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Privacy

Privacy Notice

Last Updated/Effective Date: June 16, 2024

Internet Chess Club (“ICC,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) respects your privacy. This Privacy Notice describes the processing of Personal Information (defined below) that is provided, collected, or disclosed in the course of providing our services to you (“Services”) and on the websites, mobile applications, and other platforms that link to this Privacy Notice (collectively, the “Site”). It also describes rights you may have under applicable laws. 

Personal Information We Collect

We may collect a range of Personal Information. “Personal Information” means information that uniquely identifies, relates to, describes, or is reasonably capable of being associated with or linked to you. 

The types of Personal Information we collect may include: 

  • Contact Information – If you submit an inquiry, register for an account, purchase a membership, or otherwise provide us with your information, we may collect your contact information including your name, address, email address, parent or guardian contact information, and phone number. 
  • Commercial Information – We may collect commercial information including information about purchases, subscriptions, memberships, and other Services you have shown interest in. 
  • Payment Information – If you purchase a membership or subscription, we will collect your payment information through our third-party payment processor. We do not directly store your payment information.
  • Usage Information – When you use our Site, we may automatically record information, including your Internet Protocol address (IP Address), geolocation of your device, browser type, referring URLs (e.g., the website you visited before coming to our Site), domain names associated with your internet service provider, and any other information regarding your interaction with our Site.
  • Employment Information – If you apply for employment with us, we will collect Personal Information related to your potential employment, including your education and employment history, address and contact information, demographic information, and any other information included in your resume or application.  
  • Communication Information – We may collect any Personal Information contained within your communications with us. Where permitted by applicable law, we may collect and maintain records of calls with our agents, representatives, or employees via message, post, or similar functionality.

How We Collect Personal Information 

  • Directly From You – We collect Personal Information that you provide to us, for example, if you choose to contact us, request or purchase Services or information from us, or sign up to receive updates.
  • Through Online Tracking Technologies – We use cookies and similar technologies to collect Personal Information related to activity on our Site.  For additional information regarding our use of these technologies, see the Cookies and Tracking Technologies section below.

How We Use Personal Information

To the extent permitted by applicable law, we use Personal Information:

  • To provide our Site and Services, including, for example, sending you communications about your membership or participation in a competition. 
  • To complete and fulfill your purchases, such as processing your payments for a membership, communicating with you regarding your purchases, and providing you with related customer service.
  • For internal research and development, such as testing and verifying the quality of our Site and Services, improving the quality of our Services, and creating new Services.
  • For advertising and marketing, such as sending information about our Site and Services, including using your information to send you messages, notices, newsletters, surveys, and promotions. We also use Personal Information to deliver our online advertising to you. 
  • For communicating with you, such as responding to your questions and comments. If you provide us with your mobile phone number, we may send you SMS text messages about your account. Please note that your carrier may charge you for the text messages you receive. To permanently stop receiving SMS text messages from us (if you are located in the U.S. or Canada) text STOP, CANCEL, or UNSUBSCRIBE in reply to any SMS text message sent by us.
  • For legal, security, or safety reasons, such as protecting our and our users’ safety, property, or rights; complying with legal requirements; enforcing our terms, conditions, and policies; detecting, preventing, and responding to security incidents; and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity. 
  • To detect violations of our rules, for example, if you participate in one of our chess competitions with prizes, you may be required to install software that monitors your activity on your computer or device. This software may log your activity, access your webcam(s) and video, record your input and output audio, and track your mouse or cursor movement. This information will be collected and disclosed to a third party to conduct the competition, and to prevent, detect and investigate violations of our competitions’ rules.
  • As part of a corporate transaction, such as in connection with the sale of part or all of our assets or business, the acquisition of part or all of another business or another business’ assets, or another corporate transaction, including bankruptcy.

