Privacy and student data

What Causey collects

• Account information such as email address, display name, account type, state, zip code, and competition interests.
• An optional profile photo, stored with your account and shown to people who have permission to see your profile or roster entry. You can replace or remove it in Account settings. Authorized workspace staff may also upload club images. Images on an approved public club listing are visible to the public.
• Date of birth provided at account creation or for a managed child profile, used for age eligibility and account guidance. Dates of birth are self-reported; Causey does not independently verify ages.
• School and club participation, roster membership, groups, invitations, RSVPs, attendance, saved events, and organizer registration status and submitted event-question answers. Entry answers retain the question version submitted and are available only within the participant, family and event-staff permissions. Optional US Chess registration credentials retain the member ID and, when you confirm an available lookup, a private snapshot of the returned name, membership status, reference ratings and lookup time. An enabled lookup sends that ID to US Chess; manual IDs are marked unverified. Credentials use the same participant, family and authorized event-staff access boundaries as entry answers. Organizer event listings, club descriptions, membership requests and screening responses are also stored.
• Club fee plans store the amount, payment frequency and terms the club prepares. The manual dues ledger stores staff-recorded charges, payments received outside Causey, waivers, corrections, due dates and outstanding balances linked to the relevant member. Saving a fee plan or recording a manual payment does not collect money or connect a payment account.
• When competition payments are enabled, payment-account connection status, registration amounts and fee splits, accepted entry terms, payment and refund status, and provider operation identifiers. Stripe-hosted pages collect card, bank and identity-verification details; Causey does not store full card or bank details.
• Parent-student links, staff roles, notification preferences, and in-app notification history.
• Club conversation text, the club and child context you choose, family broadcast content and audience, and opened or acknowledged status. Tournament operations also store board assignments, game results, correction reasons, and private season scoring settings.
• Eligible signed-in accounts can save private chess practice progress, including the exercise, outcome, hints, time spent, playing level and practice-rating changes. Account-linked progress is available only to its owner; family, club and school roles do not inherit access. Session-only results stay in that session.
• Problem reports sent from Support, including the contact email, description, optional screenshot, and replies from the founding team.
• When you choose nearby search in the app, a one-time foreground location is sent to Causey to look up a nearby ZIP code. You can enter a ZIP instead. Causey does not use background location tracking.
• If you choose Apple or Google sign-in when available, that provider authenticates you and supplies account identifiers and permitted account information. Causey does not receive your provider password. Device reminders are optional and scheduled locally on your phone.
• First-party product activity on web and app: discovery, event views, saved plans, registrations and RSVPs, with a limited acquisition source such as TikTok or a school link. Signed-in activity is linked to your account for up to 90 days and deleted with your account. Anonymous activity is stored only as daily totals, without a visitor identity. These records do not contain raw searches, full URLs, birth dates, advertising IDs or session replay. Platform administrators can see growth totals and provided account preferences; you can export your own activity from Account.
• Basic technical records needed to secure, operate, and troubleshoot the service.
• On the website, cookieless page views and approximate visitor counts through Vercel Web Analytics. Paths and referrers can be recorded; advertising identifiers are not. This does not run in the iOS or Android apps.
• On the iOS and Android apps, the same account data as the website, plus a sign-in session on the device. The phone app does not currently collect push tokens or advertising IDs. Nearby search can use the one-time location lookup described above; otherwise it uses the ZIP you enter or save on your profile.

How the data is used

Causey uses account and participation data to provide tournament discovery, roster and invitation workflows, family action lists, reminders, attendance reporting, account support, security, and service improvement. Payment records also support entry confirmation, refund recovery and financial reconciliation. Causey does not use student data for targeted advertising and does not sell personal information.

Who can see it

Students and linked parents can see their own planning information. Authorized school or club staff can see roster, invitation, RSVP, and attendance information for the organizations they manage. District administrators receive aggregate school reporting instead of a district-wide student directory. Causey platform administrators can access limited information when needed for support, moderation, safety, and access management.

Payment receipts are private to the payer and the event owner with current financial authority. Ordinary event staff do not gain access to another payer's financial records. Financial support may require Causey and Stripe to review the relevant operation.

Club conversations are shared between one parent and the club staff who currently have authorized roster access. Other parents and students cannot browse them. Losing a qualifying family link or club role removes ordinary conversation access; a renewed valid relationship can restore existing history. Reporting a message explicitly shares an excerpt with Causey support. That evidence remains in the reporter's own support ticket even if their ordinary club access ends.

