Privacy policy

Fourball St Andrews (“Fourball”) helps golfers in St Andrews find people to play with. This page explains what we collect, why, who sees it and what your rights are. We only collect what Fourball needs to work.

Who we are

Fourball St Andrews, run by William McGill Caiola. We're the “controller” of your information under UK data protection law (UK GDPR). Contact us at williammc1221@gmail.com.

What we collect

• Your email address and password, to sign you in, and your email to send you codes and notifications. Your password is stored scrambled (hashed) by Supabase, so nobody at Fourball can see it.
• Your profile: your name, your connection to St Andrews (student, local or club member, visitor, other), your handicap, and optionally your home club, what you study (students only), what you do, where you're from, a photo and a cover photo, and whether you're a St Andrews Links Yearly Ticketholder. You confirm you're 18 or over. We don't collect your date of birth.
• What you do on Fourball: rounds, practice sessions and Old Course ballot groups you post, ask to join or are invited to (including a ballot booking reference, if the organiser adds one), group chat messages, alerts, your playing partners and partner requests, whether you said you played each round, people you block and reports you make.
• If you join someone else's Old Course ballot group: the details St Andrews Links' ballot form asks for every golfer, which are your first and last name, an email address, gender (with “Prefer not to say” as an answer), handicap, home club and, if you're a Yearly Ticketholder, your ticketholder number.
• If you verified as a student (before 28 October 2026, when student checks were paused): a scrambled fingerprint of your university email address, not the address itself, so one university email can't verify several accounts. While checks are paused, no new fingerprints are collected and nobody can start a check; members already verified keep their badge.
• If you switch on phone notifications: the address your phone's notification service (Apple, Google or Mozilla) gives us for that phone, and the keys that encrypt what we send to it.
• After a round: who you say turned up, and any tags you give the people you played with (like “Great company”). If two or more players say someone didn't turn up, we record a no-show for that round.
• If you agree to be featured on Instagram: that you agreed, and when.
• If you send feedback: what you write and what it's about, with your name, so we can improve Fourball.
• Short records that stop spam and abuse: when you searched, invited someone, asked someone to be a playing partner, asked for a student code or were sent an alert email. These are deleted within two days (searches within an hour).
• Technical data: a sign-in cookie that keeps you signed in, and small settings saved in your browser (light or dark mode, whether you've seen the opening animation, and whether you've dismissed the home-screen guide or a policy notice). The companies that host Fourball keep short-lived technical logs of requests, including your IP address and browser type, to keep the service running and secure. We don't use advertising or tracking cookies, and we don't track your location.

Why we use it, and our legal basis

• To run Fourball: sign you in, show your profile, and let you post, find, join, invite and chat about rounds. (Needed to provide the service you asked for.)
• To tell you what's happening: emails about requests, answers, invites, partner requests and changes to your rounds (needed to provide the service; you can switch emails off in Settings), and phone notifications if you switch them on (your consent, which you can take back in Settings at any time).
• To enter Old Course ballot groups: giving your entry details to the group's organiser, who enters the group through St Andrews Links. (Needed to provide the service you asked for: nobody can be on an entry without them.)
• To keep the community safe: handling reports, blocking and removing rule-breakers, and limits that stop spam. New chat messages, round notes and profile details are also checked automatically for words linked to scams, threats and abuse; a match is passed to our administrator, with a copy of the words, to look at. Nothing is removed or decided automatically. (Our legitimate interest in a safe service. You can object, as below.)
• To keep rounds reliable and friendly: asking who turned up after a round, and showing positive tags. A no-show is never shown to other members; two in 60 days is passed to our administrator to look at, and we send you a note. Nothing else happens automatically, and you can ask us to correct a record that's wrong. (Our legitimate interest in a reliable community. You can object, as below.)
• To keep Fourball secure and running: the technical logs and anti-spam records above. (Our legitimate interest in a secure service.)
• To feature members on Fourball's Instagram, only if you agree. (Your consent, which you can take back in Settings at any time.)
• To improve Fourball: reading the feedback you choose to send. (Our legitimate interest in making Fourball better for the people who use it.)

We don't sell your information or use it for advertising. We use who-turned-up answers and tags as explained above, but we don't make significant decisions about your account solely by automated means: a person decides on every suspension and removal.

