Contents
- Introduction and acceptance of Privacy Policy
- What information do we collect?
- Do we store payment information?
- What do we use your information for?
- Where will your personally-identifiable information appear publicly?
- Where will your image be used?
- Engaging with the BSF on social media
- How do we protect your information?
- Do we use cookies?
- Do we disclose any information to third parties?
- Managing your information
- Retention period
- Reporting a concern
- Terms and conditions
- Changes to our Privacy Policy
- Contacting us
Introduction and acceptance of Privacy Policy
Use of the official website of the British Softball Federation (referred to here as "BSF"), which encompasses britishsoftball.org, is subject to this Privacy Policy. By using our website, you consent to our Website Privacy Policy as follows.
What information do we collect?
You may visit and use our website without providing personal information about yourself or having to log into an account. However, in order to do some things or access certain areas, you will be required to provide some information about yourself.
We collect information when you:
- Subscribe to one of our email newsletters or join one of our other mailing lists
- Respond to an online survey
- Fill out an online form (e.g. annual registration/affiliation, sign up for events, make a job application, etc)
- Create and update your online account (e.g. registering as a player)
The personal information we collect may include, but is not limited to:
- Name
- Age
- Date of birth
- Email address
- Mailing address
- Telephone number
- Your image (e.g. if you upload your photograph to your online profile)
- Information about your participation in baseball or softball, such as the name of the club you are a member of, your role, coaching qualifications or experience in the sport
- Information related to your application for employment or a volunteer role with the BSF, such as details of your education and employment history
- Names and contact details of other people, for example parent/guardian emergency contacts or employment references.
- In specific circumstances, you might be asked about your gender, ethnicity and, where applicable, disability, e.g. when we run equality and diversity surveys. Providing this information is entirely optional and you can state your preference not to say.
Do we store payment information?
In some circumstances, you will be asked to make payment through the website in order to pay your affiliation/membership fee, attend an event, join one of our programmes, sign up for a coaching course, or purchase apparel, equipment, etc. The BSF does not directly process online payments and we do not collect and store your online payment, credit/debit card or banking information on our servers. Instead, we will direct you a third party site to complete your online payment securely. These sites may include, but are not limited to:
Paypal (e.g. event/programme sign-ups, etc)
A commonly used secure online payment method. If you don't have a Paypal account, you can also pay by debit/credit card through Paypal.
The Softball Shop (for apparel and equipment)
Baseball Outlet (for apparel and equipment)
Teamlinkt (for team/league membership fees and player registration)
Your transaction through one of the above websites is subject to the separate privacy policy and terms and conditions of that particular website.
What do we use your information for?
The information we collect from you through the website may be used in one of the following ways:
- To provide services to you – where you have requested them -- in line with our purpose to govern the sport of softball, such as helping you find playing opportunities, participate in a BSF-affiliated softball team/league/tournament, attend events or receive softball development services from our development agency, BaseballSoftballUK.
- To keep a record of BSF membership, including team/league contacts and overall numbers of participants.
- To facilitate the annual member affiliation process at the start of each season.
- To keep a record of accidents and incidents that occur in the sport in line with the requirements of the insurance policies of the British Softball Federation and its affiliated members.
- To administer a contest, promotion, survey or other site feature.
- To facilitate recruitment processes for employment and volunteering opportunities with the British Softball Federation or Great Britain Softball programmes.
- To contact you with important information relating to your involvement in the services listed above, as part of delivering that service to you or processing your booking. We will normally contact you by email. The contact details you provide will only be used to send you information and updates pertaining to that service/booking. In rare circumstances, it may be necessary to contact website users with important information relating to their website account, e.g. for data security reasons or important changes to website functions.
- To send newsletters and news flashes to subscribers. You can unsubscribe from our mailing lists at any time by using the ‘Unsubscribe’ link on the newsletter or contacting us directly.
- To send you information about opportunities or products we think you might be interested in based on your involvement with baseball and softball, including some from select partners and third parties. You will receive this only if you have opted in to receiving such mailings when you are given the choice in one of our forms. You can unsubscribe from such mailings at any time by following the ‘Unsubscribe’ instructions on the mailing or contacting us directly.
- To improve our website, programmes and customer service based on the information and feedback we receive from you.
