Privacy policy

What SetMatcher does with your personal data, why, for how long, and what you can ask of us.

In short

SetMatcher is a place to find people to play racket sports with, to record your matches and to follow your rating, in groups and tournaments. To do that it keeps some personal data about you. This policy says which data, why, on what legal basis, for how long, who sees it, and what you can ask of us.

We keep only what the service uses. We do not sell your data. The one thing loaded from another company is Google’s advertising, on the pages that carry an advertisement and never for anybody on SetMatcher Plus; it is described below.

Who is responsible

The operator of SetMatcher, named below, is the controller of your personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Write to the contact address about anything in this policy.

What we keep, and why

For each kind of data: what it is, why we keep it, the legal basis for it in the GDPR, and how long it stays.

Your account

What: Your name, email address and password (the password only as a one-way hash, which nobody can read back), your language, your role, when the account was made and when you last signed in. Where you are signed in: for each sign-in, the browser and the operating system as names such as “Chrome” and “Windows”, when it signed in and when it was last used. Never your internet address, and never the full description your browser sends. If you turn on two-step verification: the key your authenticator app shares with SetMatcher, when a code from it was last accepted, and your recovery codes, the codes only as one-way hashes; all of it is deleted when you turn it off. Which version of the terms you accepted and which version of this policy you were shown, and when. If you sign in with Google rather than with a password: the identifier Google gives your Google account, so that we recognise you the next time. We keep no password for you then. And where your account came from: which channel brought you to SetMatcher, such as an advertisement or a link on another site, the offer you signed up through if you came from one of our offer pages, such as the launch offer, and the country and town you signed up from. Your internet address is looked up for that once and is not kept.
Why: To give you an account, to sign you in, and to write to you about it, for example with a link to reset your password. And to show which terms you agreed to and what we told you.
Legal basis: Carrying out our agreement with you (Article 6(1)(b)). For the record of this policy being shown to you: our legal duty to tell you (Article 6(1)(c), with Article 13).
How long: For as long as you have an account. If nobody signs in to it for three years, we email you and delete it 30 days later, unless you sign in before then. A sign-in, 90 days after it was last used, so that we can recognise a device when it signs in again and tell you about one we have not seen. An account whose email address is never confirmed is deleted 14 days after it was last used.

Your player profile

What: What you add to your profile: a short biography, a photo, a phone number, the languages you speak, the hand you play with, your side on a padel court, your city, region and country, when you are usually free, the sports you play and the level you give yourself in each, and whether you are open to challenges. All of it is optional. Also the views of the ranking board you save, and whether you want to hear when somebody new enters one.
Why: To show you to other players and to suggest opponents at your level near you.
Legal basis: Carrying out our agreement with you (Article 6(1)(b)).
How long: For as long as you have an account, or until you remove it.

Your play

What: The groups you join or ask to join, the matches you arrange and play, their results and scores, the ratings they give you and how those changed, the tournaments you enter, and the messages written on a match.
Why: This is the service: rankings, ratings, draws and your match history.
Legal basis: Carrying out our agreement with you (Article 6(1)(b)).
How long: For as long as you have an account. A match is also your opponent's: if your account is deleted, the matches you played stay in your opponents' histories, with you shown as a deleted player.

Notifications and email

What: Messages SetMatcher shows you in the app, and the emails it sends about your account, such as a password reset link. If you let a device show you notifications, we also keep what that device needs to receive them: the address its browser gave us, the two keys the message is encrypted with, which browser and system it is, and when it agreed. A notification sent to a device carries the same words you would read in the app, and nothing more.
Why: To tell you about your matches, groups and tournaments, and to keep your account yours.
Legal basis: Carrying out our agreement with you (Article 6(1)(b)).
How long: Notifications, 30 days, read or not. An email is out of our hands once it has been sent. A device, until you turn its notifications off, until you end the sign-in it was set up on, or after 180 days without it opening SetMatcher.

Problems you report

What: When you use Report a problem: what you write, a picture of the page and any files you add, the page's technical context (which page, your browser, your last steps and recent errors, never what you typed into the page) and your account if you are signed in. If you tick the box, also that you agreed to be contacted about it.
Why: To find and fix what went wrong, and, if you agreed, to tell you when it is fixed.
Legal basis: Our legitimate interest in a service that works (Article 6(1)(f)). Being contacted rests on your consent (Article 6(1)(a)), which you can withdraw by telling us.
How long: While the report is open. Once it has been dealt with, your account, the technical context, the picture and the files are removed from it after 90 days, and the whole report after one year.

Error reports and server logs

What: The automatic error reports described on the Cookies and storage page, and our server’s logs: which address was asked for, when, how it went and how long it took. Internet (IP) addresses are removed from what is written to the logs; they are held in memory for a few minutes only, to limit how often one address can sign in, make accounts, send reports or ask for password reset links.
Why: To keep the service running and secure, and to find what goes wrong.
Legal basis: Our legitimate interest in a service that works and is secure (Article 6(1)(f)). You can object to the automatic error reports on the Cookies and storage page.
How long: 14 days.

