Privacy Policy

Chess In Public (“CHIP”, “we”, “us”) helps you find and book real-life chess games at public venues. This policy explains what information we collect, why we collect it, who we share it with, and the choices you have.

It applies to chessinpublic.com and any related services we operate. By using CHIP you agree to the practices described here.

1. Information we collect

Information you give us

• Account: email address and password (passwords are stored as salted hashes by our auth provider — we never see them in plain text).
• Profile: display name, date of birth, gender, short bio, skill level, country, state, area, preferred play styles, and an optional avatar image. Your date of birth is used to confirm that you are at least 18 years old and is not displayed to other players.
• Game listings: the venue you choose (name, address, and geographic coordinates returned by our maps provider), date, time, and vibe.
• Bookings & messages: bookings you make or receive, and messages exchanged with the other player inside a booking chat.
• Ratings & reports:rating tags you leave after a game, and reports you submit about another player — including any photo evidence you choose to attach to a “Didn’t show up” report.
• Photowall photos: images you upload to the community Photowall, along with any caption, the players you tag, and the optional location (country, state, area) you add. We strip embedded camera metadata (such as GPS/EXIF) from images during upload.

Information collected automatically

• Session cookies: a secure cookie set by our auth provider to keep you logged in.
• IP address: used short-term to rate-limit sign-in, password-reset, message-sending and other abuse-prone requests so we can prevent abuse.
• Server logs: standard request logs (URL, timestamp, user agent) generated by our hosting provider. We do not use third-party analytics or advertising trackers.
• Anonymous usage metrics:on some public pages, such as event pages, we record simple first-party events — for example a page view or a click on a ticket link — with the page path, the domain of the website that referred you, and a random identifier kept in your browser’s session storage only until that browser tab session ends. These metrics are not linked to your account, name, email address or IP address, and we use them only to run CHIP and its events.

2. How we use your information

• To run the service: create your account, show game listings near you, match players, deliver booking and chat features, and display profiles so other players can decide whether to book a game with you.
• To communicate with you: send a welcome email, notify you of new games in your area, and send booking-related emails (requests, confirmations, cancellations). These are operational emails tied to your use of the service.
• To keep CHIP safe: investigate reports, apply no-show reliability badges, prevent fraud and abuse, and enforce our community rules.
• To meet legal obligations: respond to lawful requests from authorities and comply with applicable laws.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.

3. What other players can see

CHIP is a community product, so some information is visible to other signed-in users by design:

• Your display name, avatar, bio, skill level, gender, country, state, area, play styles, games-played count, ratings, and any reliability badge.
• Games you host (venue, date, time, vibe) and bookings on those games — visible to the host and the player involved.
• Messages inside a booking chat — visible to the other party.

We do not share your email address, password, date of birth, or IP address with other users.

Photowall (community photos)

Photos you submit to the Photowall and that we approve are shown publicly — to anyone who visits the site, including people who are not signed in — and may be indexed by search engines. Each published photo appears with your display name and avatar, its caption, any players you tagged, and the location you added.

Because these photos are public and may show other people, only upload images you took or have the right to share, and get the consent of anyone clearly recognisable — especially minors. Every submission is reviewed before it goes live. To take a photo down, delete it yourself from the Photowall or email us at support@chessinpublic.com.

4. Service providers we use

We rely on a small number of trusted providers to operate CHIP. Each receives only the data needed for its purpose, and each is bound by its own privacy and security commitments.

Most of CHIP’s users are in Nigeria, but we also have players in other countries. Several of the providers above are based outside Nigeria, so using CHIP involves international transfers of your information. Where this happens we rely on the safeguards each provider offers, including their published security and data-protection commitments.

5. Cookies

We only use cookies that are strictly necessary to make CHIP work — primarily the secure session cookie that keeps you signed in. We do not set advertising, analytics, or cross-site tracking cookies. You can clear cookies through your browser at any time, but doing so will sign you out.

6. How long we keep your data

• While your account is active: we keep your profile, listings, bookings, messages, ratings, and reports for as long as you use CHIP.
• If you delete your account: we permanently delete your profile, bookings, messages, ratings, notifications, games you hosted, your Photowall photos (including the underlying image files), your avatar files, and your auth record. Reports you submitted about other players may be retained in an anonymised form for safety and moderation purposes.
• Rate-limit data: IP-based counters expire automatically within minutes.
• Email delivery logs are kept by ZeptoMail according to their own retention policy.

7. Your rights

Under the Nigeria Data Protection Act (NDPA) 2023, and where other applicable laws give you similar protections, you have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you.
• Correct information that is inaccurate or out of date — most of this you can edit yourself on your profile page.
• Delete your account and associated personal data — you can do this yourself from Settings.
• Object to or restrict certain processing of your information.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we rely on it (e.g. by unsubscribing from notification emails or deleting your account).
• Lodge a complaint with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) if you believe your rights have been infringed.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at support@chessinpublic.com. We will respond within a reasonable time and in line with applicable law.

8. Minimum age

CHIP is for adults only. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, and the sign-up flow enforces this through the date-of-birth field. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has created an account by providing false information, please contact us at support@chessinpublic.com and we will remove it.

9. Security

We take reasonable steps to protect your information: traffic is served over HTTPS, passwords are hashed by our auth provider, database access is restricted by row-level security, and only authorised team members can access administrative tools. No service can be 100% secure, so we encourage you to use a strong, unique password and to keep your email account secure.

10. Meeting in person

CHIP arranges in-person games at public venues. You decide what to share with the other player and when. For your safety, always meet at a public place like a cafe, park, or restaurant, never follow someone to a private location, and trust your instincts if a situation feels off.

11. Changes to this policy

If we make a material change to how we handle your data, we will update this page and, where appropriate, notify you by email or in the app. The “Effective” date at the top of this page shows when the policy last changed.

12. Contact us

Questions, requests, or concerns about this policy? Reach us at support@chessinpublic.com.