In the case of surveys, to help inform future decisions on policy, procedure and activity planning. In some cases, surveys are completed anonymously and unattributable to the individual. For instance, in the case of equality and diversity surveys, personal information such as gender, ethnicity, and disability information is provided anonymously, i.e. the survey is not directly linked to your name or other identifying data in our databases. In other cases, individual survey responses will remain confidential to the British Softball Federation and used in a way that individuals will not be identified. Responses will be aggregated to provide an overall view and help the British Softball Federation develop important insight and, where required, report on our work.
Where will your personally-identifiable information appear publicly?
We limit the amount of personal information about you that appears on the website to other users. Some examples may include (but are not limited to) the following:
- We may reference your full name if you are featured in news articles, game reports, etc, that we post on the website and in update newsletters emailed to subscribers of the mailing list. If you would prefer your full name not to be published in these communications, please contact us as soon as possible to request this.
- If you submit a comment on a news article or page on the website, you will be asked to provide your name and email address as well as your comment. This is to help verify that you are a real person (rather than a spam robot) and prevent anonymous posts that might be offensive to others. Your email address will not be published on the website and you do not have to provide your full name.
- If you create a profile to join the website forum you must create a nickname to use in the forum and can opt to provide other information such as your location and a photo of some kind to use as a forum avatar. How much personally identifiable information you provide in your profile is completely up to you. Your email address will be associated privately with your forum profile in order to send you optional notifications about discussions or messages (either the email address registered to your website account or another email address you used to sign in to the forum). Although other forum users can send you a direct private message (‘DM’ or ‘PM’) through the forum, they cannot see your email address.
- Any other personal information that you choose to publish in discussions in the comments section of pages on the Website or the forum is provided at your own discretion.
In addition to the above, in such case that your entering a contest, promotion or survey run by the BSF might result in us publishing your name or any other personally identifiable data on the website or public communications, we will make the details of this clear in the specific terms of the contest, promotion or survey at the point that you choose to enter.
Where will your image be used?
If you upload your photograph to your online user account it will be stored securely on our servers along with your other profile details and used in line with the purpose and functions of your user account. For example, if you upload your photograph to your BSF registration account it might be viewable by administrators, other registered members of your team and certain other users (when logged in to their accounts), depending on access levels.
Where adults are participating in a baseball or softball competition, event, or programme, their image may appear in photographs of the event that we include in news articles on the website and social media promoting the event. It is often the case that individuals are not identified in these photographs, although sometimes they will be when it is relevant to the article. If you wish your image to be removed, you may request this.
Where children/young people under the age of 18 are concerned, there is a specific Photographic Policy adopted by BSUK and the British Softball Federation. Please refer to this for details.
Engaging with the BSF on social media
The British Softball Federation uses certain third party social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter to promote our work and our website content, and to engage with participants of baseball and softball. You can opt to engage with the BSF via these social media channels and to enter into communication with us and other users via those means. The level of engagement is up to you and may take different forms, e.g. becoming a ‘follower’ of our social media channel, posting or replying to a comment on one of our social media posts, posting an image to one of our social media channels, etc.
By doing so, your social media profile and content/communication you have chosen to post will be linked to the BSF’s social media channel and viewable by others. The exact degree to which this occurs varies depending on the particular social media channel. Both the BSF’s and your use of each social media channel is subject to the privacy policy and terms and conditions of the third party. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of third party websites or products, and we encourage you to read the privacy policies of every website and product that collects personally identifiable information from you.
How do we protect your information?
Your online account information associated with any of our services run (eg, your BSF registration) is password-protected for your privacy and security. You choose your password so the strength of that password is determined by you, and you can change the password at any time. In certain areas, we use industry-standard SSL encryption to protect data transmissions.
The personal information stored in our database can only be accessed by those authorised with special access rights to our systems for the purpose of operating our services, and they are required to keep the information confidential.
We do not install any spyware or adware in connection with our services or authorize any third party to distribute any commercial message by means of spyware or adware. ‘Spyware’ or ‘adware’ is any software which has been downloaded to or installed on an Internet user's computer or device, without the user's actual consent, and facilitates the distribution of any commercial message to the user.
Do we use cookies?
