Privacy policy

The short version. We hold swimmers' names, ages, clubs and times so we can publish meet results and run entries — that is what this service is for. We publish results; we never publish dates of birth or registration numbers. Most of the swimmers here are children, and section 5 is about them. We do not track you, advertise to you, or sell anything about you to anyone.

1. Who this is from

MeetDirector Online is operated by Sports Timing, Inc. of 3537 Ashwycke Street, Mount Pleasant, SC 29466. This policy covers meetdirector.online. Questions, requests and complaints: support@meetdirector.online, or 843-628-5486.

2. What we hold

About people with accounts — coaches, meet directors, parents, swimmers, timing vendors:

• Name, email address, and phone number if you give one.
• A one-way scrambled version of your password. We never hold the password itself.
• If you sign in with Google, Microsoft or Apple: the account identifier they give us, and the email address and name they pass on. We never receive your password for those accounts.
• Your roles — which clubs or organizations you act for.
• Times you signed in, and things you did that changed data.

About swimmers — usually supplied by their club, not by them:

• Name, date of birth, gender, club, and USA Swimming registration number where the club records one.
• Entries, swims, times, splits, places, disqualifications and records.
• Any goals or journal entries a swimmer writes for themselves, and who they have chosen to share them with.
• Contact details a club holds for the swimmer or their family.

About using the service:

• The meet files you upload, kept as you sent them.
• Emails we send you, including their content, so we can show you what was sent.
• Errors and page-not-found events, which may record who was signed in.
• Support sessions: which pages our staff opened while helping you (section 8).
• For timing vendors: business details, and payment records.

We do not run advertising, analytics or tracking of any kind. There is no tracking pixel, no advertising network, and no profiling. Every file your browser loads comes from us, so no other company learns that you visited. We do not sell or rent personal information, and we never will.

3. Where it comes from

Some of it you give us. Much of it we get from your club, in the entry and results files they upload — that is how a swimmer's name, age and times reach us, usually without the swimmer having any account at all. A results file for a meet contains every club that was there, so a file uploaded by one club brings information about swimmers from others. We tell those clubs when it happens.

4. What we publish

Results are public. Meet results, rankings and records show a swimmer's name, age, club, event, time and place. That is the purpose of the service, and clubs and meet hosts supply the information on that basis.

These are never published: dates of birth (age is shown, the date is not), USA Swimming registration numbers, email addresses and phone numbers other than ones somebody has deliberately chosen to publish, and anything in a swimmer's goals or journal.

A swimmer or their guardian can ask us to withhold their name from the public site. The swim still counts — for places, scoring, records and rankings — but is shown without identifying them.

5. Children

Most swimmers on this site are under 18, and much of what we hold is about them. We build for that rather than around it:

• Swimmers under 18 do not create their own accounts. A parent or guardian links to a swimmer through an invitation we send them, and can unlink at any time.
• A guardian has to confirm outward sharing. If a swimmer under 18 shares goals or a journal beyond their own account, we email their guardian a code and nothing is shared until it is used.
• We do not open support sessions on a child's account. Where one needs help, we work with the parent or guardian.
• A journal is private. It is not visible to coaches, to us, or to support staff, unless the swimmer shares it.

A parent or guardian can ask us what we hold about their swimmer, ask us to correct it, ask for the name to be withheld from the public site, or ask us to delete what we can delete — see section 10.

[CHILDREN'S PRIVACY LAW — this is the section that most needs review. In the US this engages COPPA, and the analysis turns on the fact that information about children reaches us from clubs rather than from the children. Schools and some leagues may also need a written data agreement from you before they can lawfully use the service. If you have users outside the US, other regimes apply again.]

6. Who else sees it

We use a small number of companies to run the service. They act on our instructions:

• Stripe — card payments. Card numbers go to Stripe and never to us; we hold only Stripe's identifiers for a customer and a saved card.
• SendLayer — sending our email, which means the recipient address and the message.
• Our hosting provider — the servers the site and its database run on: [HOSTING PROVIDER AND COUNTRY — the production servers are at IONOS; confirm the country, because it decides what section 7 has to say].
• Our support desk at support.meetdirector.online, which holds your tickets and the emails in them.
• Nobody else. Everything your browser loads to display this site — styling, charts, icons, fonts — comes from our own servers. No content delivery network, no font service and no third-party script sees your visit.

We also share information where the law requires it, and with the club or organization you are part of — a coach can see their club's swimmers, an organization administrator the accounts in their organization. That is the service working as intended.

7. Where it is kept

[DATA LOCATION AND TRANSFERS — where the servers are, and what that means for users elsewhere. Required, and the answer depends on section 6.]

8. How long we keep it

• Results and meet records — indefinitely. A swim that happened is part of the record of a meet, and of everyone else's results in it.
• Deleted journal entries — recoverable for 30 days, then destroyed.
• Uploaded meet files — kept so problems can be traced and corrected; deleted on a schedule we set, and permanently when they go.
• Support session records — at least two years, so you can always see what our staff looked at.
• Your account — until you ask us to close it (section 10).
• [BACKUPS — how long database backups are retained, and the fact that deleted data persists in them until they age out. This needs a real number.]

9. Cookies

We use cookies only to make the site work. None of them track you, and there are no advertising cookies.

• Signing in — a cookie that keeps you signed in, for up to eight hours of use.
• Signing in with Google, Microsoft or Apple — a short-lived cookie, ten minutes, used only while you are being handed back to us.
• Form security — a token that stops a form on another site being submitted as you.

10. Your choices

• See what we hold. Ask us and we will tell you.
• Correct it. Names, ages and club details can be wrong in a file we were sent; tell us and we will fix it.
• Be left off the public site. Ask and we will withhold the name.
• Stop sharing. A swimmer can withdraw goal or journal sharing at any time; a guardian can unlink from a swimmer.
• Close your account. Ask us. Published results of swims that happened stay, because they are part of the meet's record and other people's results.
• Support access. Refuse it, or end a running session, from your account page. See what support can and cannot do.

[STATUTORY RIGHTS — what people can demand rather than ask for, which depends on where they and you are: access, portability, erasure, objection, and the time limits for answering. Also how to complain to a regulator, and which one.]

11. Keeping it safe

Passwords are stored scrambled and cannot be read back. Connections to the site are encrypted. Access to the live system is limited to the people who run it, and when support looks at an account it is recorded and shown to you.

[BREACH NOTIFICATION — what you commit to telling people, and how quickly. Most regimes set a deadline; saying nothing here does not remove it.]

12. Changes

If we change this policy in a way that materially affects you, we will tell you before it takes effect.

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Related: Terms of service · When support looks at your account.