Privacy policy — Sideline

Information used to run Sideline

Sideline is an invitation-only sports viewing beta. Account setup asks for a username and password, not an email address or payment details.

Accounts and watchlist: Username, account identifier, role, status, creation time, password hash, and saved events support sign-in, access management, and your watchlist across devices.
Clubhouse: Members can see each other's usernames and online status. Short-lived presence signals indicate an active website or TV session. Group chat stores the author, message and time. Winner picks store your selections, game snapshots, results and standings.
Invitations and referrals: Labels, dates, redemption status, inviter, and joining account support invitations and referral tracking.
Membership billing: Stripe processes payments and stores payment details. Sideline stores Stripe customer/subscription identifiers, payment status and renewal dates, membership terms acceptance, and referral conversion status. It does not store full card numbers or security codes. Your referrer can see whether your signup became a paid membership, but not your card, invoices, or detailed billing information.
Feedback: Your message, account, category, dates, handling status, and optional event reference go to the operator's inbox. Avoid including passwords or sensitive details.
Watch time: Estimated viewing time is counted from distinct, paced media requests on web and TV. We store per-account weekly totals and a last-counted timestamp, not a public list of games watched. Active members can see each other’s weekly and all-time totals. Counting starts when the feature is enabled; earlier viewing is not reconstructed. Aggregates persist for all-time totals and are included in backups. Banned accounts are omitted from the member-visible board; the operator can still see their totals.
Game-day preferences and service measurements: Favorite teams, setup progress, first-watch milestones, dated visits, use of Crew, DMs and winner picks, and playback startup, failures, recovery and approximate buffering measurements help personalize the app and improve service. The owner can see these measurements and aggregate payment/refund reports. Message bodies are not copied into usage metrics. These records currently have no automatic expiry and are included in backups.
Playback: Your account, session, selected event and feed, connection state, heartbeat times, and limited diagnostics support streaming, capacity limits, and troubleshooting.
Connections and TV pairing: Servers receive your IP address; the app uses it for security rate limits. TV pairing stores hashed codes and an IP hash, device label, approval state, times, and approving account.

Who can access information

The operator manages stored records and can see active playback, recent issues, referrals, and feedback. Your invitation issuer can see your username, join date, and active status in their referral list.

Signed-in website members can read the club chat and see member standings and win/loss records. Club chat is shared with the club, not a private message. Only you can remove your messages, and the operator can remove any club message for moderation.

Configured media providers and ESPN receive requests from Sideline's servers for streams, schedules, scores, or artwork. Those requests do not include your Sideline username, password, or session cookie.

DuckDNS supplies the website address. Roku, network providers, and your browser or device have their own privacy practices. The current Sideline clients include no advertising or audience-analytics SDKs.

Joining a Crew room shares your username and room presence with signed-in members. Phone companion links identify the game, not your account, and require sign-in. Direct messages are available only to participants through the app; they are stored on the operator’s server and are not end-to-end encrypted. Reporting a DM shares that selected message with the owner. DMs have a 90-day retention period and reports a 180-day retention period; backups may retain older copies. Sidebucks balances and cosmetic purchases are stored with your account and have no automatic expiry.

Cookies and TV sign-in

The website uses sideline_session, a Secure, HttpOnly, SameSite-restricted cookie on HTTPS, to keep you signed in. Blocking it prevents persistent sign-in.

After phone approval, Roku stores a viewing-only session token in its local channel registry, not your password. This storage is not claimed to be hardware-encrypted. Sign-out removes that app's token and revokes its session; password changes and account disabling invalidate existing sign-ins.

Storage, security, and retention

Records reside on the operator's infrastructure. HTTPS, password hashing, file access restrictions, encrypted session payloads, and encrypted backups reduce risk without guaranteeing absolute security.

Expired sessions and TV pairing records are cleaned up automatically. Accounts, picks, and referrals have no automatic deletion schedule. Expired invitations, completed feedback, and reset records may remain until storage limits trigger cleanup. Backups and deployment snapshots can retain older records separately; disabling an account does not erase them.

Some backup copies and deployment snapshots have no automatic expiry. Contact the operator to ask about access, correction, or deletion, including what can be removed from backups.

Online status expires within two minutes without a presence update. Chat retains at most 1,000 messages for up to 30 days, with the latest 100 shown. Winner picks and results persist for all-time standings. Deleting a chat message removes it from the live chat; older backups can retain it.

Your choices and questions

You can edit your watchlist, change winner picks before a game locks, delete your chat messages, change your password, sign out, and choose whether to submit feedback. There is no self-service account deletion. Ask about your information through Account → Send feedback or the contact below.

Operator and contact

Operator: Zack

Public contact: zack@elevera.us