note for coaches and academies: before you create an account for a learner under 18, you must have the parent’s or guardian’s permission. Our Terms of Service make this a condition of using the coaching tools, and it is your responsibility to obtain and keep a record of that permission.
3. What we collect about a child
| What | Why we need it |
|---|---|
| Name | So a coach can recognise the learner in a class list. A first name or nickname is enough. |
| Username | Identifies the account inside the app and on leaderboards. This is the only field shown publicly. |
| Email address | Sign-in, email verification, and password recovery. This can and, for a young child, should be the parent’s or guardian’s address. |
| Password | Kept only as an irreversible bcrypt hash, never as text we can read. |
| Puzzle and challenge activity | The moves played, whether they were right, how long they took, and points scored — this is what produces progress tracking and leaderboard placings. |
| Study and practice history | Which studies the learner worked through, and any notes they wrote. |
| Class and coaching records | Class enrolment, attendance marks, homework assigned and completed, and coach notifications. |
| Hashed technical data | Irreversible hashes of IP address and browser type, used only to detect cheating and automated abuse of challenges. |
We do not ask a child for a phone number, home address, school, date of birth, photograph, or any other detail we do not need. We ask that children do not put personal details into study notes, usernames, or messages, and we will remove such details if they are reported to us.
4. What we never do
- No advertising to children. There is no advertising anywhere on ChessBinder, and we will not introduce behavioural or targeted advertising directed at children. The DPDP Act prohibits targeted advertising directed at children, and we go further by showing them no ads at all.
- No tracking or profiling of children. We do not build behavioural profiles, do not monitor children across other websites, and use no third-party advertising or analytics trackers.
- No selling or renting. We never sell, rent, or trade a child’s personal data, and we do not disclose it to data brokers.
- No detrimental processing. We do not undertake processing that is likely to have a detrimental effect on a child’s wellbeing, as required by the DPDP Act.
- No public exposure by default. A child’s email address, real name, and coaching records are never public. Only the chosen username appears on leaderboards.
- No conditioning participation. We never require a child to disclose more personal data than is reasonably necessary in order to take part in an activity.
5. Who can see a child’s data
- The parent or guardian who holds or supervises the account — everything.
- The child’s coach, where a coach relationship exists: attendance, homework, practice activity, and studies shared with them. A coach cannot see the child’s password, and cannot see activity from other coaches’ classes.
- Other users, only in two situations: the child’s username on a public leaderboard, and within a study or live board the child has been invited to and joined.
- ChessBinder administrators, where necessary to run the service, investigate abuse, or answer a support request. These actions are recorded in an audit log.
6. Interacting with other people
ChessBinder has no open chat and no public messaging between strangers. A child can be invited to a shared study or a live study board, which is normally how a coach runs a lesson. Adults supervising an account should review invitations with the child, and any invitation can be declined. Report anything concerning through the contact form and we will investigate and, where warranted, suspend the account responsible.
7. Leaderboards
Leaderboards show a username and a score. They are a core part of how ChessBinder motivates practice, but they are public. Two things follow for a child’s account:
- Choose a username that does not reveal the child’s full name, school, or year of birth. A nickname works best.
- If you would prefer your child not to appear on public leaderboards at all, contact us and we will remove them from leaderboard publication.
8. Parents’ and guardians’ controls
As a parent or guardian, you may at any time ask us to do any of the following for your child’s account, free of charge, through the contact form:
- Show you all the personal data we hold about your child and how it is used.
- Correct anything that is wrong or incomplete.
- Provide a copy of your child’s data in a portable format.
- Delete specific data, or the entire account and everything in it.
- Remove your child from public leaderboards.
- Stop a coach’s access by ending the coach–learner relationship.
- Withdraw your consent altogether. Withdrawing consent means we close the account and delete the data, because we cannot provide the service to a child without it.
We will ask you to verify that you are the parent or guardian of that account before we act — normally by replying from the email address on the account — so that no one else can obtain a child’s data by pretending to be you. We respond within the 30 days the law allows.
9. How long we keep a child’s data
For as long as the account is open, and no longer than necessary. When an account is deleted, we delete or irreversibly anonymise the child’s personal data within 30 days, and it disappears from our short rolling backup cycle as those backups are overwritten. We do not retain a child’s data to build any kind of long-term profile.
10. Questions
If anything here is unclear, or you want to know exactly what we hold about your child, write to us through the contact form and we will help.