- We keep your sign-in details, the venues you follow, the bookings you save and the alerts you set, so the app can show and remind you of them.
- We never see your venue password or your card. You sign in and pay on the venue’s own website.
- Your location, your calendar and your venue login stay on your phone.
- No ads, no analytics, no tracking and no selling of data.
- You can delete your account and everything in it from the app at any time.
Contents
- Who we are
- What we collect
- What stays on your phone
- Why we use it, and our legal basis
- Who we share it with
- Transfers outside the UK
- How long we keep it
- Your rights
- Deleting your account
- Phone permissions
- Children
- Security
- This website
- Changes to this policy
- Contact and complaints
1. Who we are
court:scout is a mobile app that shows tennis court availability at venues in the UK, alerts you when a court frees up, and keeps a record of the courts you book. It is run by Evgeny Lavrov, an individual based in the United Kingdom (“we”, “us”). We are the controller of the personal data described here.
Contact us about privacy at support@courtscout.uk.
court:scout is independent. It is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any venue, club, governing body or booking provider.
2. What we collect
We only collect what the app needs to work. It is stored in Google Firebase, in the London region (europe-west2), unless noted otherwise.
| What | Details | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Account | A user ID, your email address, your name and whether you signed in with Google or Apple. If you use Apple’s “Hide My Email”, we only get a private relay address. Firebase also records when the account was created and when you last signed in. | Google or Apple, when you sign in |
| Venues you follow | The list of venues you choose to see. | You |
| Bookings | For each booking: venue, date, start and end time, court, the venue’s booking reference, the gate PIN if the venue gives one, and whether it is confirmed or cancelled. | The venue’s confirmation or “my bookings” page, which the app reads when you open it in the app (see below) |
| Alerts | The venue, day or weekdays and time window you want to hear about, whether the alert is paused, when you set it, and the app’s record of what it has already told you about. Some alerts follow a venue’s booking window, which can reflect your membership or coach status there. | You, and our alert service |
| Notification settings | Which kinds of notification you want: court alerts, cancel-by reminders and day-of reminders. | You |
| Push tokens | A token for each phone you are signed in on, so we can send it notifications. It is removed when you sign out or it stops working. | Your phone, via Google Firebase Cloud Messaging and Apple Push Notification service |
| Service logs | Our alert service writes a short technical summary of each run (such as how many alerts were checked and pushes sent). They are used to keep the service running. | Our servers |
How bookings get into the app
When you book, the venue’s own booking website opens inside the app. You sign in to the venue and pay there, just as you would in a browser. When the venue shows your confirmation, or when you open your list of upcoming bookings, the app reads the court, time, reference and gate PIN from that page and saves them to your account. It is built to skip your name, email, contact details and the names of other players on those pages.
We never see, store or send your venue password or your payment card. We don’t sell anything, so we hold no payment data.
What we don’t collect
No phone number, postal address, precise location, contacts, photos or payment details. No advertising identifiers. The app contains no analytics, crash-reporting or advertising tools.
3. What stays on your phone
Some data is only ever kept on your phone. We cannot see it.
- Your venue login. The venue’s website keeps its own cookies and session in the app’s browser, so you stay signed in to the venue. That data is between you and the venue.
- Your location, if you allow it. It is used at town-level accuracy to sort venues by distance, and is never sent to us.
- Your calendar, if you turn on calendar sync. The app adds your bookings to a calendar you choose, and can include the gate PIN if you ask. If that calendar syncs to Google, Apple or another provider, it is shared with that provider under your account with them, not by us.
- Reminders are scheduled on the phone itself.
- Your status at each venue (for example whether you are signed in there, or a coach), which the app checks to show the right booking windows.
- Your basket of courts you are about to book, and a local copy of your account data so the app works offline.
4. Why we use it, and our legal basis
| Purpose | Data | Legal basis (UK GDPR) |
|---|---|---|
| Create and secure your account, and sign you in | Account | Contract: we need it to provide the app you asked for |
| Show your venues, bookings and gate PINs across your phones | Venues, bookings | Contract |
| Watch availability and tell you when a court frees up, without telling you about a slot you already hold | Alerts, bookings, notification settings, push tokens | Contract |
| Keep the service working, find faults and prevent misuse | Service logs, account | Legitimate interests: running a reliable, secure service |
| Answer you when you contact us | Your email and message | Legitimate interests: replying to you |
| Meet legal obligations | Any of the above, as needed | Legal obligation |
We don’t use your data for marketing, profiling or automated decisions with legal or similar effects. If we ever want to send marketing messages, we will ask first.