Who is on the site

What: When a page is opened, the page tells our server which page it was and, for the first page of a visit, where the visit came from: the site that linked to it, or the campaign and advert named in the address. Our server works out the country and the nearest city from the internet (IP) address, on the server itself against a copy of DB-IP’s free database, and then drops the address. What is kept is counts: how many pages, how many different browsers within a day (the address and the browser’s name hashed with a random key that changes every day and is never stored), which countries, which pages, which campaigns, which of the launch offer page’s buttons were pressed, and for half an hour the city of each page opened, on a map only an administrator sees, and whether that browser was signed in (yes or no, never which account). Nothing is stored in your browser, and no account is linked to any of it.
Why: To see whether people are finding SetMatcher, from where, and which of our own adverts bring them, without handing anybody else your address.
Legal basis: Our legitimate interest in knowing whether the service is being found and used (Article 6(1)(f)). Nothing here can identify you, so there is nothing to object to by name; you can still write to us about it.
How long: The city of a page opened: 30 minutes, in the server’s memory only. The daily counts: 400 days.

Administration

What: A record of what administrators do (who changed what, and when), which includes your account when an administrator acts on it, for example when a group is removed, an account suspended or the app seen as a player sees it. When a password is changed, the date is recorded, never the password, so that every other sign-in from before the change can be ended.
Why: To keep administration accountable, and to look into abuse.
Legal basis: Our legitimate interest in a service that is run fairly and securely (Article 6(1)(f)).
How long: The record of what administrators do: two years. The date a password was changed: one day.

Your browser

What: What your browser keeps for SetMatcher, listed key by key on the Cookies and storage page. SetMatcher itself sets no cookies. Google’s advertising sets its own on the pages that carry an advertisement, and Google Ads does only once you say yes to it; that page names them.
Why: To keep you signed in and to keep what you chose.
Legal basis: What is needed for the service you asked for is kept without asking. Remembering your choices rests on your consent (Article 6(1)(a)), which you can withdraw there at any time.
How long: As listed on that page.

Advertising (Google)

What: On the pages that carry an advertisement, unless you have SetMatcher Plus, Google’s advertising script runs in your browser and shows it. A consent platform certified by Google asks whether the advertisements may be personalised. With a yes, Google may store and read information on your device to choose them; with a no, it shows limited advertisements, which are not personalised and store nothing on your device except what Google needs to detect fraud. Separately, Google Ads runs as well, on every page except the two named below, in a mode that stores nothing on your device and sends Google no identifier until you say yes to it: without a yes, Google is told, without knowing by whom, that a page was opened or that an account or a club was made. With a yes it also records that you came from one of SetMatcher’s adverts on Google, and which pages of SetMatcher you open; and when you make an account, it also receives the e-mail address you make it with, hashed (SHA-256) so that Google can match the sign-up to the advert without reading the address, and never the address itself. Google receives your internet address with each request, as any website you load does. Neither runs on the administration pages or in a club panel on another website, and beyond that hashed address SetMatcher sends Google nothing from your account.
Why: To pay for the free service with advertising; and to know which of our adverts on Google bring people to SetMatcher, and to show our adverts again to people who have visited (remarketing).
Legal basis: For limited advertisements, our legitimate interest in funding a free service with advertising (Article 6(1)(f)); SetMatcher Plus is the way to use SetMatcher without them. For personalised advertisements and for Google Ads, your consent (Article 6(1)(a)), which is also what Dutch law asks for the cookies (Article 11.7a of the Telecommunicatiewet). You can withdraw either consent at any time on the Cookies and storage page, and the one for Google Ads in your settings as well.
How long: SetMatcher keeps none of it; it stays with Google. The Google Ads cookies on this site last 90 days. How long Google’s advertising cookies last and how long Google keeps what it collects is set out in Google’s own privacy policy.

Who can see what

Your name, photo, ratings, results and location follow your privacy settings. For an account made on or after 28 September 2026 they start visible to every signed-in player, so that other players can find you and play you; an account made before that keeps the settings it had, which started private. Private means that only the people you play with see them: the players in your groups, anyone you have played with or against, and the organiser of a group you have asked to join; other players then see your first name and the first letter of your last name, and nothing more of those. Every signed-in player can see the sports you play, the languages you speak, when you are usually free, your playing details and the groups you belong to. Your phone number, if you add one, is seen by nobody but you unless you choose the people you play with, and never by every player; your availability calendar and your record of turning up are seen by nobody but you until you say otherwise. Members of a group see who else is in it and the group’s matches, and a group’s organiser sees who asks to join. Nothing about you is shown to people without an account.

