Legal · Privacy policy
Privacy policy
What this pickleball court directory does and does not know about you. The short version: no cookies, no account, no ads, a visit counter that cannot see a person, and one contact form that sends us an email. The long version is below, section by section, and every line of it was checked against the site before it was written.
What leaves your browser, and where it goes
Seven things this site can receive about you. Each one is described at length in the sections that follow; this is the whole list in one place.
| What | When | Who receives it | How long it is kept |
|---|---|---|---|
| A page request: your IP address, the page address, your browser type and the time | Every page you open | Vercel, our host, in its server logs | By Vercel, under its own retention. We keep no copy. |
| A page view: the page path, the referring site, country and region, device type, browser | Every page, only where JavaScript runs | Vercel Web Analytics, which we see only as totals | As aggregated counts. The per-visit hash is discarded after 24 hours. |
| Your approximate town, as our host reads it from your IP address | When you tap the search box | Nobody new: read from a header Vercel already derived | Not kept. Answered and forgotten. |
| Your precise position | Only after you press the button and your browser asks you | Nobody. Ranked on your device. | Never leaves your browser. |
| Map tiles for the area you are looking at | When you pan or zoom the interactive map on a city or county page | MapTiler, as an ordinary image request | Under MapTiler’s policy. We receive nothing back about you. |
| Your name, email address, subject and message | Only when you send the contact form | Our inbox, delivered by Resend | As long as it takes to deal with it and to record why a fact changed. |
| A review: the name you give, a star rating, your text, an email address if you add one, and the time | Only when you post a review on a venue page | Our database, and a note to our inbox so a person reads it | Name, rating and text: on the page once approved, for as long as the listing exists or until you ask. Email: for the moderation only, never published. |
| A search term | When you search | Part of the search page’s address, so the host’s logs above | With the logs above. |
Who we are and what this policy covers
In shortThis policy covers every page of this pickleball court directory and nothing else. There is no app, no account and no newsletter for it to cover.
Find Pickleball Courts is a free directory of places to play pickleball in the United States, published by PickleballCourtsGuide.com at pickleballcourtsguide.com. People come here to find pickleball courts near them, to check whether a public park has lit or indoor courts, and to read the source behind every number we print. This policy describes what happens to information about you while you do that.
It covers the website only. There is no mobile app, no member account, no newsletter, no forum and no online shop, so there is nothing else for it to cover. If any of those are ever added, this page changes first, and the date at the top changes with it.
The terms of use incorporate this policy, and the how we verify page explains the court data itself, which is about parks and clubs rather than about people.
Back to contentsInformation we collect
In shortThrough the site itself, nothing that identifies you unless you post a review. Our host logs requests, a cookieless counter records page views, the contact form sends us what you type in it, and a review is stored under the name you give.
There is no account to create and no profile to fill in, and only one form on this site stores anything: the review form on a venue page, which keeps what you typed under the name you gave (section 9). Reading a city page, filtering for indoor or outdoor pickleball courts, opening a venue and following its source link all happen without the site learning who you are.
Three things do reach a server, and the table above lists them:
- Request logs. Vercel, which hosts the site, processes every page request the way any web host does. Its logs can include your IP address, the page you asked for, the time, and your browser’s user-agent string.
- Page views. Where your browser runs JavaScript, a small analytics script from our host records that a page was viewed, along with the referring site, your country and region, and your device and browser type. It sets no cookie and stores nothing on your device. Section 5 says exactly what it sends.
- What you send us. The contact form asks for a name, an email address, an optional subject and a message. We receive those only when you press send, and only as an email.
That is the whole list. We do not collect payment details, dates of birth, photographs of you, social media handles or anything else, because there is nowhere on the site to give them to us.
Back to contentsHow we use information
In shortTo serve the pages, to see which pages are read, and to answer the messages you send. Nothing is used to build a profile of anyone.
The host’s logs exist to serve pages and to keep the site up; we do not read them to follow anybody, and we have no tool that could turn them into a profile. The analytics totals tell us which cities and venues people look for, which is how we decide where to verify pickleball courts next. A message you send is used to deal with the thing you wrote about: a correction, a claim on a listing, a court we are missing, or a question.
