Privacy Policy
Last updated · Terms of Use
Who we are
BallroomRank (ballroomrank.com) is an independent, unofficial reference for competitive ballroom and Latin dancing. It is not a governing body or a competition organizer. It is run by Eli Rosenstein, who is responsible for the personal data described here (the “controller”). It is non-commercial: it sells nothing, shows no advertising and does not sell or rent personal data. You can reach us at ballroomrank@gmail.com.
Why we may use your data
Data protection law (for example the GDPR in the European Union and the UK) lets us use personal data only for a reason it recognises. Ours are:
- Legitimate interests for the results archive and what we calculate from it (profiles, scores, ranks, predictions and judges' statistics): keeping a searchable record of published competition results that the dance community uses. We weighed that interest against the people in the archive and added protections, described below for children and for anyone who objects. Legitimate interests also covers keeping the site secure and, outside the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland, counting visits with Google Analytics until you opt out.
- Providing the service you signed up for, for your account, dancer profile, photos, partner finder, messages, forums and groups.
- Your consent, for push notifications and results emails, and for Google Analytics cookies if you are in the European Economic Area, the UK or Switzerland. You can withdraw it at any time by turning notifications or emails off, or under “Cookie settings” at the foot of every page.
- Legal obligations, for handling correction, removal and other privacy requests and keeping a record of them.
Competition results
Most of what the site shows comes from competition results that organizers and scoring systems have already published online. We collect them from published results systems, including NDCA Premier, CompMngr, O2CM, TopTurnier, the DVET equality archive, EasyComp, Scrutelle, ScrutineerPortal, eScrut, DSCO, WDO and WDSF, and from an archive of dancesportinfo.net. Each competition page names its source.
From those results we store competitors' and judges' names as printed, partners, competition names, dates and places, events entered, placements, rounds reached, and judges' marks where published. Published results occasionally include a club, city or country beside a name, and we may keep it.
We then calculate information that does not appear in the original results: dancer and partnership profiles that join results across competitions and sources, ranking scores, ranks and predictions, whether a dancer competed as a professional, amateur or pro-am student, starting groups, and judges' marking tendencies. These are estimates made by software from the published results. They can be wrong, for example when two people share a name or one person's name was printed in different ways. Scores and ranks are an automated assessment of competition results (profiling), but nothing on this site decides anything about you with them: no selection, eligibility or agreement depends on them.
We publish this archive because a searchable, long-term record of public competition results, with calculated rankings, is useful to dancers, teachers, organizers and fans. We do not collect results dancers have not already had published, and we do not hold dancers' contact details from results. If a record about you is wrong, see Correction and removal requests. You can also object to our publishing a record about you at any time, and we will hide it.
Accounts and profiles
You can use the site without an account. Signing in is optional and uses Google. When you sign in, Google tells us your Google account ID, email address, name and profile picture address; we store them to recognise your account. We never see your Google password.
If you set up a dancer profile, we store what you choose to enter: a headline, a short biography, a partner-search introduction, whether you are looking for a partner, the country you represent, your category, styles and level, your location (city, region and country, plus an approximate map point placed a short random distance from the city centre), a contact email and whether to show it, and the competitor record you claim. Profile details you mark as public, including your photos, appear on your profile page, in the partner finder, and on the competitor record you claim.
Photos you upload (up to six) are stored on our server. When you upload one we remove the hidden details photo files can carry, such as the place and time it was taken and the camera's serial number. Deleting a photo removes the file.
Claiming a competitor record requires you to confirm that you are 16 or older, and the partner finder and private messages require you to confirm that you are 18 or older. We store that confirmation and when you gave it. We do not ask for your date of birth.
When you search for a location in your profile, the text you type is sent from our server to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service to find the place. Your saved dancers and boards, partner-search filters, the results you mark as viewed, and the competitor profiles you open (up to 200, used only to list them first in your searches) are stored with your account and are private to you.
Messages and forums
Private messages between members are stored on our server so that both people can read them. They are not end-to-end encrypted. We look at messages only to investigate a report of abuse, to keep the service running, or when required by law. Blocking a member is recorded so their messages stop reaching you.
Forum posts are public. They show your account name and, if you have a dancer profile, your profile photo. When you delete a post it is hidden from the site and its text is erased; deleting your account deletes your posts.
If you ask to manage a competition's page, the organizer details you send are visible only to site administrators.
Notifications and results emails
Notifications for followed dancers do not need an account. If you turn them on, your browser gives us a push address and encryption keys, which we store with the dancers you follow (up to 50), your browser's user-agent text, and a record of which results we have already notified you about. Notifications are delivered through your browser maker's push service (for example Google, Mozilla or Apple). Turning notifications off, in the site or in your browser settings, stops them; addresses that stop working are disabled.