How We Disclose Personal Information

We may disclose your Personal Information in the following circumstances:

  • Service Providers – We disclose your Personal Information with third party service providers as necessary to enable them to support our Services or other aspects of our business.  For example, we use a third-party payment processor to collect your payment information in connection with your membership.
  • Publicly On Our Site – We may disclose your Personal Information if we publish your name on our Site in connection with winning a competition or tournament. 
  • Business Partners – We may disclose Personal Information with trusted business partners or corporate affiliates.  For example, we may disclose your Personal Information with a company whose products or services we think may be of interest to you or who we co-sponsor a promotion or service with.  We also disclose Personal Information as needed to provide our competitive events and tournaments.
  • Legal Obligation or Safety Reasons – We may disclose Personal Information to a third party when we have a good faith belief that such disclosure of Personal Information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy or comply with any requirement of law, regulation, legal process, or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce or investigate a potential violation of any agreement you have with us, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise respond to fraud, security or technical concerns, (d) support auditing and compliance functions, or (e) protect the rights, property, or safety of ICC, its employees and clients, or the public against harm.
  • Merger or Change of Control – We may disclose Personal Information to third parties as necessary if we are involved in a merger, acquisition, or any other transaction involving a change of control in our business, including but not limited to, a bankruptcy or similar proceeding. Where legally required, we will give you notice prior to such disclosure.

Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies 

We and our service providers may use cookies and similar technologies to collect usage and browser information about how you use our Site.  We process the information collected through such technologies, which may include or be combined with Personal Information, to help operate certain features of our Site, to enhance your experience through personalization, and to help us better understand the features of our Site that you and other users are most interested in.  

We allow or enable third parties to collect Personal Information in order to provide their interest-based advertising services, and we use Google Ads and other third parties to serve ads for our Services across various websites. To opt-out of this type of advertising by Google, to customize your ad preferences, or to limit Google’s collection or use of your data, visit Google’s Safety Center and Google’s Ad Settings and follow Google’s personalized ad opt-out instructions. To learn more about this behavioral advertising practice or to opt-out of this type of advertising generally, you can visit www.networkadvertising.org. Opting out will not affect your use of our Services.

We use analytics services, including Google Analytics, to assist us with analyzing our Site traffic. These services utilize cookies and other technologies that collect your Personal Information.  To learn more about how Google uses data, visit Google’s Privacy Policy and Google’s page on “How Google uses data when you use our partners’ websites or apps.” You may download the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on for each web browser you use, but this does not prevent the use of other analytics tools. To learn more about Google Analytics cookies, visit Google Analytics Cookie Usage on Websites. 

Most browsers provide you with the ability to block, delete, or disable cookies, and your mobile device may allow you to disable transmission of unique identifiers and location data. If you choose to reject cookies or block device identifiers, some features of our Services may not be available, or some functionality may be limited or unavailable.  Please review the help pages of your browser or mobile device for assistance with changing your settings. We do not respond to Do Not Track (“DNT”) signals sent to us by your browser at this time.

Disabling Cookies: You can prevent the saving of cookies (disable and delete them) by changing your browser settings accordingly at any time. It is possible that some functions will not be available on our Website when the use of cookies is deactivated. Check the settings of your browser. Below, you can find some guidance:
Safari
Opera
Internet Explorer
Google Chrome
Mozilla

How Long We Keep Your Personal Information

We will retain your Personal Information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes described in this Privacy Notice, unless otherwise required by applicable laws. Criteria we will use to determine how long we will retain your Personal Information include whether we need your Personal Information to provide you with our Services; we continue to have a relationship with you; you have requested information or Services from us; we have a legal right or obligation to continue to retain your Personal Information; we have an obligation to a third party that involves your Personal Information; our retention or recordkeeping policies and obligations dictate that we retain your Personal Information; we have an interest in providing you with information about our Services; or we have another business purpose for retaining your Personal Information.

How We Protect Personal Information

We use commercially reasonable efforts to protect the confidentiality and security of Personal Information. However, despite these efforts to store Personal Information in a secure environment, we cannot guarantee the security of Personal Information during its transmission or its storage on our systems.

International Use of our Site

Our Site is hosted in the United States. If you are visiting our Site from outside of the United States, please note that by providing your Personal Information, it is being transferred to, stored, collected, or processed in the United States, where our servers are located and operated.

Children’s Privacy 

We do not collect or solicit any Personal Information from children under the age of 13 without verified written parental consent. In the event that we learn that we have collected Personal Information from a child under the age of 13 without proper consent, we will promptly take steps to delete that information. If you are a parent or legal guardian and think your child has given us their Personal Information, you can email us at icc@chessclub.com. For more information about our practices with respect to the collection of children’s Personal Information, please see our Privacy Notice for Children Under 13.