We do not use anything we hold to send marketing, to sell or rent a list, to show you advertising here or anywhere else, or to make an automated decision about you. There is no such machinery on the site to use.
Back to contentsAnalytics: how we count visits
In shortVercel Web Analytics counts page views without cookies. We see totals by page, country and device, never an individual.
Since 14 September 2026 the site has used Vercel Web Analytics, the visit counter built into our host. Where your browser runs JavaScript, a small script served from this site’s own address records each page view. According to Vercel’s own documentation, and as far as we can check, each record can contain:
- the time, the page path and the referring site;
- your country, region and city, worked out from your IP address (the address itself is not stored with the record);
- your device type, operating system and browser;
- a hash built from the request, used to tell one visit from another for a single day and then discarded.
It sets no cookie, uses no third-party cookie, and does not link your visit here to anything you do on another site. What we see is a dashboard of totals: how many people opened a city page, which venues were popular, how many readers came from a search engine. We cannot see a person, a session or an IP address, and we have not asked for anything that could show us one.
With JavaScript disabled, or if the script is blocked, nothing is recorded and every page still works in full. The script is the only analytics on the site: there is no Google Analytics, no advertising pixel, no heat-map recorder and no session replay.
Back to contentsLocation and the search box
In shortTapping the search field shows courts near the town our host reads from your IP address. Your exact position is used only if you ask, and it never leaves your browser.
Tapping the search field offers pickleball courts near where you are. There are two ways it can know that, and they are worth separating.
Without asking you anything, it uses the town our host reads from your IP address. Vercel works that out from a request it is already handling, so nothing new is collected about you and nothing is written down: the page asks for a town, gets one, and forgets. The answer is marked never to be cached, on the server or on your disk. Distances measured from it say “about”, because they are measured from a town rather than from you.
Only if you press the button that says so does your browser ask whether you want to share your exact position, and you can say no. If you say yes, that position is never sent to this site. The list of courts is downloaded to your browser and the distances are worked out there, on your device. There is no address on this site that accepts a location, so there is nothing here that could receive, log or leak one.
We do not remember your answer, because your browser already does, and we ask it. That is why the search box can show nearby courts on a later visit without asking again, and also why nothing about you is stored on your device by us. To withdraw the permission, use your browser’s site settings.
None of this is required to find pickleball courts here. With JavaScript disabled the search box is an ordinary form that sends what you type to the search page, and every page renders in full without it.
Back to contentsMaps and the one third-party request
In shortEvery script, font and stylesheet is served from this site. The single exception is map tiles, fetched from MapTiler when you pan the interactive map on a city or county page.
Every script, stylesheet and typeface on these pages is served from this site’s own address, including the map library itself and the analytics script from our host. There is no advertising network, no social media widget, no embedded video and no font loaded from a third party.
Every city and county page carries a real map: tiles we host, laid out in a grid, with a link to every venue, and it renders exactly like that with JavaScript off. Where your browser can run JavaScript, that map becomes one you can pan and zoom, and panning needs tiles for wherever you go, which this site cannot pre-fetch and host itself the way the fixed view is hosted.
Those tiles are requested from MapTiler, only once your browser has loaded the interactive map. Each request names the small area of map you are looking at and carries a key that identifies this website, not you. Like any request to any server, it also carries your IP address and browser type, which MapTiler receives and handles under its own privacy policy. We receive nothing back about you from it. If the request never fires, because JavaScript is off or the script does not load, the map you see is the self-hosted version, in full.
Back to contentsThe contact form and email
In shortThe contact form sends us one email, delivered by Resend, and stores nothing on the site. We keep the message as long as it takes to act on it.
Every claim, correction and add-a-court link on the site opens the contact page with a subject and a message already filled in. The form asks for your name, your email address, an optional subject and your message. Nothing is stored on the site before you press send, and nothing is stored on it afterwards: the server turns your message into one email and delivers it to our inbox.
That delivery is handled by Resend, an email service, which processes the message on our behalf under its own terms. The email arrives with your address set as the reply-to, so an answer from us goes straight back to you.