5. Who we share it with
We don’t sell or rent personal data. We share it only with the following:
- Google (Firebase and Google Cloud) hosts our database, sign-in, alert service and push notifications, as our processor.
- Apple provides Sign in with Apple and delivers notifications to iPhones.
- Google also provides Sign in with Google and delivers notifications to Android phones.
- Venues and their booking provider. When you open a venue’s booking site in the app, you deal with the venue and its booking provider (for most venues, ClubSpark) directly, under their own terms and privacy policy. We send them nothing about you.
- Authorities, if the law requires it, or to protect the rights and safety of our users or others.
- A new owner, if court:scout is ever sold or reorganised, who would have to honour this policy.
To show availability, our servers fetch public timetables from venues’ booking systems. Those requests carry only a venue and a date, never anything about you.
6. Transfers outside the UK
Our database and alert service run in London. Google’s sign-in and messaging services, and Apple’s, run on their global infrastructure, so some data (such as your email and push tokens) may be processed outside the UK, including in the United States. Where that happens, it is protected by the UK’s adequacy regulations (including the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework) or by the UK International Data Transfer Addendum in Google’s and Apple’s data processing terms.
7. How long we keep it
- Account, venues, bookings and settings: until you delete them or your account.
- Alerts: until you delete them. Alerts for a single date are removed automatically once that date has passed.
- Push tokens: until you sign out on that phone, or the token stops working.
- Service logs: up to 30 days.
- Emails you send us: as long as needed to deal with them, and no more than two years.
8. Your rights
Under UK data protection law, you have the right to:
- access the personal data we hold about you and get a copy of it;
- correct data that is wrong;
- delete your data (you can do this yourself in the app, see below);
- restrict or object to our use of it, where we rely on legitimate interests;
- data portability: receive the data you gave us in a machine-readable format (JSON).
To use any of these, email support@courtscout.uk from the email address on your account, or tell us which one it is. We will reply within one month, and it is free.
9. Deleting your account
In the app, tap the gear, go to Account and tap Delete my account, then Delete. To confirm it is you, the app asks you to sign in once more with Google or Apple. If you back out at that point, nothing is deleted.
This permanently deletes your venues, bookings, alerts, notification settings, push tokens and your sign-in account. If you signed in with Apple, it also removes court:scout from your Apple ID. It does not cancel bookings you have made with venues, or close your account with a venue’s booking system: do those with the venue.
The phone you delete from also clears what the app kept on it: the calendar events it added (past ones too), its reminders, your venue login, the venue booking rules it read, and your basket. On any other phone signed in to the same account, upcoming calendar events and reminders are removed once the app there notices the account is gone, usually within an hour of it next running. Uninstalling the app there removes the rest.
If you no longer have the app, see how to delete your account without it.
10. Phone permissions
Each one is optional, and the app works without it. You can change them at any time in your phone’s settings.
- Notifications: to tell you when a court frees up and to remind you about your bookings.
- Location (approximate, while using the app): to sort venues by distance. It is never sent to us.
- Calendar: to add your bookings to a calendar you choose, and keep them up to date.
11. Children
court:scout is not meant for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their data. If you think a child under 13 has an account, email us and we will delete it.
12. Security
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Each account can only read and write its own data, and access to our systems is limited. No system is perfectly secure, so please keep your phone locked. Anyone who can see a calendar you sync can see the gate PINs in it, if you choose to include them.
13. This website
courtscout.uk sets no cookies and uses no analytics. Its fonts and images are served from this site. It is hosted by Cloudflare, which processes your IP address and basic request details to deliver the pages and protect against attacks.
14. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will post the new version here with a new date. If a change significantly affects your data, we will also tell you in the app before it takes effect.
15. Contact and complaints
Email support@courtscout.uk.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or by phone on 0303 123 1113. We would appreciate the chance to put things right first.