Who sees what

• People who aren't signed in see open rounds without any people: no names, photos or notes. Hosts appear only as “a student”, “a local golfer” and so on.
• Other signed-in members see your name, photo, cover photo, handicap, connection to St Andrews, Verified student badge, whether you're a Links Yearly Ticketholder, a member badge if you were one of the first 100 students, locals or visitors to join (never your number), what you do, where you're from, and how many playing partners you have and how many rounds you've played (numbers only, never the names). They can find you by searching your name, unless you turn that off in Settings (people you've played with can always find you).
• Your playing partners (people you've played a round with, or who you've both agreed to add as partners) also see your home club (if you chose to show it) and what you study. Nobody else sees those. Nobody becomes your partner unless you say yes, and only you see your list of partners. If you decline a request, the person isn't told.
• Tags show on your profile only once three different people have given you the same one. Nobody sees who gave them or how many. No-shows are only seen by you and our administrator.
• The organiser of an Old Course ballot group you're in sees the entry details you gave, including your email and any ticketholder number, so they can enter you. Nobody else does, and the organiser doesn't see them while you've only asked to join.
• On Instagram, only if you agree: your name, photo and golf details may appear in public posts about Fourball, which anyone can see.
• The host of a round sees who asked to join or was invited. Only the people in a round can read its group chat, and only an Old Course ballot group sees its booking reference.
• Fourball's administrator sees reports and automatic flags (with the words concerned), feedback you send, and the list of accounts with email addresses, joining dates and last sign-in, to keep the community safe. Nobody else sees your account's email address (the organiser of a ballot group you join sees the email you give for the entry).

Who else handles your information

• Supabase stores the database, photos and sign-in. Our project is hosted in London. Supabase is a US company that acts on our instructions.
• Vercel serves the website. Our server code runs in London. Vercel is a US company that acts on our instructions.
• Google sends our emails through a Gmail account, so it handles your email address and the email's content under Google's own terms.
• St Andrews Links, when your organiser enters your ballot group: they type your entry details into St Andrews Links' ballot form, and St Andrews Links handles them from then on under its own privacy policy.
• Apple, Google or Mozilla deliver phone notifications, if you switch them on. What we send is encrypted with keys that only your phone holds, so they can't read it.
• Your calendar, if you add a game to it: for Google Calendar, your browser sends Google the game's course, time and link; an Apple Calendar file goes straight to your phone. Neither includes who's playing.
• Apple Maps or Google Maps, if you tap “Getting there”: your phone opens the course's address in that app. Fourball sends nothing about you.
• Open-Meteo provides the weather forecast on round pages. Our server asks for a St Andrews forecast; nothing about you is sent.

Supabase keeps our database in London and Vercel runs our code in London, but these companies and Google are based in the United States, and some processing (such as support, logs or email delivery) can happen there. For that they rely on the safeguards UK law allows: the UK–US data bridge where the company is certified under it, and otherwise the UK's international data transfer addendum in their data agreements. Ask us if you'd like details.

How long we keep it

• Group chats are deleted 30 days after the round or session. A message that was reported stays in the report's copy until the report is deleted (below).
• Alerts stay until you delete them (or your account). Phone notification details stay until you switch notifications off, or your phone stops accepting them.
• Records that stop spam and abuse are deleted within two days. Our hosting companies' technical logs are kept for days, not months.
• Your profile and rounds stay until you delete your account.
• Ballot entry details are deleted when you leave the group (or your request is turned down or withdrawn), when the group is cancelled or isn't drawn, and otherwise the day after the date of play. The copy on St Andrews Links' entry is theirs to keep.
• Feedback stays until we've dealt with it, or until you delete your account.
• Who-turned-up answers, no-shows and tags stay with the round, until the round or your account is deleted.
• Reports and automatic flags stay while they're open. Once dealt with, they're deleted 12 months later, unless the account they're about is still suspended, or we need them for a legal matter. The same goes for reports about an account that has since been deleted.
• Our administrator's log of actions (suspensions, removals and deletions, with a short note) is kept for two years.
• If you switch Instagram off, we won't feature you in new posts, and if you ask we'll take down earlier posts that feature you within a month. Copies other people have made or shared are outside our control.
• While an account is suspended, Settings can't delete it. You can still download your data, and you can ask us by email to delete the account: we'll do so within a month, keeping only what we need for an ongoing safety matter or to comply with the law, and we'll tell you if we keep anything.
• Backup copies of the database and photos, made once a month so Fourball can be restored if something goes wrong, are kept for up to three months on the encrypted disk of the computer of the person who runs Fourball. So something you delete can stay in a backup for up to three months. If we ever had to restore from a backup, we'd say so on Fourball and delete again anything you'd deleted in the meantime.
• When you delete your account, your profile, photos, the rounds you hosted (and their chats), your messages, alerts, feedback, blocks, who-turned-up answers and tags (given and received) are deleted. Reports and automatic flags are kept with the link to your account removed (the words reported can still mention names), and deleted on the timetable above.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask us, at any time, to:

• See the information we hold about you, and take a copy away in a standard file: Settings → Download my data.
• Correct it: Profile → Edit profile, or ask us (for example about a no-show record).
• Delete it: Settings → Delete my account, or ask us.
• Limit or object to how we use it, including the automatic checks and who-turned-up records, by contacting us.
• Withdraw your consent for phone notifications or Instagram: Settings → Notifications and Settings → Instagram.

For anything the screens don't cover, email us. We'll reply within one month; if a request is complex and needs longer, we'll tell you. If you're unhappy with how we handle your information, you can complain to us: we'll acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it, keep you informed and tell you the outcome without undue delay. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at any time: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

Age

Fourball is for people aged 18 and over. If we learn that someone under 18 has joined, we'll remove their account.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we'll tell you on Fourball. The date at the top shows when it was last updated.