If you have an account, you can also turn on “Email me new results of dancers I follow” on your account page. It is off unless you turn it on. We then use your account's email address and the dancers you follow to send at most one email a day when they have new results, and keep a record of which results we have already emailed you about. The emails are sent through Google's Gmail. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link; you can also turn it off on your account page.
Correction and removal requests
Every dancer and partnership profile has a Request a correction or removal link. The form asks for your name, an email address for our reply, your connection to the record, and what should change. We store the request, the page it is about and, if you are signed in, your account, and use them only to handle the request and keep a record of what was decided. You can also email ballroomrank@gmail.com.
We may ask for information that shows a request comes from the person concerned, their parent or guardian, or someone acting for them. Because results are a shared record (a partnership's result is also the partner's), we honour a removal request or an objection by hiding the person rather than deleting the competition results: their name reads “Name withheld” wherever it appeared, their profile shows only a note that it was removed at their request, and they are kept out of the site's search, its sitemaps and search engines. Results published later are hidden the same way. We keep the original name in a restricted record so that new results stay hidden and the hiding can be undone at their request.
Analytics and service providers
We count visits with Google Analytics, to learn which pages are used and where visitors come from. Visitors in the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland are counted only if they accept; everyone else is counted unless they choose Decline under “Cookie settings”. Nothing from Google loads before that choice. When it runs, Google receives the pages you view, the page that linked you here, your device type, browser and screen size, your approximate location (Google works it out from your IP address and does not keep the address), and the random number in the _ga cookie. We use only the totals Google reports back, such as page views by page and country. We turned off Google's advertising features and Google signals, so the data is not linked to your Google account or used for ads, and Google keeps the detailed records for at most 14 months. Google handles this data for us as our service provider.
Other services that handle some data to run the site:
- Cloudflare carries all traffic to the site and sees your IP address and the pages you request.
- Google provides sign-in and, as above, Google Analytics.
- CARTO supplies map images on map pages; your browser requests them directly, so CARTO sees your IP address.
- OpenStreetMap Nominatim looks up locations you type into your profile.
- Browser push services deliver notifications you turn on.
- Google's Gmail sends the emails the site sends: results emails you turn on and replies to requests.
These providers may process data in countries other than yours, including the United States. We do not sell personal data, and we do not use it for advertising.
How long we keep data
- Competition results and the profiles built from them are kept as a long-term record, unless they are corrected or removed after a request.
- Account and profile data are kept until you delete your account from your account page; you can also remove profile details and photos one by one at any time.
- Messages and forum posts are kept while the account that wrote them exists. Deleting your account deletes your conversations (for the other member too) and your forum and group posts, comments and photos; a discussion you started is removed together with its replies, and a group you own passes to another of its members.
- For a dancer hidden at their request, we keep the original name in a restricted record for as long as the hiding lasts.
- Push subscriptions are kept until you turn notifications off or the address stops working.
- The results email setting is kept until you turn it off or unsubscribe; the record of which results we emailed you about is kept with your account, so turning the email back on never repeats one, and is deleted with it.
- Google Analytics keeps the detailed records of visits for at most 14 months; its cookies last up to 13 months.
- Correction and removal requests are kept as a record of what was asked and decided.
- Technical records used to limit abusive traffic are held in memory for minutes. Our server and Cloudflare may keep short-term technical logs for security and troubleshooting.
- Database backups are made regularly. Data deleted from the live site can remain in a backup until that backup is replaced.
Your choices and rights
You can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, or to stop or limit how we use it, and you can object to our publishing a record about you. If you have an account, you can download your data and delete your account yourself from Your data on your account page. For anything else, including a record about you in the results archive, use the request form or email ballroomrank@gmail.com. We answer within one month, and we may ask you to show that a request comes from you, or from a parent or guardian. Depending on where you live (for example in the UK or the European Union), you may also have the right to complain to your data protection authority.
Children
Many published results are from juvenile, junior and youth events, so the archive includes children's names and placements as organizers published them. We do not know anyone's date of birth; we estimate who is likely a child from the age groups of the events they danced, and protect them:
- For a dancer we estimate to be under 16, we show results only: no score, rank, prediction or chart, and they do not appear on ranking boards.
- Profiles of dancers who may be under 18 are kept out of search engines and our sitemaps.
- A record we estimate to belong to a dancer under 16 cannot be claimed by an account; a parent or guardian can contact us instead.
A parent or guardian can ask us to correct, hide or remove a child's record at any time using the request form or by email. Accounts are for people 16 and older, and the partner finder and private messages are for people 18 and older.
Changes and contact
We will update this page when what we collect or how we use it changes, and change the date at the top. Questions about privacy go to ballroomrank@gmail.com.