Privacy Policy

The short version

NearSports helps you find sports pitches nearby, create games and arrange them with other players, book pitches and sign up for sports classes. The service is a website and a mobile app — they share one account and one database. To make that work, we store some of your data.

This page explains what we store, why we need it and what you can do about it. It describes how the service actually behaves rather than offering generic wording. Where the site and the app differ, that is stated explicitly.

What we collect

Account data: your username, email address, encrypted password (we never see or store the password itself), a profile photo if you added one, and the sports and skill levels you picked.

If you sign in with Google, we hold no password until you set one yourself. From Google we receive your email address and profile name — exactly what is needed to create the account.

If you sign in with Apple (in the iPhone app), we receive from Apple the identifier of your Apple ID, an email address, and your name if you chose to share it. Apple may give us a private relay address instead of your real email — then that relay address is all we know. We also keep an Apple token so that, when you delete your account, we can revoke NearSports’ access to your Apple ID.

Your content: pitches you create (name, address, coordinates, opening hours, photos), games, chat messages together with their photos, comments on pitches together with their photos, and the ratings and reports you submit.

Bookings: the pitch, the time, the duration and a comment on the booking if you left one (up to 200 characters).

Class sign-ups: the fact that your account signed up for a particular class, and when. Nothing else — no details of a child and no application text.

Ratings: numbers from 1 to 5 that you give players for a sport and pitches for their condition. Ratings carry no text.

Business account and coach profile — only if you use them. For a business account: the business name and a contact phone. For a coach: name, bio, experience, photo and a contact phone if one is given.

Messages sent through the feedback form: the text, the category and an email address for our reply.

Technical data: a token for push notifications. It applies only to the mobile app — the website sends no push notifications and creates no such token. The token belongs to the device, not to the account: if someone else signs in on the same phone, the token moves to them, so notifications never reach the wrong person.

Last activity time. We remember when you last used the service — at most once a minute and with no history: only the latest value is kept, replacing the previous one. It powers the “online” indicator that people who can see your profile will see. You can turn it off in your profile settings; your status then disappears for others entirely rather than showing “offline”.

Why we need it

To show you games and pitches nearby, let you join a game, book a pitch or sign up for a class and talk to other people, send notifications about things that concern you (a new message, a changed kick-off time, a cancelled booking), restore access to your account, answer your messages and review reports.

The service shows an advertising block. It is the same for everyone: we do not tailor ads to you and we do not pass your data to advertisers. We only count how many times each ad appeared on screen and how many times it was clicked — never who saw or clicked it. There is no behavioural tracking or analytics on the site — no visit counters, no advertising pixels, no third-party scripts.

What other people see

Your profile is visible to other signed-in users: your name, photo, sports and skill levels, and your player rating — the average score and the number of ratings. Who gave a particular rating is never shown. Your rating may also appear on the leaderboard.

When you book a pitch at a sports complex, the complex owner sees your name, photo, the booking time and your comment — so they know whom to expect.

When you sign up for a class, its coach and the complex owner see your name and photo and can send you a direct message.

Coach profiles are public: they can be seen without signing in and may appear in search engines. The contact phone of a class or a coach, if given, is visible to everyone too. A business account’s phone is seen only by us.

Comments on pitches are public: together with their photos, your name and profile picture they are visible even without signing in, so they may appear in search engines. If you have played at that pitch, a “played here” badge appears next to your name. While signed in, you do not see comments from people you have blocked or who have blocked you, and they do not see yours. The comments themselves stay public, so anyone can still read them without signing in.

Location

The site may ask for your location — when you press the “show where I am” button on the map. It is a one-off browser request: we receive the coordinates once, to move the map to you, and do not ask again until you press the button again.

Those coordinates stay in your browser. We do not send them to the server, do not store them and do not track your movements.

The only coordinates that reach the server are those of a pitch you create or edit — and you set them yourself by moving the map. A pitch is a public place, and its coordinates are exactly how other people find it.

You can decline the permission: the map simply opens on a default location.

Cookies and your session

The site uses only the cookies it cannot work without. There are no advertising or analytics cookies, which is why there is no consent banner — there is nothing to ask about.

Two of them hold your session after you sign in. They are marked httpOnly, meaning scripts on the page cannot read them: the access tokens themselves never reach the code running in your browser. One lives about fifteen minutes, the other up to seven days, and it is the reason you do not have to sign in every time.

One more remembers the interface language you chose.

