Privacy Policy

Starting11 is built on the principle of minimal data collection. We believe you should be able to create and share football lineups without compromising your privacy. We only collect the data necessary to provide our services and respect your rights at every step.

We collect minimal information to provide our services. For users who choose to create an account, we store only the standard OAuth data required for authentication (typically your email address and basic profile information from your chosen login provider). Guests who build a lineup on Starting11 without an account give us no personal information at all. One narrow exception applies on partner sites, explained under "Predictions made on partner sites" below. We also run short, optional in-app feedback surveys; if you leave a suggestion you may choose to add your email, which we use only to follow up on that feedback and nothing else.

Any information we collect is used solely to provide and improve our services. This includes enabling you to save your lineups, track your creations, and personalise your experience. We never sell, rent, or share your personal information with third parties for marketing purposes.

We use two analytics tools. Cloudflare Web Analytics measures page speed and pageviews. It sets no cookies, does not track you across sites, and needs no consent. Google Analytics 4 gives us session-level usage data, and it can set analytics cookies. We run it under Google Consent Mode, so if you are in the UK, EU, or Switzerland it stays off until you accept it on our cookie banner. Elsewhere it runs on an opt-out basis. You can change or withdraw your choice at any time using the "Cookie settings" link in the site footer, and if you decline, Google Analytics runs without cookies. The only strict-necessary cookie we set is the Clerk session cookie that keeps you signed in if you have an account; it expires when you log out and is exempt from consent banner requirements. We do not use advertising cookies or cross-site advertising identifiers.

The lineups you create are stored to enable sharing and saving functionality. Public lineups (those you choose to share) are visible to other users and may appear in recent lineups sections. You maintain full control over your creations and can delete them at any time.

Some football forums and fan sites embed our prediction widget so their members can pick a starting XI without leaving that site. You do not need a Starting11 account to use one. When a partner has enabled member credit, the partner's site sends us an opaque identifier for the member making the prediction: a salted, one-way hash generated on their servers. We never receive and never store usernames, display names, email addresses, or any other identifying detail from a partner site, and any value that is not a valid hash is discarded on arrival. The hash lets us count how many predictions a member made and how accurate they were, without us knowing, or being able to work out, who that person is. Only the partner can connect the hash back to a member, using their own records. If a partner publishes a leaderboard of their members, they choose to do so, they map those identifiers to names themselves within their own website, and they are responsible for telling their community. To have a prediction removed, contact the partner site you made it on, or contact us with the identifier and we will delete the matching records.

We retain your data only as long as necessary to provide our services. Account data is kept while your account remains active. Inactive accounts and associated data may be automatically deleted after extended periods of inactivity, with appropriate notice where possible.

If you're in the UK or EU you have the following rights, all of which we honour: (a) Access: get a copy of the data we hold on you; (b) Rectification: correct anything we have wrong; (c) Erasure: delete your account and all associated data ("right to be forgotten"); (d) Restriction: pause our processing of your data while a dispute is resolved; (e) Portability: receive your data in a machine-readable format and move it elsewhere; (f) Objection: object to specific processing activities. To exercise any of these, email us; we'll respond within 30 days. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) or your local EU supervisory authority.

We share only what is strictly necessary to operate the service. (a) Clerk Inc. handles authentication and stores your email, display name, and OAuth tokens. Their privacy policy: https://clerk.com/legal/privacy. (b) Cloudflare Inc. provides DNS, CDN, and cookieless analytics. Their privacy policy: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/. (c) Google LLC provides Google Analytics 4, which processes usage data such as pages viewed and approximate location, subject to your consent choice described under "Cookies and Analytics". Their privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy. (d) Hetzner Online GmbH hosts our application servers and database in Germany. Their privacy policy: https://www.hetzner.com/legal/privacy-policy. We do not sell your data, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

We implement appropriate security measures to protect your information against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. Our systems are designed with privacy and security as core principles, not afterthoughts.

We do not currently show display advertising, and no advertising cookies are set on the site today. Should we introduce advertising in the future, we will update this policy before it goes live, keep it clearly distinguishable from our content, and, where the law requires consent for personalised ads, ask for that consent through a dedicated banner separate from the analytics choice described above. We will not bundle advertising consent into any other agreement.

Starting11 uses OAuth providers (such as Google or GitHub) for authentication. These services have their own privacy policies that govern how they handle your information during the login process. We encourage you to review their policies as well.

Starting11 is designed for general audiences and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we become aware that we have collected such information, we will take steps to delete it promptly.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or applicable laws. We will notify users of any material changes through our website and update the effective date below. Your continued use of Starting11 after changes become effective constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.