The form includes a hidden field that a person never sees and a simple bot fills in by mistake. A message with that field filled is discarded without being sent. Nothing else about the way you fill in the form is recorded.
Because the pre-filled links carry their subject and message in the page address, that address can appear in the host’s logs like any other. The text they carry names a venue and a reason, never you.
We keep a message for as long as it takes to deal with it and to keep a record of why a published fact changed. We do not add you to a list, share your address, or write to you about anything other than what you wrote to us about.
Back to contentsReviews you post
In shortA review is the one thing this site stores about a person: the name you give, a star rating and your text go on the page once a person has read them; an email address, if you add one, never does.
A venue page carries a form for rating the court. It asks for a name, a rating out of five, your review, and an email address you may leave blank. Pressing the button stores those in our database, marked as waiting, and sends us a note so that a person reads it. Nothing appears on the page until that person has approved it, and no average is shown for a venue until three reviews have been.
Once approved, the name, the rating and the text are public: on the venue page, in the average we compute from them, and in the structured data search engines read from the page. Choose the name with that in mind; a first name is fine. The email address is not part of any of that. It exists so we can reply if a review needs a question answered, it is stored where the site’s own public key cannot read it, and it is never shown, shared or added to a list.
The form has the same hidden field as the contact form, which a person never sees and a simple bot fills in by mistake; a review with that field filled is discarded. To stop a flood, the database refuses more than a handful of reviews for one venue in an hour, counted per venue rather than per person, which is why no address of yours is recorded to do it.
To change or remove a review you posted, or to ask what we hold under a name, use the contact page and name the venue. Removal is not conditional on a reason.
Back to contentsPaid listings, sponsorship and advertising
In shortThere are none. No featured listings, no sponsored placement, no affiliate links and no ads, so there is nothing to disclose and nothing that tracks you for it.
Directories in this category often sell “featured” or “verified” tiers, and a policy like this one is where they disclose it. Ours has nothing to disclose. No venue, club or coach can pay to appear on this site, to appear higher, or to carry a badge. The order of public pickleball courts on a city page comes from the data, and the “verified” mark means a named source was read on a stated date, never that anybody paid.
There are no affiliate links to paddles, shoes or equipment, no sponsored content and no advertising of any kind. That matters here because ads and affiliate programmes are where most tracking on the web comes from, and their absence is why sections 4 and 5 are as short as they are.
Claiming a listing is free and buys nothing: it gives an operator a direct line for corrections and a “confirmed by the venue” label with a date. The terms of use say so at greater length.
Back to contentsLinks to other sites
In shortSource links, the directions button and map tiles take you to sites we do not run. Nothing loads from a linked site until you click.
Every venue page links to the organisation that published its facts, which is usually a parks and recreation department, and the directions button opens Google Maps. An ordinary link loads nothing until you follow it, which is why those links belong in this section rather than in the one about what we collect.
Once you arrive, you are on their site under their privacy policy rather than ours. We do not control those sites and cannot speak for what they collect. The same applies to MapTiler, described in section 7, and to Vercel and Resend, which process data for us under their own policies.
Back to contentsData security
In shortEvery page is served over HTTPS, the site holds no accounts or passwords, a review is the one thing it stores about a person, and a message travels as email, which is only as private as email is.
The site is served over HTTPS, so what you read and what you type into either form is encrypted between your browser and the server. The site keeps no accounts: there are no passwords to leak and no profiles to breach, because none exist. What it does hold is reviews (section 9), in a database whose public key can read approved reviews and nothing else — the email address on a review is not readable by the key the site runs with at all.
A message to us, after the server hands it to Resend, travels as email. Email is as secure as email is, which is to say reasonably and not perfectly. If something you need to tell us is sensitive, tell us that first and we will suggest another way.
No method of transmission or storage is perfect, and we do not promise otherwise. What we can promise is that the surface is small, and this page describes all of it.
Back to contentsHow long we keep things
In shortLogs stay with our host under its retention. Analytics keeps totals only. A message stays as long as it takes to act on it and record the change it caused.
- Request logs are held by Vercel under its own retention period. We do not download or archive them.
- Analytics keeps aggregated counts. The per-visit hash exists for a single day and is then discarded by our host.
