Plain-language summary
ARES uses limited personal information to operate accounts, watchlists, alerts, newsletters, security controls, first-party analytics, consent-controlled external measurement, and future institutional workflows. Optional measurement and advertising storage remain denied until a visitor makes a privacy choice. ARES does not sell personal information and does not store payment-card details. Newsletter delivery is handled through Substack after explicit signup consent.
1. Information ARES collects
Public browsing and first-party analytics
ARES may record a randomly generated browser-session identifier, page path, page category, permitted event name, broad internal or external referral class, campaign labels, engagement time, scroll percentage, selected entity identifiers, and a limited set of governed metadata. Search text and full external referrer domains are not stored in analytics events.
Account information
When you request a passwordless sign-in code, ARES collects your email address. An account may also include an optional display name, timezone, watchlist objects, notes, alert settings, alert history, entitlement status, security audit records, policy acceptance records, and account timestamps.
Newsletter information
ARES records the newsletter email address, exact consent version and text, consent time, source page, permitted campaign labels, subscriber state, suppression state, and export history. Newsletter signup does not create an ARES account or activate billing.
Legal and rights requests
ARES records the contact address, request category, region you provide, subject, request details, acknowledgements, status, and correspondence needed to evaluate and answer a request.
Security and abuse prevention
ARES may transform an IP address into a protected cryptographic hash for rate limiting, account auditing, or abuse prevention. The raw IP address is not stored in ARES analytics events. User-agent values may also be hashed for session security.
2. Why information is used
- Provide passwordless account access and secure sessions.
- Synchronize watchlists and account preferences across devices.
- Generate and deliver requested ARES alerts.
- Prepare opted-in newsletter addresses for the official ARES Substack publication.
- Measure product use through privacy-limited first-party analytics and consent-controlled external measurement.
- Protect the service from abuse, fraud, automated attacks, and unauthorized access.
- Respond to privacy, correction, copyright, image-rights, and data-source requests.
- Maintain provenance, auditability, policy acceptance, and system reliability.
3. Cookies and browser storage
Authenticated sessions use a secure, HTTP-only, SameSite=Lax cookie named ares_session. First-party analytics uses sessionStorage for a temporary anonymous identifier. ARES uses localStorage to remember the visitor's optional measurement and advertising consent choice and may also store non-essential interface preferences. Optional analytics or advertising cookies may be set only after consent is granted. See the Cookie and Browser Storage Disclosure.
5. Retention
- Passwordless codes: expire after 10 minutes and are stored only as protected hashes.
- Account sessions: normally expire after 30 days unless revoked sooner.
- Raw analytics events: retained for up to 90 days.
- Aggregated analytics: may be retained for up to 730 days because they are designed to exclude direct contact information.
- Accounts and watchlists: retained while the account remains active and removed through the account-deletion process, subject to limited legal, fraud-prevention, security, suppression, or audit obligations.
- Newsletter suppressions: may be retained to prevent future mailings to an unsubscribed, bounced, or complained address.
- Legal requests: retained for the period needed to verify, resolve, document, and defend the response.
6. Your controls and rights
You can accept or reject optional measurement and advertising technologies from the sitewide privacy notice and reopen those choices from the footer. Signed-in users can export current account data and request account deletion from the account page. You can also disable alerts, remove watchlist items, sign out, and unsubscribe from newsletter delivery through Substack. Depending on applicable law, you may request access, correction, deletion, portability, restriction, or objection through the ARES legal request channel.
ARES may need to verify your identity before acting on a request. Rights vary by location, and lawful exceptions may apply.
7. Football intelligence and public data
Player, club, league, fixture, transfer, image, and market records are governed separately from account information. ARES preserves source, freshness, confidence, rights, and correction metadata where available. ARES Score measures modeled on-field performance. Market Score measures modeled football-asset strength. Neither is an official transfer fee, official valuation, employment decision, agency recommendation, financial recommendation, or scouting guarantee.
8. Children and minors
ARES is not directed to children under 13. A person under 13 must not create an account, subscribe to the newsletter, or submit personal information. A higher minimum age may apply where local law requires it. Parents or guardians who believe a child submitted personal information should use the legal request channel.
9. Security
ARES uses access controls, secure cookies, hashed session tokens and sign-in codes, same-origin request controls, input limits, rate limits, protected administrative routes, least-privilege data access, and audit records. No online service can guarantee absolute security. Do not share a sign-in code with another person.
10. Policy changes
Each policy has a version and effective date. Material changes may be announced through a sitewide notice and recorded in the policy register. ARES may require renewed acceptance before account access when a material Terms or Privacy change affects account processing.
11. Contact
Use the legal and privacy request form for privacy rights, data corrections, image rights, copyright, account concerns, or policy questions. The form produces a reference number and stores the request in the governed ARES request system.