Security & Privacy

Your Mac, Your Save, Your Decisions

What ChiefScout reads, writes and stores, what stays on your Mac, and what the website keeps.

Local processing, read-only, no desktop account

Processed locallyYour save is read and processed on your Mac. It is not uploaded.
Read-onlyChiefScout reads supported save data and is designed to leave the original save untouched.
No desktop accountThe desktop app does not need an account.

Three kinds of data

Where information lives.

On your Mac

Your scouting data

ChiefScout reads supported save data locally and leaves the original save untouched.
Its database, shortlists, recruitment needs, settings and saved searches are stored on your Mac.
It does not upload your save or your scouting data. No Football Manager save or scouting data is uploaded as part of the account or download process, and the desktop app itself needs no account.

On this website

Optional ChiefScout account

A free account is needed to download ChiefScout. Account data is deliberately minimal: your email address and a username, an optional favourite football team (shown publicly with your Community posts if you add one), plus account and security identifiers, whether your account has successfully downloaded ChiefScout, your release-notification choice (off unless you turn it on) and the 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.
There is no password: you sign in with a short-lived emailed link. Link tokens and session tokens are stored only as one-way hashes.

On this website

Community content and reports

Community threads and replies are public (the name you choose and what you write) and may be moderated or removed. Email addresses are private: they are never shown publicly and never shared between the person who posts and the person who reports.
Guests give a display name and a private email address; signed-in accounts post under their username, with how long they have been a member, an optional favourite team and a badge shown beneath it. Reporting a thread or reply stores your report privately for the moderator.
ChiefScout may email a reporter or an author about a report. These are operational messages, not marketing. Please don’t put sensitive personal information in a public post.

How ChiefScout gets its data

It reads your save file, not your running game.

ChiefScout’s approach

You choose a supported Football Manager save and ChiefScout reads that file on your Mac. It does not connect to Football Manager while it runs, and it does not need Football Manager to be open. The original save is not written to.

Other approaches exist

Some scouting and editing tools instead work with the running game. That is a different design with different trade-offs, and the right choice depends on what you want to do. See how ChiefScout works.

This website

What the website does and does not do.

No advertising or analytics cookies, and no third-party scripts or fonts.
Page visits are counted as a daily total (a date and a number) that does not identify visitors. The website does not store the IP address or browser details for it, and uses no cookie, local storage or third-party analytics to count.
One security cookie, set when you visit a page without being signed in (24 hours, used only to protect forms from forgery), and one session cookie while you are signed in.
Sign-in uses one-time email links, not passwords. Links expire after 15 minutes, work once, and are never written to logs or kept in the clear in storage.
Email open and click tracking is not used.

Read the Privacy Notice Terms

Report a concern

Report a security or privacy concern

Please report vulnerabilities and privacy concerns privately, not in a public post. How to report a security issue