Privacy Policy

PickleTrips (“PickleTrips”, “we”, “us”) operates the PickleTrips platform at pickletrips.com.au — a service for finding pickleball games, joining clubs, entering tournaments, reviewing match footage and planning group pickleball trips. We operate from Australia and this policy is written with the Australian Privacy Principles in mind.

Questions or requests about this policy can be sent to support@pickletrips.com.au.

When you create and use a PickleTrips account, you may provide:

• Account identity: your name, email address and profile photo, managed through our sign-in provider (Clerk).
• Profile details: display name, suburb, postcode and state, playing preferences, dominant hand and an optional bio.
• Mobile phone number, which we verify by SMS one-time code before you can complete onboarding.
• An optional link to your DUPR rating profile, if you choose to connect one.
• Club information: memberships, roles, join requests and invitations.
• Match, event and tournament entries, including results and scores you or organisers record.
• Community content: posts, comments, reactions and reports you submit.
• Photos and videos you upload, including match footage.
• Coach applications: qualifications, credentials and compliance documents such as Working With Children Check (WWCC), first-aid and insurance evidence.
• Venue and booking details when you book or manage court time.
• Messages you send us, for example support emails.

When you use PickleTrips we automatically collect limited technical information:

• Log and diagnostic data: requests, errors and timestamps generated as the service runs, which can include your IP address and browser details.
• Aggregated usage analytics via Vercel Analytics, which is designed to work without cross-site tracking cookies and reports page views to us in aggregate.
• Essential cookies set by our sign-in provider to keep you securely signed in, and a local preference (such as light/dark theme) stored in your browser.

We do not run third-party advertising trackers on PickleTrips, and we do not use advertising cookies.

Playing on PickleTrips generates competition records: match participation, scores, results, tournament standings, streaks and player ratings (including a provisional platform rating and, where you link it, DUPR figures). Clubs you join record your membership, role and participation in club sessions and events. Where clubs enable internal administration features (for example social “fine jar” or disciplinary records), those are internal club records visible to the relevant club according to its roles — they are not legal or financial instruments.

Posts, comments, photos and reactions you share in Community are visible according to the audience of the space you post in (for example a club’s feed or a public feed). Reports you make about other content are visible to moderators and platform administrators. Content you share may remain visible in context (for example replies to your comment) as described in the account deletion section below.

You can upload photos and pickleball footage to PickleTrips (for example club media and match videos). Uploads are stored in our media storage (Cloudflare R2). New uploads are not automatically public: club media has draft and publication states and visibility settings, and publishing to a wider audience is a deliberate action by you or an authorised club administrator. Some media (such as a public club gallery item or a public community post image) is intended to be publicly viewable once published.

Match footage naturally includes other people. Only upload footage you have the right to share, and be considerate of other players — our moderation tools can remove content that shouldn’t be up. If you appear in footage you want taken down, contact us or use in-app reporting.

If you or your club submit match footage for analysis, the video is processed by PB Vision, a third-party pickleball video-analysis service. PB Vision receives the footage (via a time-limited link or public media URL) and returns analytics such as shot statistics, rallies and highlights, which we store and show alongside the match. Automated analysis is an estimate and can be wrong — see our Terms for its limitations.

Footage is only sent to PB Vision when a submission is made through those features, not for every upload.

Coaches applying to the marketplace provide credentials and compliance evidence such as WWCC, first-aid certificates and insurance documents. These are stored privately, are accessible only through permission-checked, expiring links, and are used solely to assess and verify the application and to meet our safety obligations. They are never published on a public profile; a public coach profile shows only the information intended for it (for example your coaching bio, photo and verified badges).

We use your verified mobile number for:

• Verification codes when you sign up or change your number.
• Service messages tied to things you do on the platform — for example a score-entry link at match time, or organiser/administrative alerts.
• Marketing messages only if you opted in, and you can withdraw that opt-in at any time.

SMS is delivered through our SMS provider (ClickSend). Your number is not shown to other players; where a page needs to reference it, it is masked.

• Operate the platform: accounts, profiles, matchmaking, clubs, events, tournaments, ratings, bookings, media and coaching.
• Verify identity signals that keep competition honest (phone verification, organiser controls, result verification).
• Keep the platform safe: moderation, report handling, enforcement of our Terms, and fraud and abuse prevention.
• Communicate with you about your account and activity, and send marketing only with your opt-in.
• Improve the service using aggregated usage analytics and error diagnostics.
• Meet legal obligations and respond to lawful requests.

We handle personal information to deliver the service you signed up for, with your consent where we ask for it (for example marketing opt-in and coach declarations), for our legitimate operational purposes (safety, moderation, fraud prevention, service improvement), and where the law requires or permits it. Where the Australian Privacy Principles or another law applies to a specific use, we aim to meet that standard.