Links to Third-Party Websites

We are not responsible for the practices employed by any websites or services linked to or from our Services, including the information or content contained within them. We encourage you to investigate and ask questions before disclosing Personal Information to third parties, since any Personal Information disclosed will handled in accordance with the applicable third party’s privacy notice. 

Shine the Light

Under California Civil Code Section 1798.83, individual customers who reside in California and who have an existing business relationship with us may request information about our disclosure of certain categories of Personal Information to third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes, if any. To make such a request, please contact us using the information in the Contact Us section below. Please be aware that not all information sharing is covered by these California privacy rights requirements and only information on covered sharing will be included in our response. This request may be made no more than once per calendar year.

Individuals in the European Union, European Economic Area, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom

This section provides additional information regarding ICC’s processing of Personal Information of people located in the European Union (“EU”), European Economic Area (“EEA”), Switzerland, and the United Kingdom (“UK”) in accordance with the EU Data Protection Regulation, UK Data Protection Regulation, and the Swiss Federal Data Protection Act.  

Legal Basis for Processing

Our legal basis for processing Personal Information depends on the Personal Information concerned and the context in which we process it.  We process Personal Information from you where we need it to perform a contract with you, where the processing is in our legitimate interests (including the purposes described in this Privacy Notice), where the processing is necessary for us to meet our applicable legal obligations, or if we otherwise have your consent.

 Special Category Data

ICC does not intend to collect any Special Category Data, which is any data that reveals your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious, moral or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, political views, the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of identifying a person, and data concerning health or a person’s sex life and/or sexual orientation.  Please refrain from sending us any Special Category Data.

Automated Decision Making

ICC does not make any automated decisions on your behalf or about you without first obtaining your express, opt-in consent.  In the event we secure your consent to do so, you have the right to object to the processing of Personal Information via automated decision making at any time by contacting us at icc@chessclub.com. 

Transfers to Third Parties and Countries

Personal Information that we collect or receive may be transferred to and/or processed by third parties that are located outside of the EU, EEA, Switzerland ort the UK, some of which applicable authorities may not consider to have an adequate level of protection for Personal Information. ICC will only transfer Personal Information to third parties located outside of the EU, EEA, Switzerland, and the UK when it has ensured appropriate safeguards for such Personal Information through use of the standard contractual clauses or other lawful and approved methods.

Your Privacy Rights and How to Exercise Them 

Depending on where you live, you may have the following rights with respect to your Personal Information under applicable data protection laws:

  • Access – The right to know what Personal Information we have collected about you and to access such Personal Information.
  • Data Portability – The right to receive a copy of your Personal Information in a portable and readily usable format.
  • Erasure/Deletion – The right to delete your Personal Information that we have obtained, subject to certain exceptions.
  • Correction – The right to correct inaccuracies in your Personal Information.
  • Objection/Restriction of Processing – The right to object or restrict us from processing your Personal Information in certain circumstances.
  • Withdraw Consent – The right to withdraw your consent where we are relying on your consent to process your Personal Information.
  • Lodge a Complaint – The right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority or other regulatory agency if you believe we have violated any of the rights afforded to you under applicable data protection laws. We encourage you to reach out to us fist so we have an opportunity to address your concerns directly before you do so.

To opt out of marketing emails, please email us at icc@chessclub.com or by following the instructions included in the email correspondence. Please note that, even if you unsubscribe from certain correspondence, we may still need to contact you with important transactional or administrative information, as permitted by law.  Additionally, if you withdraw your consent or object to processing of your Personal Information, or if you choose not to provide certain Personal Information, we may be unable to provide some or all of our Services to you.

To exercise any of the privacy rights afforded to you under applicable data protection laws, please submit a request to us by one of the following methods:

 

We must verify your identity before fulfilling your requests, and if we cannot verify your identity, we may request additional information from you. If you are an authorized agent making a request on behalf of another person, we will also need to verify your identity, which may require proof of your written authorization or evidence of a power of attorney. We endeavor to respond to requests within the time period required by applicable law. If we require more time, we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing.

Changes to this Privacy Notice  

Please note that we may modify or update this Privacy Notice from time to time, so please review it periodically. We will provide you notice if material changes are made. Unless otherwise indicated, any changes to this Privacy Notice will apply immediately upon posting to our Site.