Privacy Policy

Overview

Prep Sports Central ("PSC", "we", "us") is a sports media company. We publish coverage of high school, college, and pro athletics, operate accounts for readers and credentialed media professionals, host photo galleries, and process payments for photo orders and subscriptions.

This policy explains what personal information those activities involve. It applies to prepsportscentral.com and the PSC account system. Our related platforms — Streamline, PSC Network, and PWR — operate under this same policy where they use your PSC account.

The short version: we collect what we need to run accounts, publish credited work, fulfil photo orders, and keep the site working. We do not sell personal information.

Information we collect

Information you give us

Account information. When you create a PSC account we collect your name, email address, username, and password. Passwords are stored as salted one-way hashes; nobody at PSC can read yours.
Profile and portfolio information. Credentialed creators may add a display name, photo, biography, headline, organisation, phone number, website, social links, and the sports and areas they cover. Anything on a public portfolio is, by design, public.
Credentialing information. Applications to cover events may include your experience, equipment, affiliations, and the schools or events you are requesting access to.
Orders and payments. When you buy photos or a subscription we collect your billing name, email, and — for physical items — a shipping address. See Payments and Stripe for card handling.
Messages you send us. Contact form submissions, support tickets, and correction requests, including whatever you choose to put in them.

Information we collect automatically

Log data: IP address, browser and device type, referring page, and pages viewed.
Aggregate usage data such as article and gallery view counts.
Cookie and session identifiers needed to keep you logged in and to protect forms from abuse.

How we use information

To operate accounts, authenticate you, and keep sessions secure.
To publish coverage and credit its authors and photographers.
To process photo orders and subscriptions, and to pay photographers what they are owed.
To review credential applications and communicate about events.
To answer your messages and support requests.
To send our newsletter, if you asked for it — with an unsubscribe link in every issue.
To detect abuse, rate-limit forms, and investigate security incidents.
To understand which coverage is read, so we can commission more of what matters.

We do not use your personal information to train third-party advertising profiles, and we do not sell or rent it.

Payments and Stripe

Payments on PSC are processed by Stripe. Card numbers, CVCs, and bank details are submitted directly to Stripe and are never stored on PSC servers. We keep only what we need to show you a receipt and reconcile an order: a Stripe customer or payment identifier, the amount, currency, status, and date.

Photographers who receive payouts are onboarded through Stripe Connect. Stripe collects the identity and tax information required by law for that account directly from the photographer; PSC stores only the resulting Stripe account identifier and whether payouts are enabled.

Stripe is an independent controller of the information it collects. Its handling of that information is governed by Stripe's own privacy policy.

Photographs and galleries

PSC publishes photographs taken by credentialed photographers at sporting events. These are generally taken in public or semi-public settings under the access rules of the venue, school, or league.

Galleries may be public, unlisted, or private. Unlisted galleries are reachable only by link.
Photographs may include captions identifying teams, events, dates, and — where the information is already public — athletes.
If you appear in a photograph and want it removed, email us with a link to the image and we will review the request. Requests concerning a minor from a parent or guardian are actioned promptly.

Cookies and analytics

We use a small number of cookies: a session cookie to keep you signed in, a CSRF token cookie to protect forms from cross-site submissions, and a preference cookie or two. These are required for the site to function.

Where we use analytics, we configure it to measure aggregate traffic — not to build advertising profiles or follow you across other websites. You can block or delete cookies in your browser; doing so will sign you out and may break parts of your account.

We share personal information only in these situations:

Service providers that run parts of the service on our behalf — payment processing (Stripe), hosting, email delivery, and error monitoring — and only what each needs to do its job.
Publicly, at your direction. Your public portfolio, published bylines, photo credits, and anything you post are visible to anyone.
Within the PSC ecosystem. Your PSC account identity is shared with Streamline, PSC Network, and PWR so that one login works across all of them.
Legal reasons. When required by law, valid legal process, or to protect the rights and safety of people using our service.
Business transfers. If PSC is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, information may transfer as part of that transaction; we will give notice before your information becomes subject to a different policy.

How long we keep it

Account and profile data: for as long as your account is open, then deleted or anonymised.
Payment and order records: as long as tax and accounting rules require, typically seven years.
Published coverage and photo credits: retained as part of the editorial archive.
Log and security data: a rolling window measured in months, not years.
Newsletter records: until you unsubscribe, plus a suppression record so we do not re-add you.

Your choices and rights

You can, at any time:

Access and update your profile from your account settings.
Unsubscribe from the newsletter using the link in any issue.
Turn your public portfolio off, which removes it from the media directory.
Ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
Ask us to correct or delete your information, subject to our legal and archival obligations.

Depending on where you live you may have additional rights under laws such as the CCPA/CPRA or the GDPR, including the right to object to certain processing and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising a right. Contact us and we will honour applicable requests. We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising.

Student athletes and minors

PSC covers high school sports, so our coverage necessarily includes people under 18. We do not knowingly create accounts for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

Editorial coverage of a minor athlete is limited to what is already public about their participation: name, school, team, position, and performance in a public event. We do not publish home addresses, personal contact details, or class schedules. Parents and guardians may contact us to request removal of a photograph or a correction, and we will act on those requests promptly.

Security

We use HTTPS everywhere, hash passwords with a modern algorithm, scope access to our systems to the people who need it, and keep an audit trail of administrative actions. No system is perfectly secure, but if a breach affects your personal information we will notify you as required by law rather than quietly hoping it went unnoticed.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes we update the date at the top of the page. Material changes are announced on the site before they take effect. Continuing to use PSC after a change means you accept the revised policy.

Contact us

Questions, requests, or a photograph you want reviewed? Use our contact form and choose the closest subject. We answer privacy requests within the timeframe the applicable law requires, and generally within a few business days.