Monday 19 October

MatchLine

Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 18, 2026

MatchLine ("the app") is a fixture-tracking app for football and other sports, available on iOS and Android. This policy covers both versions and explains what data the app handles.

No account, no personal information

MatchLine doesn't require you to sign up or log in. We don't collect your name, email address, phone number, or any other identifier that names you — the one exception is an email address you choose to give us in the contact form, described below.

Live match chat

For every match the app offers a chat room that opens about 30 minutes before kick-off and closes about an hour after the final whistle. Using it is optional; here is exactly what it involves:

  • Anonymous identity — the first time you open a chat, the app generates a random identifier on our server. It is not derived from your device, carries no personal information, and is stored on your device so you keep the same chat identity over time.
  • Nickname — chosen by you before your first message and shown next to your messages. Pick something that doesn't identify you personally.
  • Messages and closed rooms — Messages are kept while a match's room is open. When a room closes with at least 10 messages, a read-only copy of its chat (the messages with each sender's nickname and chat identifier, and the match events, poll and player-of-the-match results shown in the room) can be read by anyone in the app for 7 days, and is then deleted automatically. It never includes messages hidden by moderation, messages from users banned at that moment, or messages sent from app versions released before this change. Other rooms are deleted when they close. A moderator can remove an archived message or a whole archive at any time; to ask for one of yours to be removed sooner, use the contact form.
  • Reported messages — when a message is reported, a copy of that message (with the sender's chat identifier and nickname) is retained so we can review it and act on it — and, if it was a reply, the message it replied to (its text, and its sender's chat identifier and nickname), because a reply cannot be judged without what it answered. Resolved reports are deleted after 90 days.
  • Moderation — messages pass through an automatic language filter, and users who violate the rules can be muted or banned from chat. Blocking another user hides their messages on your device only.
  • Translation — when you translate a chat message, or turn on automatic translation, the translation happens on your device: on iPhone with Apple's built-in translation, on Android with Google ML Kit. The message text is not sent to us or to anyone else to be translated. The first time a language is needed, your device downloads its language model from Apple or Google.
  • Device verification — when the app first creates your chat identity, it asks Apple (App Attest) or Google (Play Integrity) to confirm that the request comes from a genuine, unmodified copy of MatchLine on a real device. The check returns only a yes/no answer about the app and the device; it sends us no identifier for you or your device, and the chat identity above is still a random value generated on our server.

Contact form

You can write to us from the chat's community rules ("Contact us") or from our support page. The form sends us:

  • the topic you pick and the message you write;
  • an email address, only if you enter one. Email is used only to confirm that your message reached us and to reply to you, and is deleted after 90 days;
  • the language the form was shown in;
  • when you open the form from the app: your chat identifier (the random one described above), your platform, app version and build, and your operating system version — so that we can understand the issue, for example a chat restriction you are appealing;
  • when you open the form outside the app: which app you use (iPhone, Android or none), only if you choose to answer.

We don't store your IP address with the message, and every message is deleted automatically 90 days after it arrives. Two things sit outside that rule: if you leave an email address, a copy of your message is also sent to our support mailbox so we can reply, and that copy and any conversation that follows live in our mailbox until you ask us to delete them; and deleted messages can remain in our database provider's point-in-time backups for up to 30 days before they are gone for good. The form is protected by Cloudflare Turnstile (see below).

What's stored on your device

The list of teams you follow and your per-team notification settings are stored locally on your device — using SwiftData on iOS and Room on Android. Your notification settings are also sent to our server so notifications can be delivered, as described below.

What the app sends to our server

  • Follows — when you follow a team, the app sends the sport, team ID, and team name so we can maintain the aggregate "popular teams" counts shown on team search. This carries no device or user identifier. Like every request, it appears in our server's request log for seven days (see Cloudflare below); the counts themselves keep no trace of who followed.
  • Notifications — to deliver notifications, the app sends our server a random identifier created for this installation, your device's push address (issued by Apple or Google), the teams and notification types you have turned on, your platform and app version, and the app's language, so that team names in notifications appear in your language. None of this identifies you personally, and it is used to deliver the notifications you chose — not for advertising or tracking.

