Privacy policy

Who we are

The Robot Football League (“RFL”, “we”, “us”) operates rfl.football and the associated public repositories, broadcasts and data archive. The league is run from the United Kingdom by its founder, and for the purposes of UK GDPR we are the data controller for the personal data described here.

The way to reach us about anything in this policy is the contact form.

What we collect

Information you give us

• Contact form (/contact): your name, email address, chosen subject and message.
• Team entry form (/start-a-team): your name, email address, and optionally a club name, your intended approach, your background and any links you choose to share.

Both forms are emailed straight to a human inbox. We do not have a database of visitors, a mailing list, or a CRM; if you write to us, the record of that is an email.

Information collected automatically

• Analytics — only if you accept. We use Google Analytics 4 to count visits and see which pages people read. It sets cookies in your browser and receives your IP address, approximate location, device and browser type, and the pages you view. It does not load until you accept it on the banner you get on your first visit; reject, and no analytics script is ever fetched. We never use it for advertising and we do not run ad networks on this site.
• Server logs. Our hosting provider records ordinary web-server information — IP address, timestamp, URL requested, user agent — as part of serving and protecting the site.
• Rate limiting. When you submit a form, your IP address is held briefly in memory to stop the same address flooding us. It is not written to disk and is discarded within minutes.

Why we use it, and our lawful basis

• To reply to you and to run the league — reading your message, answering it, and assessing team entries. Lawful basis: legitimate interests (responding to people who contact us) and, for team entries, steps taken at your request before entering into an arrangement.
• To understand what people read — analytics. Lawful basis: your consent, which you give on the banner and can withdraw at any time.
• To keep the site up — logs and rate limiting. Lawful basis: legitimate interests in the security and availability of the service.

We do not sell personal data, we do not share it for advertising, and we do not use it to make automated decisions that produce legal effects about you.

Who else sees it

We use a small number of service providers, and they only process data on our behalf:

• Vercel — hosting and delivery of this website.
• Amazon Web Services (Simple Email Service) — delivery of the emails our forms generate. Our sending region is in the EU (London).
• Google — Google Analytics, as described above.

The site footer carries a badge image served by PromptFrenzy, an AI directory; loading that image tells their server your IP address and user agent, as any remote image would. Links out to Twitch, YouTube, 4DGSx and GitHub are ordinary links — those services have their own privacy policies, which apply once you arrive.

We may also disclose information where we are legally required to, or to establish or defend legal claims.

International transfers

Some of these providers are based in, or route data through, the United States. Where personal data leaves the UK or EEA, it is covered by the provider's standard contractual clauses, UK addendum, or an applicable adequacy decision.

How long we keep it

• Form submissions stay in our email for as long as the conversation is useful — for a team entry, for as long as the club is involved with the league. Ask us and we will delete them.
• Analytics data is retained by Google under the retention period set on the property (14 months by default).
• Server logs are kept for a short period by our host as part of their normal operations.

Cookies

We set no cookies of our own. The only cookies on rfl.football are Google Analytics cookies, which distinguish one visit from another, and they are only ever set if you accept them.

On your first visit you get a banner with two equally weighted choices, Accept and Reject. Nothing is loaded before you choose, and declining costs you nothing — the league tables, fixtures, blog and streams all work without cookies. Your choice is remembered in your browser's local storage, not in a cookie, and it never leaves your device.

To change your mind, use the Cookies link in the footer of any page. If you withdraw consent we switch analytics off immediately and delete the Google Analytics cookies already in your browser. You can also block or delete them in your browser settings, or install Google's opt-out browser add-on.

Your rights

Under UK and EU data protection law you can ask us to give you a copy of the personal data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, or provide it in a portable form. Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time. Use the contact form and we will answer within one month.

If you think we have handled your data badly, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, or to your local supervisory authority in the EEA. We would rather you told us first.

Children

The RFL is suitable for a general audience, but it is not aimed at children and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13. If a child has sent us their details, tell us and we will delete them.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS. We hold no passwords, no payment details and no accounts, which removes most of what there is to lose. Form submissions travel over encrypted connections to an email inbox protected by two-factor authentication. No system is perfect, and we make no absolute guarantee.

Changes

If this policy changes we will update the date at the top of the page. Material changes will be called out on the site.

Contact

Questions, requests or complaints about this policy: rfl.football/contact. See also our terms of service.