Privacy Policy

Who we are

Ball Knowledge (ball-knowledge.com) is a free football quiz and trivia site. This policy explains what data we collect when you use the site, why, and how you can control it.

What we don't collect

Ball Knowledge doesn't require an account. We don't collect your email address, name (beyond what you optionally type into a leaderboard), password, or any payment information. There is currently no user registration on the site.

Analytics — only with your consent

We use Google Analytics (GA4) to understand how visitors use the site — which pages are popular, roughly how much traffic we get, and general location and device information. This involves cookies.

These analytics cookies are never set unless you click "Accept" on the cookie banner shown when you first visit. If you click "Reject," or simply close the banner, no analytics cookies are placed and no data is sent to Google Analytics. You can change your choice at any time using the "Cookie Settings" link in the site footer.

Where analytics data is collected, it's processed by Google in line with Google's own privacy policy. We don't use analytics data to identify individual visitors.

Leaderboards

Several games (including Higher/Lower, Football Bingo, Ten to Win, and others) let you submit a score to a daily leaderboard. If you choose to do this, we store:

• The name you type in (up to 20 characters, filtered to remove offensive language)
• Your score and, for some games, the time you took
• A hashed (irreversibly scrambled) version of your IP address, used only to apply a short rate limit and reduce duplicate submissions — we never store or view your actual IP address

Leaderboard entries are kept to preserve each day's results as part of the site's daily archive — this is a core part of how the leaderboards work, not indefinite storage of personal data, since the only personal element is a name you chose to type in yourself.

Transfer Business votes

The Transfer Business game lets you vote "Good" or "Bad" on real transfers. To stop the same visitor voting twice on the same transfer, your browser generates a random, anonymous identifier (stored locally in your browser, not linked to any personal information) which is sent along with your vote, alongside a hashed version of your IP address for the same purpose described above.

Cookies used for the site to function

Separately from analytics, a short-lived technical cookie is used on games with a leaderboard, to confirm you actually started a game before a score can be submitted (this helps stop automated fake score submissions). This cookie is strictly necessary for that feature to work, expires automatically, and doesn't require consent under UK/EU cookie law, in the same way a shopping basket cookie wouldn't.

Other services this site uses

• Google Fonts — the site's fonts are loaded from Google's font service, which may log basic request information (like your IP address) as part of serving the font files, under Google's own privacy policy.
• flagcdn.com — national flag images shown across the site are served from this public flag image service.
• API-Football — used only on our server to fetch match and transfer data automatically each day. This doesn't involve any of your personal data.
• BBC Sport, Sky Sports, and 101 Great Goals — the Football News page links out to headlines from these publishers. Clicking through takes you to their site, which has its own privacy policy.

Children's privacy

Ball Knowledge is a general-audience football trivia site and isn't specifically directed at children. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children, and the only information anyone can submit — an optional leaderboard name — is filtered for inappropriate language.

Your rights

Since we hold very little personal data (an optional leaderboard name, and hashed data that can't identify you), there's little to request — but if you'd like a leaderboard entry removed, or have any question about this policy, contact us via the Contact page.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top of this page. Significant changes will be reflected here directly — there's no separate notification list to sign up for, since we don't collect email addresses.