Current as of: 25/05/2018

This Privacy Policy covers the relationship between this website, Hot Off The Chess (also known as: ‘hotoffthechess.com’ ‘(internally) HOTCH‘ ’this website’ ‘the Site’), and it’s Owner and Administrator, John Lee Shaw, (also known as: ‘me’ ‘myself’ and ‘I‘) — all of the preceding being known collectively as ‘us‘ ‘we’ — and its visitor (also known as: ‘you’ ‘your’ ‘yourself’ ‘the User’).

HOT OFF THE CHESS VALUES YOUR PRIVACY

This Privacy Policy outlines how your personally identifiable information and other personal data (your ‘user information’) will be collected, used, and shared in connection with your access to and/or use of hotoffthechess.com and any content, features, services, or other offerings that may be provided in connection with the Site.

It also describes your choices and rights regarding the use, access and correction or deletion of your user information. By using the Site, you consent to the use of your user information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. If you are located in the European Union (EU), you will also be asked to provide clear and unequivocal affirmative consent to the collection, processing, and sharing of your user information via cookies and similar technologies.

TO VISITORS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU)

This Privacy Policy and its enumerated policies are intended to comply with Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 (the ‘General Data Protection Regulation’ or ‘GDPR’) and provide appropriate protection and care with respect to the treatment of your user information in accordance with the GDPR.

SUMMARY

To enhance, personalise, and support your experience on the Site, it may be necessary that your user information is collected, used and shared. An example of this is the use of aggregated information in order to develop content targeted to user interests and to generally improve the Site’s user experience.

As detailed below, your user information may also be used by the Site and its partners to tailor content and ads, provide social media features (e.g., features that allow you to share content directly to your preferred social media platform), track your preferences, analyse traffic, and provide similar services and content. We are committed to your privacy and will not share any user information with any third party without your request/consent, except as outlined in this Privacy Policy or as deemed necessary by law.

If you have any requests, comments, or questions about this Privacy Policy or your user information, please get in touch as detailed at the bottom of this Policy.

WHAT THIS POLICY COVERS

This Privacy Policy covers this website only. While you may encounter links on the Site to other websites, such as those relating to our third party sponsors, advertisers, and other partners, please note that these websites are not covered by this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to the activities of third party sponsors, advertisers, and other partners of Hot Off The Chess that may collect your user information while accessing or using such third party’s services in connection with your use of this Site (e.g. social media and sharing services). The privacy and information practises of those third parties are not covered by this Privacy Policy. To learn more about such third party policies, we encourage you to read and review the privacy policies of each third party service that you may choose to use in connection with the Site. This Privacy Policy applies only to any information collected by this website.

With regard to concern regarding your safety and privacy online, please think carefully before you decide to disclose or upload anything on the Internet. For example, if you voluntarily disclose user information in chat areas or bulletin boards or comments sections. That information could be seen and used by others, and may result in unsolicited messages from others. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information or other user information you may choose to submit in these public forums. To request removal of your personal information from our blog or community forum, please contact us as detailed below. In some cases, we may not be able to remove personal information voluntarily disclosed by you in such forums for legal retention purposes or technical limitations (e.g., the data may not be searchable), in which case, we will notify you if we are unable to do so.

GATHERING OF INFORMATION

Your user information is collected when you use the Site. Sometimes you may submit it yourself, other times it may be collected automatically. You have full control over this process.

INFORMATION COLLECTED

When you use the Site, your user information may be collected, used, and shared in a variety of manners. As detailed below, the type of user information collected may vary based on how it was gathered, but may include, among other things, your name, email address, and other information that you voluntarily submit (e.g., when setting up an account or submitting a registration or application on the Site, you may submit your contact information, social media account handles, and/or professional information), information automatically collected about your usage of the Site (e.g., the content that you choose to view), and information about you that our third party partners may share with us if such third party partners have previously received your consent to do so.

VOLUNTARY SUBMISSION

Hot Off The Chess may collect user information that is voluntarily provided by you or with your permission. For example, we may ask you for information, such as your email address, if you register to become a member of the Site or register in order to comment on blog posts here. You may also provide information to us in other contexts. This includes, for example, your member profile page and public profile URL.

In the event that you order something from the Site or enter a contest, we may request additional personal information, such as your address, telephone number and credit card information.

You always have the option not to provide the information we request. If you choose not to provide the information we request, your experience at the Site will be largely unaffected. However, you may be unable to access certain options and services.

Should you register or become a member of the Site or provide information to Hot Off The Chess in any other manner, you agree to provide only true, accurate, current and complete information.

COOKIES

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LOG FILES

The Site’s web and ad servers log information about a user’s IP address, browser type and the current URL the user is requesting. This information is always provided by a user’s browser and automatically logged by most websites. These log files are stored in a secure location and used with regards to our analysis of traffic patterns within the website.

USE OF YOUR INFORMATION

The primary goal in collecting, using, and sharing user information is to enhance your experience on the Site, support the Site, and improve its features, performance, and other elements. Your user information may be used for the purposes outlined below. We will not use your user information without a valid legal basis to do so.

