This Privacy Notice for Chess Advisor ("we," "us," or "our"), describes how and why we might access, collect, store, use, and/or share ("process") your personal information when you use our services ("Services"), including when you:
- Visit our website at https://app.chessadvisor.in or any website of ours that links to this Privacy Notice.
- Use Chess Advisor: an online chess training and analytics service providing Stockfish-powered game analysis, personalized spaced-repetition tactical puzzles generated from real match mistakes, opening drills, and multi-student management tools for coaches and chess academies.
- Engage with us in other related ways, including customer support, marketing, or community events.
Questions or concerns? Reading this Privacy Notice will help you understand your privacy rights and choices. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please do not use our Services. If you have questions, please contact us at rajdeep@chessadvisor.in.
Summary of Key Points
This summary provides key highlights from our Privacy Notice. Use our table of contents below to jump to any section.
- What personal information do we process? We collect information you voluntarily provide (name, email, password hash, Chess.com and Lichess usernames), game records (PGNs), and basic session data.
- Do we process sensitive personal information? No. We do not process sensitive or special category data (such as racial or ethnic origins, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs).
- Do we sell your personal information? No. We have never sold your personal information and will never sell or rent your personal information to third parties.
- How do we process your information? To provide chess game analysis via Stockfish, schedule personalized blunder puzzles, maintain your account, facilitate coach/academy collaboration, and securely process subscriptions through Razorpay.
- How do we keep your information safe? We maintain robust technical security measures including bcrypt password hashing, encrypted data transmission (HTTPS/TLS), isolated database access, and secure session management.
- What are your rights? You have the right to access, download (data portability), correct, or delete your personal information, or withdraw consent at any time.
Table of Contents
- 1. What Information Do We Collect?
- 2. How Do We Process Your Information?
- 3. Legal Bases for Processing
- 4. Sharing Your Personal Information
- 5. Cookies & Tracking Technologies
- 6. Artificial Intelligence & Chess Engine
- 7. Social & OAuth Logins
- 8. Data Retention
- 9. Data Security
- 10. Children's Privacy (COPPA & GDPR)
- 11. Your Privacy Rights
- 12. Do-Not-Track & GPC Controls
- 13. United States Privacy Rights
- 14. International Region Rights
- 15. Policy Updates
- 16. Contact Us & Data Requests
1. What Information Do We Collect?
Personal information you disclose to us: We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you register on the Services, express interest in our features, participate in training activities, or contact us.
- Full Name & Email Address: Used for account creation, authentication, password resets, and essential service updates.
- Account Credentials: Passwords, which are always stored securely using cryptographic one-way hashes (bcrypt) and never stored in plain text.
- Chess Platform Usernames: Your Chess.com and/or Lichess.org usernames, used exclusively to fetch public PGN game files that you request to analyze.
- Year of Birth: Required during registration for age verification to ensure compliance with children's privacy regulations (COPPA / GDPR Art. 8). We do not collect exact birth dates.
- Parent/Guardian Email: For players under 13 years of age, strictly used to obtain verifiable parental consent.
- Chess Games & Annotations: Match PGNs, game evaluations, move accuracy scores, mistake categorizations, and move-by-move annotations left by your coach.
Payment Data
If you choose to subscribe to a paid tier (such as Coach Pro or Academy plans), all payment processing is handled directly by our PCI-DSS compliant payment gateway, Razorpay. We never store or process your complete credit card numbers, debit card numbers, or CVV codes on our servers. You can view Razorpay's privacy policy at https://razorpay.com/privacy-policy/.
2. How Do We Process Your Information?
We process your personal information for essential service operations, including:
- Game Analysis & Training Plans: We retrieve games from Chess.com and Lichess.org using your linked username and process them through the Stockfish chess engine to detect inaccuracies, mistakes, blunders, and opening patterns.
- Spaced-Repetition Puzzles: We convert your real match mistakes into personalized tactics puzzles scheduled via spaced repetition algorithms to improve your play.
- Coach & Academy Collaboration: Enabling authorized coaches and academy administrators to review your game metrics, assign homework, and leave board annotations.
- Security & Fraud Prevention: Protecting account integrity through session rate-limiting, IP verification, and abuse mitigation.
3. What Legal Bases Do We Rely On?
If you are located in the European Union (EU), United Kingdom (UK), or Canada, applicable data protection laws require us to explain the legal bases we rely on:
- Performance of a Contract: To provide you with the chess training platform and fulfill our terms of service.
- Consent: Where you have provided express permission (e.g. connecting optional third-party platforms or verifiable parental consent for young players). You may withdraw consent at any time.
- Legitimate Interests: To improve our engine algorithms, secure our infrastructure, prevent fraudulent transactions, and deliver reliable customer support.
- Legal Obligations: Compliance with applicable laws, tax/accounting requirements, and lawful authority requests.
