Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

The Global Domino Federation ("GDF", "we") operates GDF Platform — the tournament management platform at app.globaldomino.org, its mobile Companion event app for players, the public spectator app GDF Live, the public website at globaldomino.org, and the digital passes we issue to Apple Wallet and Google Wallet. This policy explains what personal information we collect through them and what we do with it. Contact: play@globaldomino.org.

2. What we collect

Information you give us

• Account — first and last name, email address, nickname, avatar photo, nationality, country/state/city, date of birth (optional), preferred game mode, theme and language.
• Home address — optional, used only to find tournaments near you on the Play page (distance is computed from it). You can leave it blank.
• Sign-in — if you sign in with Google, Apple or Microsoft, we receive your name, email and profile picture from that provider and a stable identifier for your account there. We never see your password for those services. Apple's "Hide My Email" relay addresses are accepted as-is.
• Tournament participation — registrations, partner pairings, club membership, rules acknowledgements, entry-fee payment records (amount, method, who recorded it — never card numbers, which we do not process), check-ins, and warnings or cards issued by officials.
• Prize winnings — if you win prize money and claim it: how you want to be paid (your bank's routing and account number and the email address the bank sends its payment notice to, for a transfer, or collecting it at the event) and, when US tax rules require it, the W-9 or W-8BEN you sign in the app (name, address, taxpayer identification number, and for a W-8BEN your country and date of birth). Bank details and tax numbers are encrypted; we email you whenever your payout details change.
• Messages & feedback — direct messages to other members, announcements, rules-assistant questions, and reports you file through Report / Feedback (including screenshots you attach).
• Public website updates — if you subscribe for GDF news on globaldomino.org: your email address and, if you choose to give them, your name and which country or community you support (a stated preference, never your nationality). We send one confirmation email before anything else; you can unsubscribe at any time from the link in any email we send. If you contact us or ask about a partnership through the website: your name, email, and whatever you choose to tell us (organisation, phone, city, country, and your message).

Information created by play

• Match scores hand by hand, results, standings, rating (Glicko-2), rankings, achievements and tournament history.

Information collected automatically

• Session and security data: IP address, browser and device type, sign-in times, and identity-confirmation codes issued for sensitive actions.
• Web push subscription tokens, if you enable notifications.
• Pass scans: when your Player Pass or member card QR is scanned at a venue, we record the time, the purpose (check-in) and the official who scanned it.
• Anonymous engagement counters on GDF Live (scans, searches, follows) keyed by a hashed device id — never linked to an account.

3. How we use it

• Running tournaments: registration, pairing, check-in, scheduling, scoring, standings, prizes and officiating.
• Your identity in the sport: member cards, Player Passes, rankings and player profiles.
• Communication: registration and pairing emails, round calls, announcements, in-app and push notifications, and replies to your feedback.
• Safety and integrity: content moderation of messages, duplicate-account merges you initiate, fraud and abuse prevention, and audit trails of official actions.
• Improving the platform, using aggregated statistics.
• Keeping you updated, if you subscribe on the public website: a confirmation email, and GDF news once we start sending it (we do not operate a mailing list yet). Replying to a contact or partnership enquiry you send us.

We do not sell personal information and we do not use it for third-party advertising.

4. What is public

Domino is a spectator sport and results are the record of it. The following is visible to anyone, including without an account, on tournament pages, display boards at venues and GDF Live:

• Your display name (or nickname, where you set one), nationality/flag, club, team number and team name.
• Match schedules, tables, live scores, results, standings, brackets, rankings and rating.
• Podium and "moment" share cards you choose to share yourself.

Your public player page. A verified member in good standing has a player page on globaldomino.org showing their display name, photo (if they have one), flag, club, ratings and rankings, tournament record, upcoming events, awards, and trust indicators such as Email verified and Member since. Young players appear there only with their guardian's consent (section 11). If you have a result in a finished official tournament, that page is offered to search engines — Google, Bing and AI search assistants — unless you turn off Show my player page in search engines in your profile; for everyone else it is offered only if they turn it on. You can change that choice at any time; a page that is not public is never offered. We ask crawlers that collect content to train AI models not to use our website — a request that well-behaved crawlers honour, not a technical block.

Your email address, home address, date of birth, payment records, private messages and feedback reports are never public. Officials of a tournament you enter can see your payment status for that tournament. Your contact details and date of birth are visible only to GDF staff given access to personal data, and each time one of them opens your record, that is recorded.

5. Who we share it with

We use the following processors to run the service. Each receives only what its function needs.

We also share information when the law requires it, or to protect the rights and safety of members and officials. Tournament organisers (GDF and club representatives) see the participant data needed to run their event. A prize winner's payout details and tax form are seen only by the GDF staff who handle Finance and by GDF's accountant, and the tax form is used for US tax reporting of prizes to the IRS where the law requires it. If we start sending GDF news through a dedicated email provider, it will be added to this table before that begins.