We use a small set of infrastructure providers to run PickleTrips. They process data for us under their own security and privacy commitments:

• Clerk — sign-in, account identity and session management.
• Neon — our Postgres database hosting.
• Vercel — application hosting and aggregated analytics.
• Cloudflare R2 — storage and delivery of uploaded photos and videos.
• ClickSend — SMS delivery (verification codes and service messages).
• PB Vision — match-video analysis when footage is submitted for processing.
• Google Maps — address search when creating or finding venues (loads in your browser under Google's terms).
• DUPR — only if you choose to link your DUPR rating profile.
• xAI — only where AI media-generation features are enabled; used to generate promotional match visuals, not to process your private documents.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

PickleTrips is operated from Australia, but our service providers listed above are global companies and may store or process data outside Australia (for example in the United States or other regions where they operate infrastructure). Where data is processed overseas, it remains subject to this policy and our providers’ contractual and security commitments.

PickleTrips is a social, competitive platform, so some information is visible to others:

• Player profiles are public by default; you control whole-profile visibility (public / signed-in members / private) and per-module visibility from Settings → Privacy.
• Match, tournament and ladder results — including your display name and rating — are visible to participants and, for public events, to viewers of those pages.
• Content you post is visible to that space's audience; public club profiles show the club information the club chooses to publish.
• Your phone number, email address, private documents and unpublished media are not shown to other players.

When you join a club or enter an event, the people running it can see what they need to run it: club administrators see member names, roles and participation; organisers see entrant details, results and (for filmed events) footage mapping. Club administrators and organisers must only use that information to run their club or event. Internal club records (such as disciplinary or fine-jar entries, where enabled) are restricted to the club roles that need them.

We use account signals, reports, moderation tools and administrative audit records to keep PickleTrips safe: investigating reports, actioning content, restricting or banning accounts, protecting competition integrity (for example disputed results) and preventing abuse of the platform. Administrative actions are logged so they can be reviewed.

We keep personal information while your account is active and for as long as it is needed for the purposes above. Indicatively:

• Account and profile data: for the life of your account, then handled per the deletion section below.
• Competition records (match results, tournament standings, ratings history): retained to preserve the integrity of past competitions, anonymised where a participant's account is deleted.
• Coaching compliance documents: kept while relevant to an application or active coach profile and for any period we need to demonstrate checks were performed, then deleted.
• Moderation, dispute and administrative audit records: retained for accountability, fraud prevention and dispute resolution.
• Logs and diagnostics: short-lived and rotated by our hosting providers.

When your account is deleted, we use a staged deletion and anonymisation model rather than silently erasing shared history:

• Direct identifiers (name, email, phone, profile details, avatar) are removed or anonymised and your sessions and private-media access are revoked.
• Competition records needed for other players' history and standings are kept but anonymised (you become an unnamed participant).
• Community posts and comments are anonymised by default rather than deleting other people's conversations from under them; you can remove your own content before deleting your account.
• Private coaching documents are deleted in line with the retention rules above.
• Some records may be retained where required for fraud prevention, disputes, legal obligations or platform integrity.
• If you own a club, ownership must be transferred or resolved before the account can be fully closed.

Parts of this pipeline are still being completed — where a step cannot yet be automated, we complete it manually when you ask. To request deletion, email support@pickletrips.com.au from your account email.

• Access and correction: much of your data is editable in-app (profile, settings); you can ask us for a copy of, or corrections to, information we hold about you.
• Marketing: opt in or out at any time; opting out does not affect service messages such as verification codes.
• Visibility: control profile and module visibility from your privacy settings.
• Deletion: request account deletion as described above.
• Complaints: contact us first and we will work through it; you can also complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

PickleTrips accounts are intended for people aged 16 and over. Junior players may be involved in pickleball activity organised around the platform (for example club junior sessions or coaching); those activities are run by the responsible adults, and coaches offering junior coaching must hold a valid Working With Children Check, which we require evidence of during coach verification. If you believe a child under 16 holds an account, contact us and we will investigate.

We take reasonable technical steps to protect personal information: connections to the platform are encrypted in transit (HTTPS), sign-in is handled by a dedicated identity provider, private media and documents are only reachable through permission-checked or expiring signed links, administrative functions are role-restricted, and sensitive actions are logged. No online service can guarantee absolute security — if we become aware of a data breach that is likely to result in serious harm, we will notify affected users and the OAIC as required by law.

We will update this policy as PickleTrips evolves. The version and date at the top of this page identify the current text. For material changes we will take reasonable steps to notify you (for example an in-app notice or asking you to re-accept), and continued use after the effective date means the updated policy applies.

Privacy questions, requests and complaints: support@pickletrips.com.au — or use the contact page. Please include enough detail for us to find the relevant account or content.