6. Do We Offer Artificial Intelligence-Based Products?
Chess Advisor incorporates the open-source Stockfish 18 chess engine (running client-side via WebAssembly in your browser and asynchronously on our worker backend) to calculate move evaluations, detect tactical motifs, and categorize blunder severity.
We do not submit your private personal identifying information (PII) to third-party public LLM training datasets. Game evaluations and positional calculations are strictly chess-specific computations based on board FEN/PGN state.
8. How Long Do We Keep Your Information?
We retain your personal information for as long as your account remains active. When you request account termination or deletion, we permanently delete or anonymize your personal information, match analysis cache, puzzle history, and ratings from our active databases, except where retention is required by applicable law (such as financial invoice records).
9. How Do We Keep Your Information Safe?
We have implemented appropriate organizational and technical safeguards:
- Passcodes and auth tokens are hashed using industry-standard bcrypt and SHA-256 routines.
- All HTTP traffic is encrypted using Transport Layer Security (TLS/HTTPS).
- Database tables enforce strict Row-Level Security (RLS) policies to prevent unauthorized tenant cross-access.
10. Children's Privacy (COPPA & GDPR Art. 8)
We take special precautions to protect the privacy of children who use Chess Advisor:
- Age Verification: Registration requires declaring a year of birth. Exact dates of birth are never collected or stored.
- Parental Consent: If a player is under 13 years of age, a parent or legal guardian's email address is required. The account remains in a pending, restricted state until the parent confirms consent via a secure verification link.
- Coach Attestation: When an academy or coach approves an account for a student under 13, the coach must formally attest to having obtained parental approval.
- Parental Rights: Parents may review their child's records or request account deletion at any time by contacting us at rajdeep@chessadvisor.in.
11. What Are Your Privacy Rights?
Depending on your jurisdiction (such as the EU, UK, Switzerland, and Canada), you possess rights regarding your data:
- Right of Access: Request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
- Right to Rectification: Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete personal details.
- Right to Erasure (Right to be Forgotten): Request deletion of your account and associated game data.
- Right to Data Portability: Export your games, analysis, and puzzle records in standard machine-readable formats.
- Right to Withdraw Consent: Withdraw previously granted consent at any time without penalty.
You can exercise any of these rights directly through your account settings or by emailing rajdeep@chessadvisor.in.
12. Controls for Do-Not-Track & GPC Features
We recognize and respect Global Privacy Control (GPC) signals from modern browsers. When we detect a valid GPC signal, we automatically register your preference to opt out of non-essential tracking.
13. United States Privacy Rights
If you reside in California (CCPA/CPRA), Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Oregon, Texas, Utah, or Virginia, state laws provide specific protections.
The table below discloses the categories of personal information collected over the preceding 12 months:
| Category | Examples | Collected |
|---|---|---|
| A. Identifiers | Name, email address, IP address, unique user ID, and username | YES |
| B. Personal records (CA statute) | Name, account credentials, payment records (handled by Razorpay) | YES |
| C. Protected characteristics | Year of birth (used strictly for age gate compliance) | YES |
| D. Commercial information | Subscription tier purchase records, coupons redeemed | YES |
| E. Biometric information | Fingerprints, facial recognition | NO |
| F. Internet / Network activity | Game interaction logs, puzzle solve times, session telemetry | YES |
| G. Geolocation data | Country/region derived from IP for regional pricing | YES |
| H. Audio / Visual data | Profile avatars or photos uploaded by user | NO |
| I. Professional / Employment | Coach qualifications or academy affiliations | YES |
| J. Education records | Student homework assignments and puzzle curriculum | YES |
| K. Sensitive Personal Data | Government IDs, health information, precise geolocation | NO |
We do not sell your personal information. We have not sold or shared any consumer personal information for commercial cross-context behavioral advertising in the past twelve (12) months.
14. International Region Rights
Australia & New Zealand: We comply with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020. If you are unsatisfied with our response to any privacy concern, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) or the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (New Zealand).
United Kingdom & EU: You may lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority or the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.
15. Do We Make Updates to This Notice?
Yes, we may update this Privacy Notice from time to time to stay compliant with changing laws and service features. The updated version will be indicated by the "Last updated" date at the top. If we make material changes, we will notify you through our web application or by email.
16. How Can You Contact Us & Manage Your Data?
To exercise your privacy rights, review, update, or permanently delete the personal data we maintain about you, you can:
- Online Contact Form: https://www.chessadvisor.in/contact
- Email Support / Data Protection: rajdeep@chessadvisor.in
- Direct Account Deletion: Log in to your account settings to download your data or request immediate account deactivation.
We will review, verify your identity, and respond to all lawful data requests within thirty (30) days.
7. How Do We Handle Social Logins?
If you choose to sign in using Google OAuth, we receive your email address, verified status, full name, and avatar picture from the provider. We use this information solely to create or link your account securely. We do not access your private contacts or other Google data.