6. Wallet passes

When you add a GDF Player Pass or a member card to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, the pass file we create contains: your name and nickname, nationality, member id, world rank, club, role, the tournament name, date, venue, your player and pair numbers, and a QR code with a pass serial (Player Pass) or a link to your public profile (member card). That pass is then stored by Apple or Google under their own privacy terms. Adding a pass is optional; the same information is always available on the pass page in GDF Platform.

7. Email & notifications

• Account and registration email (verification, password reset, registration approved, pairing, rules) is sent because you asked for the action; it cannot be switched off while you hold an account.
• Notification email (friend requests, pairing invites and reminders, tournament invites) can be turned off in My Profile → Email notifications, or with the one-click unsubscribe link in every such email.
• Push notifications are opt-in and can be turned off in the Companion or your device settings.
• Addresses that bounce or report our mail as spam are suppressed automatically.

8. Cookies

GDF Platform (app.globaldomino.org) uses a session cookie to keep you signed in and a CSRF token to protect forms. Your theme and language preference are stored in your browser.

The public website (globaldomino.org) sets no session cookie at all — it has no sign-in, so there is nothing to keep you signed into. It sets no cookies at all: each language has its own address (Spanish at globaldomino.org, English under globaldomino.org/en), so the page you open already tells us which language to show. Page-visit counts and what led you there (which tournament, which tile, which page, and the name of the website that sent you — for example a search engine or an AI assistant; never the address of the page you were on or what you searched for) are recorded without any cookie, using a fingerprint of your IP address and browser that is re-scrambled every day and can never be linked back to a person or across days.

Neither site carries advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

9. Retention

Your account data is kept while your account exists. Tournament results, standings and ratings are part of the competition record and are retained after an account is closed, shown under your display name. Payment records are kept for the organiser's accounting. Messages you delete "for everyone" are removed for both parties; audit records of official actions are kept for accountability, as described next.

Audit records. Official actions on the platform — scoring and score corrections, check-ins, registrations, warnings and cards, account, club and membership changes, payments, and actions taken by support staff — are written to an audit log so results can be explained and disputes resolved. The record of what changed, when and through which version of the platform is kept as part of the competition record. Personal details inside those records (such as names, email addresses and dates of birth) are anonymised 84 months (7 years) after they were recorded, and the technical details attached to them (IP address, device and browser, session reference) are deleted after 13 months. You can ask us to anonymise your personal details in the audit log sooner by emailing play@globaldomino.org.

Date of birth. We ask for your date of birth only where it decides something: entering an Official tournament (age divisions, prize-money rules) and, for players under 18, a parent or guardian's consent. Elsewhere it is optional. It is encrypted when stored, never shown publicly, visible only to GDF staff who need it, and each time a person at GDF opens it, that access is recorded. While your account exists we keep the date you gave; you can change or remove it in My Profile at any time. You can ask for it to be included in an export of your data, or deleted, as described below.

Account-creation checks. To keep fake and automated accounts out, when an account is created we store a one-way, keyed hash of the IP address and browser details it was created from — never the addresses themselves — and use it only to notice an unusual number of sign-ups from one place. A shared hash is never treated as proof that two accounts belong to one person, because households and venues share a connection. We also decline email addresses from known temporary-mail providers, and we record the time of your last sign-in so we can tell an active account from a dormant one. These hashes are deleted after 13 months (or the period for your country listed above). When two accounts look alike we compare them in a review queue; the details that matched (such as an email address, phone number or date of birth) are removed 84 months (7 years) after the review is closed, and nothing happens to either account without a person deciding it.

10. Your rights

You can view and correct most of your information in My Profile. In My Account → Privacy & Data you can download everything we hold about you in one file, see the choices you have made, and ask us to delete your account, correct something you cannot change yourself, or stop or limit a use of your data; we answer within 30 days. You can also email play@globaldomino.org from the address on your account. Deleting an account erases your personal details (including those inside our audit records), removes your sign-in methods and subscriptions, and signs you out everywhere; tournament results, ratings and payment records stay, because they are also other players' and organisers' records, shown as "Former player". Messages you already sent stay with the people who received them. Depending on where you live (for example the EU/EEA, UK, Brazil or California) you may have additional rights to access, portability, restriction or objection, and to complain to your data-protection authority.

11. Children

No account may be opened below age 14. Between 14 and 17, a parent or guardian must grant permission before the account can be used at all — we email them a signed link when the account is created, and the account stays inactive until they respond. That same link lets them choose, independently and at any time, whether their child's name appears on public results and rankings, whether a photograph is shown instead of initials, whether they are searchable by name on the spectator app, whether spectators can react to or vote for them, and whether other adult members can send their child a friend request; granting one of these does not grant the others, and a guardian can withdraw any of them at any time from the same link, taking effect immediately. Until a guardian grants public listing, a young player's results and rankings still count — their competition record is never diminished — but on public pages they appear only as a first name and last initial, with no photograph and no public profile page. Until a guardian grants messaging, an adult member cannot send the child a friend request; the child can still send and receive friend requests with other young players. If you believe an account was opened for a child under 14, or have any other concern about a young player's account, contact play@globaldomino.org.

12. Changes & contact

We will post changes here and update the date at the top; material changes will be announced in the app. Questions: play@globaldomino.org, Global Domino Federation.