Privacy Notice.

In short

• The ChiefScout app processes your Football Manager save on your Mac. It is not uploaded, and the app needs no account.
• This website needs no account to read, to leave a Community comment or to report one. A free account (email address and username only) is needed to download ChiefScout.
• We collect only the personal information needed to sign you in, provide downloads and account identity, run the Community, respond to reports, send release emails you have opted into, and protect the service. We do not build marketing or behavioural profiles.
• We do not use advertising or analytics cookies or third-party scripts. We count page visits as a daily total that does not identify visitors.

Who we are

ChiefScout is operated by Brian Thomson. ChiefScout is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Sports Interactive or SEGA. For privacy questions, use the privacy route under Your data below.

What we collect, and why we keep it minimal

ChiefScout aims to collect only the personal information required to authenticate accounts, provide downloads and account identity, operate the Community, respond to reports, send release notifications you have opted into, and protect the service. We do not add marketing profiling.

The ChiefScout app

ChiefScout reads the Football Manager save you choose and builds its own database on your Mac. Your save, shortlists, recruitment needs, settings and saved searches stay on your Mac. The app does not upload them and does not need an account. The original save is not written to.

If update checking is enabled in a ChiefScout release, the app may request public update information from the ChiefScout website. That request may expose the app version and normal network information such as your IP address. Your Football Manager save and scouting data are not sent.

The website

Visiting. You can read every public page without an account. We set no advertising or analytics cookies and load no third-party scripts or fonts. To see roughly how much the website is used, each successful visit to a public page adds one to a daily total. The total is a date and a number: it does not identify or distinguish any visitor, and we do not store the IP address, browser details, page visited or referrer for it. We do not use cookies, local storage or any script on your device to count visits, and we use no third-party analytics. Separately, our hosting provider receives your IP address and browser details in order to deliver pages and protect the site from abuse, as any web host does (see Who else handles information).

Cookies. When you visit a page without being signed in, we set one security cookie. It lasts 24 hours, holds a random value and is used only to protect forms from forgery. It is not used for tracking. While you are signed in we also use one session cookie, which lasts up to 30 days or until you sign out.

ChiefScout accounts

A ChiefScout account is free and deliberately minimal. For a registered account we store:

• your email address and username;
• an optional favourite football team, only if you choose to add one;
• account and security identifiers (random reference numbers used by the system), with created and updated times;
• account status, including whether the account has successfully downloaded ChiefScout;
• your release and update notification preference, if you have turned it on; and
• the authentication and session records needed to sign you in.

We do not ask for a real name, date of birth, phone number, postal address, location, demographic profile, bio or avatar. Your favourite team is optional: if you add one, it is shown publicly beneath your username on your Community threads and replies, and if you leave it blank nothing is shown. Your email address is never shown.

Signing in. There is no password. You sign in with a passwordless email link: a short-lived, single-use link that expires after 15 minutes. Link tokens and session tokens are stored only as one-way hashes, never in the clear, and links are removed from logs and stored email records. Signing in sets a session cookie, and we keep the security records required for account access.

Account settings. On the Account page you can change your username, add or change your optional favourite football team, change your email address (we send a link to the new address and keep the old one active until you confirm it, and we tell your old address once it has changed), manage your release-notification preference, sign out and delete your account.

Downloads and the ChiefScout User badge. A free account will be required to download ChiefScout. A successful download may be recorded against your account so that a ChiefScout User badge can show on your Community comments. This is not behavioural tracking, and no Football Manager save or scouting data is uploaded as part of the account or download process. Merely having an account does not earn the badge.

Release and update emails. We use your email address for release and update notifications only if you have opted in, and you can change that choice at any time on the Account page. These are not marketing emails. We may still send account or security messages (for example sign-in links) when operationally necessary. We do not use email open or click tracking.

Community threads and replies

Threads and replies, and the names or usernames they appear under, are public. A thread has a title, one category (General, Feature Request or Bugs) and a post, and people can reply to it in a flat, chronological list. Email addresses are private. Please do not put sensitive personal information into a public post. Threads and replies may be hidden or deleted under the Community Guidelines.

Signed in. When you post or reply while signed in, your account username is used automatically. Your account email stays private. Beneath your username we may show how long you have been a member (worked out from when your account was created), your optional favourite team and a badge such as ChiefScout User or ChiefScout Developer. If you change your username, it updates on your earlier posts.

As a guest. Guest posting (a new thread or a reply) stores the display name you choose, a private email address, your post, and the time it was posted along with any moderation state. The email address is not displayed publicly and is used only for Community operations, moderation and contacting you about your post if needed. It is not automatically used for product-update notifications or marketing. We do not store the IP address, device details or any tracking identifier with a comment.

Reporting and moderation

Anyone can report a public thread or reply, with or without an account. When someone reports one we store: a reference to exactly which thread or reply was reported; the reason and any details written; the reporter’s email address (their account reference if signed in, or the email given if not); the moderation status; timestamps; and any moderation correspondence or actions where necessary. Reporter contact details are private and are not shared with the person who wrote the reported comment.

Authorised ChiefScout admins can review reports, hide, restore or permanently delete Community threads and replies (deleting a thread also deletes its replies), and contact reporters and authors where necessary. ChiefScout may email a reporter about their report, or a comment’s author about moderation of their content. These are operational Community messages, not marketing. They are sent through ChiefScout, so a reporter and an author never see each other’s email address.

Who else handles information

• Cloudflare hosts the website and its database.
• Resend delivers the emails we send: sign-in and account emails, release notifications you have opted into, and Community moderation messages to reporters and authors.

Neither is given your save or your scouting data, because we never receive them.

If you email support, privacy or security at chiefscout.co.uk, the message is received through Cloudflare Email Routing and read by the operator.

How long we keep it

• Sign-in links expire after 15 minutes and are removed within a day after they expire.
• Sessions end after 30 days or when you sign out.
• Daily page-visit totals contain no visitor information and are kept.
• Your account details are kept until you delete your account or ask us to remove them. Community comments are kept until they are removed.
• When you delete your account: your email address is replaced with a meaningless stand-in, your username is removed, notifications are switched off and you are signed out everywhere. Your Community comments stay and show as “Deleted user”. Reports you made are kept for moderation but are no longer linked to you.
• Permanently deleted comments are removed from the website along with any private guest email stored with them.
• Reports: once a report is resolved or dismissed it is deleted after 90 days, with the reporter’s contact details.
• Email records: a log of emails we send, including the address each went to, is deleted automatically after 90 days. Deleting your account also deletes the records of emails sent to your address straight away.

Your data and your choices

You can change your username, change your email address and notification setting, and delete your account yourself on the Account page once you are signed in. Account deletion does not remove the text of your Community comments, so for a full erasure request, a copy of the information we hold about you, a correction, or to object to how it is used, contact us. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk). We will reply to requests under data protection law as the law requires.

Privacy and data-rights requests

Ask for a copy of your information, a correction or an erasure, or raise a privacy concern.

privacy@chiefscout.co.uk

Changes

If what we collect or how we use it changes, we will update this notice and its date before the change takes effect. Last updated 15 November 2026.