TO TARGET CONTENT AND ADVERTISING

To develop and provide content and advertising to you that is tailored to your interests, we use the analytics collected by the systems described above to determine which areas of our website you prefer based upon the frequency of your visits and engagement with those areas.

We may make reasonable assumptions based on your browser provided data to target relevant content and advertising to you on our site and elsewhere where we may be acting as a 3rd party. We may also make reasonable geographic and demographic assumptions based on your presented IP address to target relevant content and advertising.

TO PROVIDE INTERACTIVE COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE SITE

To enhance your experience we may provide you with interactive communications, such as notifications of activity by topic or contributor to the e-mail address that you provide to us. This also includes replies to comment topics to which you have subscribed. Such interactive communications are provided only to those users who have expressly provided us with their permission to receive them.

From time to time Hot Off The Chess may provide e-mails highlighting new features, promotions or contests on the website to those users who have expressly provided us with their permission to send such communications as part of their user profile.

SHARING OF INFORMATION

You may be requested to voluntarily provide certain user information during your use of the Site. If you choose to do so, that user information may be shared with Hot Off The Chess as well as business partners and vendors providing hosting and other services for the Site.

In addition, if you provide any personally identifiable information via an advertiser promotion, please be aware you are directly providing your personally identifiable information to that advertiser.

From time-to-time we may provide you the opportunity to participate in contests or surveys on our site. If you participate, we may request certain personally identifiable information from you, such as your name and e-mail. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and you therefore have a choice whether or not to disclose this information. We use this personally identifiable information to notify contest winners and award prizes and to ensure that certain conditions and rules that may be in place are met.

We may use a third party service provider to conduct these surveys or contests; that company will be prohibited from using our users’ personally identifiable information for any other purpose. We will not share any personally identifiable information you provide through a contest or survey with other third parties unless we give you prior notice and choice.

The Site includes social media features, widgets and/or interactive mini-programs. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our website. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.

AGGREGATE, ANONYMOUS INFORMATION WITH ADVERTISERS

Hot Off The Chess uses advertising in order to support itself. In order to attract and retain advertisers we use the aggregated, anonymous information that we gather to assist our advertisers and sponsors to better understand our audience. We do not disclose personally identifying information about our users to these parties.

We partner with a third party ad network to either display advertising on our Web site or to manage our advertising on other sites. Our ad network partner uses cookies and may also use Web beacons to collect non-personally identifiable information about your activities on this and other websites to provide you with targeted advertising based upon your interests.

If you wish to not have this information used for the purpose of serving you targeted ads, you may opt-out or modify your choices by scrolling up to the ‘Cookies’ section and clicking ‘Change your consent’ or ‘withdraw your consent’; or, if located in the European Union by clicking here . Please note this does not opt you out of being served advertising. You will continue to receive generic ads.

AS REQUIRED BY LAW

We may disclose your personal information if required to do so by law such as to comply with a subpoena or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to conform to the edicts of the law, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order or legal process served on Hot Off The Chess, it’s Owner and Administrator, or to protect and defend our rights or property.

Notice to EU Individuals: As outlined in this Privacy Policy, we will not process your user information without a lawful basis to do so, as such bases are defined in Article 6 of the GDPR. In general, we will process your user information on the legal bases of consent, contract (should you enter into an agreement with us), or legal obligation (as noted above).

We may also process certain user information on the basis of the following legitimate interests, provided that such interests are not overridden by your privacy rights and interests: delivering and continuing to develop and improve the Site, learning from your behaviour on the Site (e.g., analysing traffic) to better serve you and other Site users, helping in the modification or enhancement of the Site and its content, receiving insight as to what users like (and don’t like) about the Site or aspects thereof, and providing a stable, consistent, safe and secure user experience in connection with the Site.

SECURITY

The protection of your user information is of paramount importance to us and as such, we employ various premium safeguards in order to make the best efforts to prevent loss and/or theft. Of course, it’s important to keep in mind that no data transmission on the Internet is guaranteed to be 100% secure.

PROTECTION OF MINORS

Hot Off The Chess is a website that is open to all who love chess or have an interest in our wonderful game. However, we do not accept any personal details of children under the age of 16-years.

In order to protect minors, we ask that children under the age of 16-years do not provide any personal information to or whilst at this website. This includes interaction at the Site, including its comments. In no case may you provide any user information under any circumstance, including information such as your name, address, or e-mail address.

In the event that we learn that this has not been adhered to and that Hot Off The Chess has inadvertently collected any personal information from a child under the age of 16, that information and anything that it is linked to will be deleted.

This is for your protection, (for example, so that your personal information, which could place you at risk from predators, is not seen in comments), not to discriminate against you. You are very much appreciated and welcome at the site. We thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

HOW YOU CAN CONTACT US

Please contact us if you have any questions or requests.

If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy or how to remove or modify your user information or related consents, please feel free to get in touch by e-mail at: mainline@hotoffthechess.com

HOW YOU WILL BE NOTIFIED IF THIS PRIVACY POLICY CHANGES

Changes to this Privacy Policy will be publicised on our Twitter account (@HotOffTheChess) as well as on the website. This will be done within 14-days of the change coming into force.