Your email address is seen only by you and by SetMatcher's administrators.

Under Settings, Privacy you choose who sees each of those four: the people you play with, or every player, and for your location also nobody but you. Whoever cannot see your rating will not find you in the rankings, and whoever cannot see your location will not find you in the local rankings. A match you played always shows to the players in it and to its group.

Administrators can see all data, to run and support the service. To help with a problem they can look at the app the way a particular player sees it, without being able to change anything; every time they do, it is recorded.

We do not sell your data. A few companies handle it for us, as processors, and may use it only to provide their service to us: our hosting provider, Microsoft Azure, which runs the servers and the database, and whose monitoring service also receives what our servers measure about each request and the errors they report; the email service that delivers our emails; and, when you buy something, our payment provider, Stripe, which takes the payment, holds the card or bank details we never see, and issues the invoice. The advertisements on SetMatcher come from Google, which decides for itself what its own script collects: it is not working for us, and we send it nothing about you.

Google is not working for us for Google Ads either. For the advertisements and for Google Ads alike, it uses what its scripts collect as a controller in its own right, under its own privacy policy (policies.google.com/privacy), and may transfer it to the United States, where Google LLC is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. The one exception is the hashed e-mail address that goes with a sign-up after your yes: for that, Google works for us as a processor, under Google Ads’ data processing terms, and uses it only to match the sign-up to the advert. SetMatcher Plus removes the advertisements, and without your yes Google Ads stores nothing on your device and is told nothing about who you are.

If you choose to sign in with Google, Google tells us the email address of your Google account, that it has verified that address, and your name. We ask it for nothing else. Google learns that you signed in to SetMatcher and when, and handles that as a controller in its own right, under its own privacy policy (policies.google.com/privacy). We tell Google nothing about what you do on SetMatcher. You never have to use it: an email address and a password work just as well.

If you let a device show you notifications, each one passes through that device's own notification service: Google, Mozilla, Apple or Microsoft, whichever made your browser. Your device chose it, not us, so it is not a company working for us. That is why the message is encrypted before it leaves: the service carries it and holds it until your device is reachable, and cannot read a word of it.

Where the servers and the database are is stated under Who is responsible. Our hosting provider belongs to a group with staff outside Europe, who can reach the data only when they help to keep the service running; the standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission, which are part of our agreement with it, cover that. Our email service may handle the emails it delivers in the United States; the same clauses, which are part of our agreement with it, cover that.

We give data to an authority only when the law obliges us to.

How long we keep it

As stated for each kind of data above. In short: your account and what you did with it, for as long as you have an account, and no longer than three years after your last sign-in; where you signed in, 90 days after each sign-in was last used; notifications, 30 days; a device you let show you notifications, 180 days after it last opened SetMatcher; server logs and automatic error reports, 14 days; a problem you reported, until it has been dealt with and then at most one year; the record of what administrators do, two years. Our server removes what has passed its time by itself, several times a day, so none of this depends on somebody remembering.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

show you what we keep about you, and give you a copy (you can download it yourself under Settings, Privacy);
correct it (most of it you can change yourself in Settings);
delete it (you can delete your account yourself under Settings, Privacy; it is deleted 30 days after you ask, and matches you played stay in your opponents’ histories with you shown as a deleted player);
limit how we use it while a question about it is being settled;
give you the data you gave us in a common, machine-readable format (that same download is a JSON file in a zip);
stop what we do on the basis of our legitimate interest (the automatic error reports you can switch off yourself on the Cookies and storage page).

You can withdraw a consent at any time; that does not undo what was done before. The one about your browser is on the Cookies and storage page.

Write to the contact address under Who is responsible. We answer within one month, and if we need longer we tell you why. We may ask you to show that it is you who is asking.

No decision with legal or similarly significant effects on you is taken by a machine. Your rating is calculated automatically from your results; it decides where you appear in rankings and which opponents are suggested to you, nothing more.

If you think we handle your data wrongly, you can complain to the Dutch data protection authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl), or to the authority where you live. We would like to hear from you first, but you do not have to.

What you have to give us

To have an account you have to give an email address and a password, or sign in with Google, and then a name and the sports you play; without them we cannot make one. Everything else is up to you.

Children

SetMatcher is for people aged 16 and over. Younger players may use it only with the permission of a parent or guardian.

Security

Passwords are stored only as a one-way hash. You can turn on two-step verification under Settings, Security: signing in then also asks for a code from an app on your phone. Everything travels over an encrypted connection (HTTPS). What administrators do is recorded. If a breach puts your data at risk, we tell you and the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens as the law requires.

Changes to this policy

This policy has a version and a date, shown at the top. When we change what it says about your data, we publish the new version here and tell you in the app beforehand. Earlier versions are kept, and we send one to anybody who asks.