Analytics

MatchLine uses Google Firebase Analytics to understand how the app is used so we can improve it. It records:

  • which screens you open;
  • when you follow or unfollow a team, and from where in the app (including the sport, team ID, and team name);
  • the terms you type into team search, along with how many results came back;
  • how you use chat translation — whether you turn automatic translation on or off, and how many messages were translated in a room (never the messages or their languages);
  • diagnostic events such as a failed search or a feed that couldn't load.

Firebase also collects some information on its own, including a randomly generated app instance ID, your device model and operating system version, and an approximate location derived from your IP address (typically no more precise than a city or region). None of this is tied to a name or an account. Google's handling of it is governed by the Firebase privacy documentation.

MatchLine contains no advertising SDKs and no cross-app or cross-site tracking, and we do not sell or share your data with data brokers.

Crash and diagnostic reports

When the app crashes or hits a serious error, we receive an automatic report through Google Firebase Crashlytics. It contains the stack trace, the app version, your device model, operating system version, and the state of the app at that moment, such as free memory and screen orientation. It also contains an installation identifier that Crashlytics generates for your installation of the app. It is not your advertising identifier and it does not identify you personally. We use these reports only to find and fix crashes. Firebase keeps them for 90 days.

Third-party services

  • API-Sports (api-sports.io) — the source of the match and team data shown in the app. Our server proxies these requests, so none of your information is sent to them.
  • Cloudflare — hosts our server. It sees the IP address of each request, as any host does. Our server's request log, which includes that address, is kept for seven days and is used to keep the service running, to block abusive traffic, and to count how the app is used. Our server also reads which country the address is in and uses it to order the Popular list on team search: when you follow a team, it adds one to an anonymous count of recent follows of that team in your country, and the Popular list you see starts with teams that are popular in your country. The count stores neither your address nor anything about your device, and it is not linked to you. On the contact form only, Cloudflare Turnstile checks that a person rather than an automated script is sending it, which involves Cloudflare examining signals from your browser; Cloudflare handles that data under its Turnstile privacy addendum. If you leave an email address in the contact form, the confirmation email is sent through Cloudflare's email service.
  • Google — Firebase Analytics and Firebase Crashlytics, as described above, and Firebase Cloud Messaging for delivering notifications on Android.
  • Apple — the APNs service for delivering notifications on iOS, and App Attest for the device verification described above. MatchLine currently has nothing to buy; should a paid subscription ever be offered, the transaction would be handled entirely by Apple through the App Store and we would never see or store your payment details.

Children's privacy

MatchLine is rated 13+ and is intended for people aged 13 and over, as set out in the Terms of Use. It is not directed at children, we do not knowingly collect information from children, and if we learn that a chat identity belongs to someone under 13 we delete it. If you believe a child has used the app, write to us at the address below.

Deleting your data

Uninstalling the app removes what it stores on your device, with one exception on iPhone: your chat identity is kept in the Keychain, which iOS does not clear when an app is deleted, so it is still there if you reinstall. On Android, uninstalling clears the device too, but the app's data (your followed teams, alert settings and chat identity) is included in Android's backup to your Google account when backup is on, and can come back when you reinstall or move to a new phone. The matching chat record on our server is deleted automatically after twelve months without use, unless it is under a chat ban or a report about one of its messages is still on file; write to us through the contact form if you would like it removed sooner. Either way, reported messages are kept until 90 days after their report is resolved, as described above, because they are the record of a moderation decision.

Notification data that is no longer in use is deleted from our server automatically; to remove yours sooner, turn off notifications for all your teams in the app, or contact us at the address below. To have analytics data associated with your app instance deleted, email us at the address below and we will request its deletion from Firebase. The same request also covers crash reports linked to your installation.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top of this page.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be sent through our contact form or to privacy@matchline.dev.