Privacy

The short version

• This site sets no cookies.
• It loads no third-party scripts, no fonts from anyone else's server, no analytics, no advertising and no share widgets.
• It stores nothing in your browser at all as you read it. The pages follow your device's own light or dark setting.
• We do not ask you for anything. There is no form on this site, no name, no email address, nothing to fill in. The one button asks you to say you support the campaign, and records only that somebody did.
• The postcode you type into the "write to your MP" page never reaches us.

What the site stores in your browser

Nothing, on any page you can reach from the navigation. The site reads your device's light-or-dark setting and follows it, and it writes nothing down to do that.

There is one exception, and it is easier to describe than to hide. Every page checks localStorage for an item called fsf-theme holding the word light or the word dark, and honours it if it is there. Only one page can write it: /styleguide.html, an internal reference page for the people building the site, which is excluded from search engines and linked from nowhere. Unless you have gone there deliberately and pressed a button, that item does not exist and nothing is stored.

Even then it is not a cookie, it is never sent to a server, and it does not identify you. You can clear it by clearing site data for this site in your browser.

The support button

The button marked I support this collects nothing. Not your name, not your email address, not your postcode, not your IP address, not a cookie, not a session, not which page you pressed it on, not when you pressed it. There is no record of you anywhere in it, because none is made.

What happens when you press it is that a whole number on our server goes up by one. That number, and the time it last changed, is everything the button stores. It is held in a table called support_counts, on the same server that sends you this page, and it is never sent anywhere else. The date is a date and not a time: it records that a press happened on a given day, so we can see whether the campaign is being noticed, and nothing about when in the day or by whom.

The total is not shown on this site and is not sent back to your browser. The page does not know it, and neither does anyone reading the page.

Pressing the button does not record anything by itself. It opens a box that asks, optionally, which of five kinds of supporter you are: an independent supporter, someone who supports a non-league club, someone who runs one, someone who supports grassroots football, or someone working with a grassroots organisation. Only when you press OK is anything recorded, and all that is recorded is one added to the number against the line you chose, and the date it happened. If you press Cancel, close the box, or leave, nothing is recorded at all.

Your browser is asked to remember that you have already pressed the button, and which of the four lines you chose. That is two entries in this site's local storage, as described above: they stay in your browser and we have no way of knowing they are there. The second exists only so the box can show you the line you chose last time.

The address in that box, WeSupport@fairsharefootball.com, is an ordinary mailbox. If you write to it we will read it. What you send is not put in a database, is not used to contact you unless you have asked for a reply, and is not passed to anyone else. If you are happy for us to quote you on social media, say so in the email — otherwise we will not.

What this costs, said plainly. Because nothing distinguishes one visitor from another, nothing can stop the same person pressing the button more than once, from another browser or another device. So the total is a count of presses, not a count of people, and we will not describe it as a number of supporters. We would rather publish a number we cannot inflate a claim from than collect something about you in order to make it defensible.

The MP lookup, which is different

This one matters, so it gets its own section.

On the write to your MP page, the postcode you type is sent from your browser directly to postcodes.io, a free, keyless, public postcode service. The constituency name comes back to your browser.

It does not pass through us. We have no server that could see it, we do not log it, and we do not store it. If you close the tab, it is gone. The letter you compose on that page is also never transmitted anywhere by the page: you copy it, or you open it in your own email program.

postcodes.io is operated by a third party and has its own privacy practices. If you would rather not use it, the page works without it — the letter is fully usable and there is a link to Parliament's own lookup instead.

Server logs

This is a set of static files on a web host. Like every web server, the host keeps access logs containing IP addresses and requested URLs, which it uses to serve the site and to defend against abuse. We do not analyse them, build profiles from them or connect them to anything else. When the campaign chooses a host, this paragraph will name it and its log retention period.

If we ever add analytics

We have none today. If that changes, it must be cookieless, self-hosted or genuinely privacy-preserving, must collect no personal data, and must be disclosed on this page before it ships, not after. Anything that would require a consent banner is not going on this site.

Children

This site is not aimed at under-13s, and there is nothing on it that collects a child's data, or anybody's. If you believe otherwise, email us and we will look.

Changes to this page

Material changes get a dated note in the news feed as well as a new date at the top of this page. We will not quietly rewrite it.

Who to write to

Data protection: data@fairsharefootball.com. Anything else: info@fairsharefootball.com.

The campaign is not yet a registered organisation and therefore has no registered address to publish. When that changes, it will appear here. We would rather say that than invent a letterhead.