Signing out clears the session cookies. You can also delete them yourself through your browser — that is equivalent to signing out.

Photos

Before uploading, your browser shrinks the photo on your own device — what travels to the server is a compressed copy, not the original. Re-encoding an image strips the camera metadata along the way, including the GPS coordinates of where it was taken.

On the server every photo is rebuilt once more, no matter where it came from. So your photo will not reveal where it was shot.

Pitch photos and profile pictures are visible to other users of the service. Comment photos are visible to everyone, even without signing in. Photos in chats are visible only to the participants of that chat and, where needed to handle a report or a violation, to NearSports administrators: they are stored outside public access and never reach visitors or search engines.

Who we share data with

We do not sell your data and do not pass it to advertising networks. To keep the service running, some data reaches a few third-party services:

Brevo — sends the sign-up confirmation and password reset emails. Receives your email address.

Expo — accepts the push notification request for mobile devices. Receives the device token and the notification text. This does not apply to the website.

Google Firebase Cloud Messaging — delivers push notifications to Android devices: Expo passes it the device token and the notification text. This does not apply to the website either — there are no push notifications here.

Sign in with Google — only if you use it. Google learns that you are signing in to NearSports, and we receive your email address and profile name from it. If you sign in with a username and password, Google is not involved at all.

Sign in with Apple — only if you use it, in the iPhone app. Apple learns that you are signing in to NearSports. When you delete your account, we notify Apple to revoke access.

OpenWeatherMap — shows the forecast for kick-off time. Receives only the rounded coordinates of the pitch, with nothing about you; on the website the request comes from our server, not from your browser.

Google Gemini — prepares summaries for municipal sports analytics. Only anonymous aggregate statistics go there (how many games, at what hours, at which pitches) — no names, emails or conversations.

We may also disclose data where the law requires it.

How long we keep it

Account data is kept for as long as the account exists.

An unfinished sign-up lives for 15 minutes — if you never confirm your email, the account is not created at all. Confirmation codes are single-use and valid for the same 15 minutes.

Games and pitches remain after a game ends: they are needed for statistics and for repeat games. Past bookings remain in the complex’s history. Messages remain for as long as the chat itself exists.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account both on the website (in your profile) and in the mobile app (Profile → Delete account). A password is needed for confirmation only if your account has one: accounts created through Google or Apple are deleted without it.

Here is what happens next. Personal data is erased: name, email, profile photo, sports. The photo file is removed from disk. The email address is released, and you can sign up with it again. If you signed in with Apple, we revoke NearSports’ access to your Apple ID.

Future games you organised pass to the first participant, or are cancelled if nobody joined. You are removed from games you only signed up for. Future bookings are cancelled, and the comments on all your bookings are erased. Class sign-ups are deleted. A coach profile and a business account are switched off and disappear from listings; a complex stays on the map until an administrator removes it, because people go to the place, not to the account.

The record itself is not wiped entirely but anonymised. Otherwise other people’s chats and the history of games you took part in would vanish. Your messages stay in the chats, but no longer show an author. Photos you sent in chats are deleted. Ratings you gave remain in the averages, without your name. Comments on pitches and their photos also stay, signed “Deleted account”, so that other people’s replies keep their meaning. If you do not want them to remain, delete them yourself before deleting the account.

All sessions end. An access token issued a few minutes before deletion may remain valid for up to about fifteen minutes, until it expires.

Reports and blocking

On the website and in the mobile app you can report a message, a comment on a pitch or a person and block them. Blocking works both ways: you do not see that person’s messages and comments, and they do not see yours; public comments are still visible to anyone who is not signed in. A comment reported by three different people is hidden automatically until a moderator decides; its author still sees it, with a label.

Reports are kept even after the message is deleted or the account is closed. Otherwise a moderator could not look into the case. When you report a message in a chat, we keep a copy of its text and photos for the moderator — even if the author later deletes the message or the account. The copy is erased as soon as the report has been reviewed.

Your rights

You can view and correct your data on the site (Profile → Edit profile), change or set a password and delete your account at any time.

If you need a copy of your data or have a question about how it is processed, write to us at the address below. You also have the right to contact the data protection authority in your country.

Children

The service is not intended for children under 14. If you believe a child has created an account, write to us and we will delete it.

A class sign-up is made by the account holder. If a child is going to attend, an adult signs up in their own name — we do not collect or store any data about children.

Changes and contact

We may update this document; the date of the latest update is at the top.

Questions about your data: nearsport.support@gmail.com