Privacy Notice
What we collect, what we deliberately do not collect, and how long we keep it. Written to be read by a head teacher, a parent or an entrant — not only by a lawyer.
Who we are
Signals of Space is an Equal Space™ Challenge of the Space Athletics Academy®, a programme of the Space Games Foundation, the 501(c)(3) charitable arm of Space Games Federation. The Foundation is the controller of the personal information described here.
Contact: info@SpaceGamesFederation.com
Postal address: [TO ADD]
Person responsible for data: [TO ADD]
The short version
| If you are a… | What we hold |
|---|---|
| First Reader | Nothing. No name, no age, no class, no contact detail, no work. We never receive an answer sheet, and no reader is recorded, photographed or filmed. |
| Session leader or teacher | Your name, school or organisation, email, session details, and — only if you claim a stipend — payment details. |
| Entrant | Name, date of birth, email, school or employer, your team roster, and everything you submit as your entry. |
| Subscriber | First name and email address, nothing else. |
| Visitor | Whatever our host and embedded video player log automatically. We do not add advertising or tracking of our own. |
First Readers — what we do not collect
No student information reaches us. Ever.
This is the most important statement in this notice, and it is a commitment rather than an intention. It is why a school can run a session without a new consent process.
- No reader is recorded, photographed or filmed, and no session is recorded.
- Readers give us no personal information. We receive answer letters and a group identifier — never a name, never an individual sheet.
- Paper answer sheets stay at the school until the season closes on 31 May 2027 and are never sent to us, scanned to us or photographed to us. A photograph of a sheet is the sheet.
- Readers are identified only as Reader 1, Reader 2 and so on. No reader number is ever linked to a name on any record we hold.
- Sessions run on the school’s premises, in supervised time, led by the school’s own staff, under its existing policies. No Academy volunteer or contractor attends a session or has contact with a student at any time.
- Individual readers under 18 are never named in anything we publish. Participating classes are named only with the school’s written permission.
- Certificates for readers under 18 are issued to the school to hand out, never to a student directly.
Because we hold no personal information about readers, there is nothing about a reader for us to disclose, correct or delete. If a school wants a session’s returned letters removed from the dataset, write to us and they are deleted.
Session leaders and teachers
We hold your name, your school or organisation, your email address, the dates and details of sessions you run, and the group identifiers issued to you. We use these to send you session materials, to assign entries, and to contact you about the season.
If you claim a classroom materials stipend we also hold what is needed to pay it, and a record of the payment for as long as accounting and tax rules require — which is longer than the season. Payment details are held by the Reader Coordinator alone. They are never recorded on a return form, never connected to entrant identities, and never connected to any score.
Entrants
At registration we collect your name, date of birth, email address, school or employer, and the same for every member of a team. We collect your date of birth for one reason: entry is open only to people aged 18 or over on the closing date, and we have to be able to verify that.
At submission we receive your entry: the link to your video, your reference card, your written rationale, your Self-Test Log and your AI statement.
Your entry is separated from your identity at intake
Every entry is given an anonymous entry ID. Readers and judges see the entry ID and the entry name, never a person, a school or a country. The people who hold the link between an entry and a real person do not take part in scoring, and the people who run reader sessions never hold entrant identities. That separation is what makes cold reading meaningful.
Your video stays on your own account. You upload it to YouTube as Unlisted and give us the link. We do not host it and we cannot delete it — only you can. Unlisted means it does not appear in search, on a channel or in recommendations. Officials, session leaders, First Readers and judges view it through that link. Nothing is made public without your separate written permission.
If you win a monetary award we will ask you, at that point and not before, for the tax and payment information required in your jurisdiction. We do not collect payment or tax details at registration.
Subscribers
The form on the challenge page collects a first name and an email address so that we can tell you when registration opens and send the dated FAQ and change log. It is handled by Mailchimp. There is no marketing, and you can unsubscribe from any message.
Where your information goes
| Service | What it handles |
|---|---|
| Mailchimp | Subscriber names and email addresses. United States. |
| Vimeo | Our own films on this site. Playback is set to do-not-track, and no player loads until you press play. |
| YouTube | Entrants’ own unlisted videos, on their own accounts. We hold only the link. |
| Our website host | Standard server logs, including IP addresses, as any website keeps. |
| Google Fonts | Typefaces used on this page are requested from Google, which receives your IP address. |
We do not sell personal information, we do not share it with advertisers, and we do not run advertising or behavioural tracking of our own. Partners and sponsors receive no personal information about entrants, readers or schools.
How long we keep things
- Entry materials and reader data: until the season closes on 31 May 2027, and after that only in aggregate form.
- Entrant registration details: for the season and any appeal, then deleted.
- Payment records: for as long as accounting and tax rules require.
- Subscriber details: until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them.
- Published findings: permanently. The after-action report contains entry names and aggregate results, never personal information about a reader and never personal details about an entrant.
An entry name appears in the published report permanently, which is why the Rules require it not to be a personal name, a school name or an existing team name.
Your rights
Wherever you live, you may ask us to show you what we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or send it to you in a portable form. You may object to a use, or withdraw a permission you gave, at any time. Withdrawing an optional permission has no effect on scoring, standing, advancement or any award.
Depending on where you live you may have further rights under laws such as the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation or the California Consumer Privacy Act, including the right to complain to your data protection authority. Write to info@SpaceGamesFederation.com and we will answer.
Some requests we cannot fulfil. Once a result has been calculated and published in aggregate, it cannot be separated out again. And we cannot delete your video, because it never left your account.
Children
No entrant is under 18. Participants under 18 take part in one way only — as First Readers, at their own school or association, led by that organisation’s own staff — and we collect no personal information from them at all. We do not knowingly collect personal information from any child. If you believe we hold something about a child, write to us and we will delete it.
A fuller statement written for a head teacher or safeguarding lead is published as the Youth-Participation Statement in the Reader Pack.
Information crossing borders
The challenge is open worldwide and the Foundation is based in the United States, so information you give us is processed there and in the countries where our service providers operate. Where the law requires a safeguard for that transfer, we rely on the appropriate mechanism for your country.
Changes to this notice
If we change it we will publish the new version here with a new date, and tell registered entrants and session leaders. Changes are never applied retroactively to information already collected in a way that would disadvantage you.
Contact us
Effective [DATE TO ADD]. This notice describes the Signals of Space challenge. Where anything here differs from the published Rules and Regulations, the Rules govern the conduct of the challenge; this notice governs how information is handled. Space Athletics Academy®, Space Games®, Sports in Space®, Astrolete® and Equal Space™ are marks held within the Space Games Federation group.
