Privacynotice

Who we are

Allegretto USA is the United States program of the Allegretto Eisteddfod. It is operated by a single adjudicator, who is also the only person who views submitted entries. There is no panel, no reviewer pool and no third party with browsing access to your recordings.

Questions, requests and complaints all go to the same place: usa@allegretto-eisteddfod.co.za.

What we collect, and why

We ask for what an entry needs and nothing else. We do not use advertising networks, we do not run analytics that profile you, and we do not sell or share personal information for advertising — not for adults and not for children.

Entrant and contact details

The performer's name and age division, and the name, email address and state of the adult entering — a parent, guardian, teacher or the adult performer themselves.

Why: To identify the entry, place it in the right section and age division, and send the adjudication.

The submission itself

A performance video, or a photograph or scan of artwork, together with the title of the piece and any accompanist details you give us.

Why: It is the thing being adjudicated. A performance video contains the child's image and voice, which is personal information.

Payment record

The amount, the date, the payer's email address and the transaction reference from PayPal. We never see or store card numbers.

Why: To confirm the entry fee, and — for an entrant under 13 — to serve as the record of verifiable parental consent.

Your sign-in

The email address you sign in with, and when each sign-in link was requested and used. Signing in sets one cookie that keeps you signed in; it holds a random code and nothing else, and it is not used for tracking, analytics or advertising.

Why: So that only the person who controls an email address can see the entries made with it, or upload a recording for one.

The adjudication

The adjudicator's written remarks, criterion scores and award for the entry.

Why: To produce and deliver the entrant's adjudication and certificate.

Entrants under 13

A video containing a child's image or voice is personal information under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (16 CFR Part 312). For any entrant under 13 we must have verifiable parental consent before we collect it — not afterwards.

So the order is enforced by the system, not by good intentions: no upload link is issued until the entry fee has been paid and the consent record exists. The paid PayPal transaction is what makes the consent verifiable — it notifies the account holder of a discrete transaction, which is one of the methods the Rule accepts.

A parent or guardian may withdraw consent at any time by emailing us. Withdrawal stops any further use of the entry and triggers deletion of the recording. Withdrawing consent before adjudication means the entry cannot be judged; the refund terms in the rules then apply.

Parental rights

If you are the parent or guardian of an entrant, you may at any time:

• Review the personal information we hold about your child, including the submitted recording.
• Delete it, and have the recording removed from our media host.
• Refuse any further collection — you can withdraw consent without deleting what we already hold, or do both.

Email usa@allegretto-eisteddfod.co.za from the address the entry was made under, naming the entrant and the season. We will verify that you are the parent on record before we act — that check protects your child, so we will not skip it — and we aim to respond within seven days. There is no charge, and exercising any of these rights will never disadvantage an entrant in adjudication.

How long we keep it

This is our data retention policy, and it lives here rather than in a separate document on purpose — the Rule requires it in the notice itself.

We do not keep any of it indefinitely, and we do not keep a child's recording once the purpose it was collected for has been served. If consent is withdrawn, deletion happens then rather than at the end of the period above.

Who else receives it

These are every third party that handles entrant data, named individually as the Rule requires. Each one is a service provider acting on our instructions — none of them may use your information for their own purposes, and none of them receives it for advertising.

• Media hosting

  Cloudflare, Inc.

  Stores and streams submitted performance videos and artwork images. Files go from the entrant's browser straight to Cloudflare and are stored with signed-URL access required.

• Payments

  PayPal Holdings, Inc.

  Processes entry fees and provides the account-holder notification that serves as verifiable parental consent. Card details are handled by PayPal and never reach Allegretto.

• Website hosting

  Vercel Inc.

  Serves this website and runs its server-side endpoints.

• Email delivery

  Resend (Plus Five Five, Inc.)

  Delivers interest-list sign-ups to the Allegretto USA inbox. It carries the name, email address and preferences submitted on the sign-up form, and nothing about an entry or a performer.

We will also disclose information if the law requires it, or where it is necessary to protect a child from harm. Nothing else leaves us.

How it is protected

• Recordings are stored with signed-URL access required, so they are never publicly listed or guessable. They are not embedded anywhere, not indexed, and not shared on social media.
• Files travel from your browser directly to our media host over HTTPS. They do not pass through, and are not stored on, this website's servers.
• Access credentials for the media host are held only on the server and are never sent to a browser.
• One person — the adjudicator — has access to submitted entries, and that access is reviewed each season along with our security practices.

If you are an adult in the US

Several states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and others — give residents rights over their own personal information: to know what is held, to get a copy, to correct it, and to have it deleted. We extend those rights to every entrant and adult contact regardless of which state you live in, because operating two standards would be worse than operating the better one.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. Use the same address above to make a request.

Changes to this notice

If we change what we collect, who receives it or how long we keep it, we will publish a new version here and give it a new version number. Where the change materially affects a child's information already in our care, we will seek fresh parental consent rather than assume the old consent carries over.