Family broadcasts are limited to their selected recipients with current qualifying connections. Staff can see whether an update was opened or explicitly acknowledged. These records do not prove that a person read or understood it. Tournament and season views show participants their own results or their currently linked children's results; authorized staff can see their permitted event or club records. Private conversations and broadcasts do not automatically send their text by email or push notification.

Adults can opt into family-update email when delivery is enabled. These messages contain a generic link to sign in, rather than the update text or child's name. Current eligibility and email preferences are checked before sending. Staff see delivery status, while provider acceptance does not prove inbox delivery or reading. You can turn these emails off in Account or use their unsubscribe link.

An authorized tournament organizer can separately enable public pairings and standings. Those pages show numbered player labels and published game results, without participant names, contact details or registration answers. Disabling sharing removes future access; copies someone already saved cannot be recalled.

Service providers and event organizers

Causey uses Vercel for hosting and cookieless website page-view analytics, Supabase for authentication and database storage, Resend for email delivery, Sentry for error reporting when it is configured, hCaptcha for security checks on supported forms, OpenAI for optional pathway enrichment and automated checks of public listing text, links and images, and GitHub Actions for build and ingest jobs. They process data only to provide those services. Stripe processes enabled competition payments and hosted organizer payment-account setup. Causey sends Stripe the amount, event name and operation references; entry answers and child profile details are not included in payment metadata. Some organizers offer free or approved paid registration inside Causey. When an event sends you to an external registration website, information submitted there is governed by that organizer’s privacy practices. Problem reports and optional screenshots are stored and emailed to the founding team so they can reply.

Optional Ask AI also sends an eligible adult's submitted help question and available workflow guide text to OpenAI. Search as you type does not. Ask AI is unavailable to children, accounts with an unknown age, locked accounts, and people connected to school or district workspaces. Their workflow help uses local search. Do not include names, student records, or other sensitive information in an AI question.

Family and account choices

Users can update profile and notification choices in Account settings. Parents and students can manage family links there. Signed-in users can download a JSON copy of their account from Your data and can delete the account after typing their email. Organization owners must transfer ownership first. Founder super-admin accounts cannot be self-deleted. Account export includes your payment summaries and billing records you own or authored, without another payer's receipts. Financial records needed for payment recovery are retained after account deletion with Causey identity references detached and private order answers and membership credentials cleared. Stripe maintains its own records under its privacy practices. Contact Support about retained financial records or closing a connected payment account.

Schools, districts, and children

District use must be reviewed with Causey before students are provisioned. Causey will document the district’s instructions, permitted uses, retention expectations, and deletion process in an agreement approved by the district. Causey does not claim FERPA, COPPA, or state student-privacy compliance merely because this page exists. Public self-signup is for ages 13 and older. A younger student can activate a website login after their school has authorized educational use and provisioned their access, or after Causey has reviewed their parent or guardian’s consent for a child login. Class enrollment is separate and can happen later. School-authorized access is limited to the authorizing school’s educational activities. These younger-student logins do not enable use of the phone app. Causey does not sell an under-13 paid cohort. Public event comments already block under-13 posters. A parent can add a child under 13 as a profile the parent manages: Causey stores the child’s name, birth date, and grade, with no child email or login. The child never appears in search or member directories, and event hosts see the child’s age and grade with the parent as the contact. A parent may request an independent website login through Family. Causey records the consent method, notice version, private evidence reference, reviewer and expiration before enabling a younger child’s login. The same profile and family link are retained. Parents can revoke this authorization from Family and request access to or deletion of their child’s data through support. At 13, the existing profile can transition to independent age-eligible access. Unused school signup provisions are removed by scheduled cleanup after they have been expired for 30 days. Deleting an activated child profile also deletes its school signup provision. Minimal authorization audit records do not duplicate the child’s email or the private evidence document.

iOS and Android apps

The phone apps use the same accounts and privacy rules as the website. They are for ages 13 and up, not a kids app. Students 13 or older, parents, and coaches can create an account in the app. New accounts provide a date of birth to check age eligibility, regardless of their chosen starting screen. People under 13 who sign in on a phone see a blocked screen and can delete the account there. Account deletion is in the app (Profile tab, and the blocked screen) and also on Account. Export stays on Account. Support is at Support.

Questions or requests

Contact the founding team through causey.dev ↗. Include the account email and the school or district involved, but do not send passwords or sensitive student records.