- Your approximate town is never stored, by us or in any cache. Your precise position never leaves your browser.
- A message you send stays in our inbox for as long as it takes to deal with it and to keep a record of why a published fact changed, since a court count that changed because of a correction should be traceable to the correction. Ask and we will delete it sooner.
- A review you post stays for as long as the venue is listed, or until you ask for it to come down. A review we decline is kept, unpublished, only long enough to tell that it was declined. The email address on a review is kept for the moderation and any reply, and is never published.
Children’s privacy
In shortThe site is not aimed at children under 13 and collects nothing from anyone through its pages. If a child has written to us, a parent can ask us to delete the message.
This is a directory of public places to play a sport. It is not directed at children under 13, and because the site collects nothing from anybody through its pages, it collects nothing from them either. The terms of use ask that anyone writing to us through the contact form be at least 13.
If you believe a child under 13 has sent us a message, tell us through the contact page and we will delete it. We do not knowingly keep anything a child has sent.
Back to contentsYour privacy rights
In shortAsk what we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, and we will do it. We sell nothing, share nothing and profile nobody, so there is nothing else to opt out of.
Depending on where you live, the law may give you the right to know what personal information an organisation holds about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to receive a copy of it, to object to how it is used, and to complain to a regulator. You have all of those here whether or not the law where you are requires it, because honouring them costs us nothing.
In practice the only personal information we could hold about you is a message you sent us. Ask through the contact page and we will tell you what we have, correct it, or delete it. We may ask you to write from the same address the message came from, so that we are not handing one person’s message to another.
We do not sell personal information, share it for advertising, or use it to profile anyone, so there is no “do not sell or share” choice to make and no targeted advertising to opt out of. We do not discriminate against anyone for exercising a privacy right; there is no service level here to withdraw.
If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, the legal basis for the host’s logs and the visit counter is our legitimate interest in running and improving the site, and the basis for handling a message is that you sent it to us and asked for a reply. You may also complain to your local data protection authority.
Back to contentsWhere the data lives
In shortThe site is hosted in the United States. Anything you send is processed there.
The site is hosted by Vercel and published from the United States, and email is delivered through Resend, also a US company. If you read the site from a country whose law treats personal data differently, the logs, the visit counts and any message you send are processed in the United States under this policy and those companies’ own terms.
Back to contentsChanges to this policy
In shortWhen this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it and the list below says what changed. Adding analytics, ads or a cookie would mean rewriting a section, not editing a sentence.
We may change this policy when the site changes. The date at the top moves when we do, and rather than quietly absorbing a change into a sentence, we record it here. The changes that would matter most to a reader are a cookie, an advertising script or a new third party, and each would mean rewriting the section it belongs to and, for anything non-essential, asking you first.
- 15 September 2026, later. Added section 9, reviews: the venue page gained a review form, and a review is now the one thing a form on this site stores. Sections 2, 12 and 13 and the table above were corrected to say so, where they had said nothing was stored.
- 15 September 2026. Rewritten into numbered sections with a contents list. Added section 5: Vercel Web Analytics was switched on for the site on 14 September 2026, and for one day this policy still said the site ran no analytics. Section 8 now describes the contact form, which replaced the mailto links the previous version described. The map section now says that a tile request carries your IP address, as any request does, rather than “nothing about you”.
- 15 September 2026, earlier. Map tiles from MapTiler on city and county pages described as the one third-party request.
- 9 September 2026. First version, and the location section, added the day the search box learned to suggest courts near you.
Contact
In shortQuestions about this policy, and every request under it, go through the contact page and reach a person.
A question about this policy, a request to see, correct or delete a message you sent, or anything else about how this site handles information goes through the contact page. It reaches a real inbox and is read by a person. We publish no postal address or telephone number, for the same reason this page describes as little collection as it does: the contact page is enough, and everything else would be a claim we would then have to keep true.
Back to contentsWhat this page is, and is not
An accurate description of what the software does, checked against the built site rather than written from a template. It is not legal advice, and nobody here is a lawyer. If you need to be certain it satisfies a particular law in a particular place, have a solicitor read it. The facts in it should stand up, which is the part that is usually hardest to get right.