Legal
Privacy Policy
Last updated 19 August 2026
This policy explains what we collect, why, who else sees it, and what you can ask us to do about it. It covers the ChessScribe website and the iOS and Android apps.
«legal entity name» is responsible for the data described here. Reach us at privacy@chessscribe.ai.
1. The short version
- We ask for an email address so you can sign in. There is no password.
- Scoresheet photos you upload are stored privately and sent to our AI provider to be read.
- Your games are visible only to you, unless you deliberately turn on a share link.
- We do not sell your data, show advertising, or track you across other websites.
- Children may use ChessScribe through a parent's account; the parent controls and can delete everything.
- You can export or delete your games whenever you like, and ask us to delete your whole account.
2. What we collect
| Category | What it is | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Your email address, and the sign-in codes we send to it | You |
| Profile (optional) | Display name, player name, birth year, country, club, rating and goal rating, federation identifiers such as FIDE or national IDs, usernames on other chess sites, avatar image | You |
| Scoresheet images | The photographs you upload, up to six pages per game | You |
| Game data | The transcribed moves, PGN, player names, event, date, round, result, ratings, your notes and annotations, and timeline entries you create | Produced from your images, plus anything you edit or add |
| Usage | How many conversions you have used in the current month, and your plan | Generated by the service |
| Technical | IP address, device and browser type, and error reports containing the technical details of a crash | Automatically, when you use the service |
| Tournament submissions | Event details and organiser contact information, where you submit a listing | You |
A scoresheet usually carries both players' names, and often a club, rating or federation ID. When you upload one you are giving us the other player's details as well as your own — please only do that where you are entitled to.
3. Why we use it
| Purpose | Data used | Our basis (where GDPR applies) |
|---|---|---|
| Sign you in and keep your account secure | Account, technical | Performance of our contract with you |
| Convert your scoresheets and store the results | Scoresheet images, game data | Performance of our contract with you |
| Show analysis, insights and progress tracking | Game data, profile | Performance of our contract with you |
| Enforce plan allowances and prevent abuse | Usage, technical | Our legitimate interest in running the service sustainably |
| Diagnose faults and improve accuracy | Technical, and images only where you agree | Our legitimate interest in a service that works |
| Meet legal obligations and respond to lawful requests | Whatever is strictly required | Legal obligation |
We do not use your data for advertising, we do not build advertising profiles, and we do not sell or rent it. We do not perform automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects.
4. How scoresheet photos are processed
When you upload a scoresheet it is stored in a private storage bucket that only your account can read. To transcribe it, the image is sent from our server to our AI provider, which runs a vision model over it and returns the moves it read. The image is sent for that purpose only.
We do not use your images to train our own models. The provider receives an image in order to return a transcription; what it retains, and whether it trains on data sent through our account, is governed by that provider's own terms rather than by us. The current provider is named below, and we will update this page if we change it.
Photograph the sheet, not the room. If a photo happens to include a face, a badge or a phone number, it is stored and processed along with the rest of the image — so crop it first where you can.
5. Children, and parents in control
ChessScribe is built with junior chess in mind, and children are welcome to use it to review their games — with an adult alongside them.
- Accounts are for people aged 13 and over. A child under 13 may use ChessScribe only through an account held and supervised by a parent or guardian, who is treated as our user.
- We do not knowingly collect personal data directly from a child under 13 without that parental involvement.
- The profile fields — including birth year — are optional. Please do not add more about a child than you need.
- A parent may see everything in the account, correct it, export it, and delete any game or the whole account at any time.
- We do not advertise to children, do not profile them, and do not use their games for anything but providing the service to the account holder.
If you believe a child has provided us personal data without a parent's involvement, write to privacy@chessscribe.ai and we will delete it promptly.
Where a school, club or coach uses ChessScribe with pupils, the supervising adult is responsible for obtaining parental agreement first.
7. How long we keep it
- Games, images and profile: until you delete them in the app, or until we delete your account at your request.
- Deleted items: removed from live systems promptly, and from our hosting provider's routine backups as those age out — currently within 30 days.
- Account records after deletion: only what we need for legal or accounting reasons, and no longer than required.
- Usage counters: retained per month so allowances can be enforced and history shown.
- Technical logs and error reports: kept for a short period for security and debugging.
8. How we protect it
- Traffic is encrypted in transit with HTTPS.
- Every request that touches your data carries your own session token, and the database enforces row-level rules so one account cannot read another's rows.
- Scoresheet images live in a private bucket, not on a public URL.
- Server-side keys stay on the server and are never shipped to the app.
- Cross-origin calls from the mobile apps are restricted to the app's own origins.
Honest limit
No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee that ChessScribe or its providers will never be breached. If a breach affects your personal data we will contain it, tell you what happened, and notify regulators where we are required to — within the time limits that apply to us. Please keep your own copies of scoresheets that matter, and report anything suspicious to us.
9. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you have some or all of the following rights. We do not charge for exercising them, and we will not treat you differently for doing so.
- Access — ask what we hold about you.
- Portability — export your games as PGN at any time from the app, or ask us for a copy.
- Correction — fix anything inaccurate, including in a transcribed game.
- Deletion — remove a game and its images yourself at any time. Account deletion is not yet self-serve: email privacy@chessscribe.ai and we will delete the account and everything in it within 30 days.
- Restriction and objection — ask us to pause or stop a particular use, including anything we do on the basis of legitimate interest.
- Withdraw consent — where we relied on consent, withdraw it without affecting what came before.
- Complain — to your local data protection authority. We would rather you came to us first.
To exercise any of these, write to privacy@chessscribe.ai. We will respond within one month, and will ask you to confirm your identity through the email address on the account.
10. Where your data goes
Our providers operate internationally, so your data may be processed outside your country, including in the United States. Where data leaves the UK or EEA we rely on the transfer mechanisms our providers offer, such as standard contractual clauses.
12. Changes to this policy
When this policy changes we update the date at the top, and for material changes we will tell you in the app or by email before they take effect.
13. Contact
Privacy questions: privacy@chessscribe.ai. Security reports: security@chessscribe.ai. Everything else: support@chessscribe.ai.