Yes. Cookies are small bits of data we store on the device that you use to access our website (eg, computer, mobile phone, tablet), so that we can recognise repeat users, save your preferences for future visits, enable functionality, and monitor website performance.
For more information, please visit the cookies page.
Do we disclose any information to third parties?
We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to third parties your personally identifiable information. The exception is those trusted third parties who require access to certain information in order to assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or providing services to you. Access is provided on the understanding that those parties agree to keep this information confidential, secure, and in adherence with data protection laws. An example is BaseballSoftballUK, the development agency of the BSF, which administers the British Softball website on behalf of the BSF.
We may use dedicated third party sites to help us administer certain functions such as surveys and registration forms. Some examples include but are not limited to:
Wufoo - online forms
Survey Monkey - online surveys
Insightly - business contact management system
MailChimp - sending email newsletters to mailing lists
Only BSF or BaseballSoftballUK administrators authorised with special access rights to those systems can access the information stored in them for the purpose of operating our services (see What do we use your information for?), and they are required to keep the information confidential. In addition to how we have said we will treat that data in this Policy, the information will be stored on the third party servers and is subject to the privacy policies of those third parties, which must comply with data protection laws.
We may share aggregated demographic and website analytics information with third parties. This data is not linked to personal information that can identify you or another individual person.
Notwithstanding any term to the contrary in this Privacy Policy, we reserve the right to use, disclose or share your personal and non-personal information in order to investigate, prevent or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person, violations of Terms of Use of any of our services, or as required by law.
Our website contains links to other websites and products operated by unrelated third parties, including advertisements. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of third party websites or products, and we encourage you to read the privacy policies of every website and product that collects personally identifiable information from you. This Privacy Policy applies only to our website and services.
Managing your information
You can edit and update information held in your online account (eg, your BSF registration) by logging in to it and making changes.
You can unsubscribe from receiving mailings from us at any time by clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link on the email, following the ‘Unsubscribe’ instructions on the mailing or contacting us directly.
If you wish to access, update or delete any other information that you have provided to us through the website, please contact the BSF. Please be aware that as we require certain information from you (as outlined in this Privacy Policy) to enable your participation in our products and services, a request from you to delete that information might mean that you can no longer participate. We reserve the right to retain certain information necessary to accurate record keeping and ongoing operation of our services, or where we have a lawful reason to store and process the information. In such cases we will aim to keep this to a minimum.
Retention period
The length of time that we will retain your data on our website, servers or in our online survey / form accounts or software (see the section on third party sites) varies depending on what it is used for (see What do we use your information for?).
In the case of your website account, this is likely to be retained on an ongoing basis so that you can continue to have access to the services provided through that account and so that we can maintain accurate records such as team rosters and statistics. If you sign up to our mailing list, you will remain on it until either you unsubscribe or we no longer use the mailing list and delete it.
Where you have filled in an online form or survey, we will delete the collected information from the software once we no longer require it for the purposes it was provided. In some cases, we may need to keep certain parts of it for accurate record-keeping and ongoing operation of our services, in which case we will securely transfer and store it in our database.
Please see the section above for more on Managing your information.
Reporting a concern
If you have a concern about how your information has been handled by us, please contact us. If you still have a concern after that, you can raise it via the Information Commissioner's Office.
Terms and Conditions
Please also visit our Terms of Use page establishing the use, disclaimers, and limitations of liability governing the use of our website.
Changes to our Privacy Policy
If we decide to change our privacy policy or are obliged to under the law, we will post those changes on this page. If there are material changes to the Terms of Use, the Privacy Policy or how the British Softball Federation will use your personal information, such changes will be published prior to implementing the changes. The BSF will use reasonable means to notify users prior to implementing the changes. This will include: prompting the user to read the policies when they first register or when they reactivate their account at the start of a new season; emailing current users and subscribers to the BSUK mailing list; publishing notification of significant changes on the website. Your use of this Website and other BSF Properties after such changes are posted will mean that you accept them.
This policy was last modified on 17 February 2021:
Section 3 was edited to include an updated list of third party websites where payments may be handled.
Contacting Us
If there are any questions regarding this privacy policy you may contact us using the information below.
British Softball Federation
c/o BaseballSoftballUK
Home Plate
Farnham Park
Beaconsfield Road
Slough SL2 3BP
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7453 7055
Email us