Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

The BITS Sports Festival (“BSF”, “we”, “us”) is organised by the Sports Department of BITS Pilani, Dubai Campus, Dubai International Academic City, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. We decide how the information described here is used, and we are responsible for it.

Questions about this policy or your information: bitsdubaievents@gmail.com.

2. What we collect

Universities and schools

• Institution name, type, emirate and area.
• The contact person’s name, email address and phone number, and the email used to sign in.
• The registration consent you accept, and when you accepted it.

Athletes, entered by their university or school

• Full name, gender, date of birth and nationality.
• Email address and phone number.
• School or university ID number, and for university athletes, whether they are an undergraduate or postgraduate.
• Emirates ID number or passport number (never both), and a photo of that document.
• The teams and sports they are entered in, and changes made to them.

Visitors

• Name, email address, phone number, Emirates ID or passport number, and the days you plan to attend.

At the festival

• When a pass is scanned: the time, the gate, and which staff member or volunteer scanned it.
• Match results and team line-ups.

On this website

• Pages viewed, the page that referred you, your device type, browser and operating system, and campaign tags in the link you followed.
• A one-way scrambled form (hash) of your IP address, used to count visitors and stop abuse. We do not store your IP address itself.
• A random visitor ID kept in your browser, so repeat visits are counted once. It is not created if your browser sends “Do Not Track” or “Global Privacy Control”.

3. ID photos

When you upload a photo of an Emirates ID or passport, the text on it is read in your own browser, to fill in the form for you. The photo is not sent to any outside reading or AI service.

The photo is then reduced in size and stored privately on our servers, so organisers can check that each athlete is who they say they are and meets the age and eligibility rules. It is never published, never shown on a pass, and only organisers can open it.

4. Why we use it

• To register institutions, teams and visitors, and to run the competition.
• To check eligibility under the BSF rulebook, including age and study-level rules.
• To issue entry passes and QR codes, and check people in at the venue.
• To email sign-in codes, passes, confirmations and important updates about the festival.
• To keep the venue safe and deal with disputes, complaints or misconduct.
• To understand how the website is used and make it work better.

We rely on the consent given when registering, on what is needed to run the registration you asked for, and on our legitimate interest in running a safe, fair event. We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not sell it.

5. Athletes under 18

Many school athletes are under 18. Their details are entered by their school, which confirms, before finalising a team, that it is allowed to share them and that a parent or guardian has agreed where that is required. Parents and guardians can contact us at bitsdubaievents@gmail.com to see, correct or remove their child’s details.

6. Who can see it

• The organising team, on a need-to-know basis. Volunteers at the gates see only what a scan shows: the name and institution on the pass, and whether it is valid.
• Your university or school sees and manages the details of the athletes it entered.
• Service providers who run parts of the system for us: website and database hosting, and email delivery (Google Gmail and Resend). They may only use it to provide that service.
• Authorities, if the law requires it or it is needed to protect someone’s safety.

Team names, institution names, line-ups and results may be shown publicly on this website, scoreboards and social media.

7. Where it is stored

Our hosting and email providers may store or process information on servers outside the United Arab Emirates. Where they do, we use reputable providers that protect it with appropriate security measures.

8. How long we keep it

• ID photos and Emirates ID or passport numbers: deleted within 90 days after the festival ends, unless they are needed for an open dispute.
• Other registration records (names, teams, results, attendance): kept for up to two years, for the festival’s records and to answer questions about it, then deleted or anonymised.
• Website usage data: kept for up to 12 months.
• Sign-in codes: expire after 10 minutes and are stored only in scrambled form.

9. How we protect it

Information travels over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Accounts sign in with one-time codes, which we store only in scrambled form. ID photos are kept in private storage that is not reachable from the web, and access is limited to the people who need it. No system is perfectly secure, but we will tell affected people and the relevant authorities if a breach puts their information at risk, as the law requires.

10. Your rights

Under the UAE’s personal data protection law, you can ask us to:

• tell you what information we hold about you, and give you a copy;
• correct anything that is wrong or incomplete;
• delete your information, or stop or limit how we use it;
• withdraw your consent at any time (this does not affect what was done before you withdrew it).

Email bitsdubaievents@gmail.com from the address we have for you, or have your university or school contact us. We reply within 30 days. Institutions can also correct athletes’ details themselves in the team portal. Removing an athlete’s details may mean they can no longer compete or enter the venue.

11. Cookies and browser storage

We do not use advertising or tracking cookies. This website keeps a few things in your browser:

• your sign-in session, so you stay signed in;
• the last email you signed in with, to fill it in next time;
• whether you have seen the portal tutorial;
• a team you are still typing in, so it is not lost if the page closes. It is removed once the team is saved, when you sign out, and after seven days;
• the random visitor ID described above.

You can clear these at any time in your browser settings.

12. Photos and filming at the festival

BSF is a public event. We photograph and film matches, ceremonies and crowds, and may publish them on this website and our social media. If you do not want a published photo of you to stay up, email bitsdubaievents@gmail.com and we will take it down.

13. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page. If a change significantly affects how we use information already given to us, we will tell registered institutions by email.