Privacy Policy

The principle before the details

This page explains what FOOTBALL INSTANT learns about you when you read futbolalinstante.com, what is done with it, who else is involved and how you can object. Our readers live under many different privacy laws, so this policy is written to hold true wherever you are. The governing idea is restraint. No account is needed to read anything here, we gather only what running a news site requires, we discard it once its purpose is served, and we build no profiles of individual readers. A publication that asks clubs and competitions for transparency should be able to describe its own data handling plainly, and this is that description.

What reading the site tells us

Every request for a page leaves the trace any web server records: the IP address behind it, the page requested, the time, the page you arrived from, and the browser and device your software identifies itself as. Those logs keep the site up, help us find faults and let us fend off scrapers and denial of service traffic, which arrive in volume around a transfer deadline or a big match. They are kept for a short, fixed period, then deleted or reduced to anonymous totals, and they are never attached to a name.

Readership is measured with an analytics tool that counts visits and shows which stories were read and on what kind of device. It shortens IP addresses before storing anything and is configured not to profile individuals. What we see are totals, which tell us which competitions readers want more of. We cannot tell which reader followed a particular club through a transfer window, and that is deliberate.

What writing to us tells us

An email to support@futbolalinstante.com gives us your address, your name if you include it, and whatever the message contains. Those are used to answer you and to act on what you sent, and for nothing else. A message is kept while its matter is open: a correction report sits with the record of that correction, a tip stays until the story runs or is dropped. Mail from confidential sources is handled under the tighter rules described on our contact page and is kept out of shared systems, because sources inside clubs, leagues and agencies have jobs to lose. Nobody who writes to us is added to a mailing list, and addresses are never sold, rented or exchanged.

Please do not send us payment details, betting account credentials, passport or identity documents, or medical records belonging to anyone. No story we publish requires them, and anything of that kind is deleted on arrival.

Cookies and the advertising network

We set a small number of cookies of our own, to remember your preferences and to keep the readership count honest. Our cookie policy names every category, says what each one does and explains how to refuse it. Where your local law requires consent before non-essential cookies are set, none is set until you have consented.

This site is paid for by display advertising delivered through a third-party advertising network, an arrangement described on our ownership and funding page. To select an advertisement and record that it was shown, the network receives the technical facts of the request: the page address, the device type, an approximate location inferred from your IP address, and a cookie identifier. Across the many sites it serves, that network may combine such facts into interest categories under its own privacy policy rather than ours. It never receives your name, your email address or anything you have sent us. Consent controls, browser settings and local opt-out tools all reduce how targeted the advertising is; none removes advertising altogether.

The complete list of uses

Reader data is used to serve pages, to count readers in aggregate, to keep the site secure, to answer mail and to meet obligations the law imposes. That is the entire list. Reader data is never sold, never fed into an automated decision about you, and never passed to a club, a league, a federation, an agency, a betting company or any other organisation we report on.

Rights under the GDPR, the CCPA and comparable laws

If the GDPR protects you, you may ask to see the personal data we hold about you, have it corrected or erased, restrict or object to its use, receive it in a portable form, withdraw any consent you have given and complain to your supervisory authority. The lawful bases we rely on are our legitimate interest in running, securing and measuring the site in aggregate; your consent, for non-essential cookies; the need to reply when you write; and legal obligation.

If the CCPA or a similar consumer privacy statute protects you, you may ask what personal information we collect and how it is used, have it deleted or corrected, and opt out of its sale or of its sharing for cross-context behavioural advertising. We sell nothing. Advertising cookies may amount to sharing under some of those statutes, and both the consent controls and a Global Privacy Control signal switch them off. Exercising a right never changes how we treat you.

To make a request, write to support@futbolalinstante.com with PRIVACY as the first word of the subject line. You will get an acknowledgement within two business days and an answer within the period the relevant law allows, usually much sooner. We may ask you to show that you are the person concerned, and nothing beyond that.

Providers, transfers and demands from authorities

Our hosting, email and analytics providers process data on our behalf under agreements where the law requires them; the advertising network processes data for its own purposes, as described above. Readers and providers sit in different countries, so processing may happen outside the country you live in, and where rules such as the GDPR govern that transfer we rely on the safeguards those rules recognise. We hand data to police, regulators or courts only under legal compulsion. We resist demands that look overbroad or that aim to identify a source, and we tell you that a demand was made unless the law forbids it.

Signals, children, retention and security

A Global Privacy Control signal from your browser is treated as an opt-out from sale or sharing wherever the law recognises it, and as an instruction to switch off non-essential cookies everywhere else. This is a site for adults, and while football has young supporters, nothing here is aimed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13, or under the higher age set by your jurisdiction, and if you believe a child has written to us, tell us and the message will be deleted. Server logs last weeks rather than years, analytics survives only as totals, and mail lasts as long as its purpose. Pages are served over encrypted connections and security updates are applied promptly. No system is beyond compromise. If a breach touches personal data we hold, we will tell the affected readers and the relevant authorities as the law requires, and we will say publicly what happened.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, the wording on this page changes and the date of revision is recorded. Anything material is announced on the site rather than left for readers to discover by comparing versions. Questions about any of it go to support@futbolalinstante.com with PRIVACY in the subject line.