With 1327 accounts created on the Off the Dial site and growing, it's time we become completely clear about what data we collect and use here at Off the Dial. In this post, we're discussing what data we collect and use on our sites that we can see. This does not include any data that our 3rd party services collect, including Discord and start.gg.
Let's start with one thing straight. Our philosophy is that we collect as minimal data as possible. When running a tracker detector through safari, only one gets detected, just google. This is out of our control as our domain name (otd.ink) is from Google Domains, and it is required to have our URL be so short and unique for a reasonable price.
If you go onto our site, we don't collect any data that is stored. The browser will locally determine if you'd prefer dark mode or light mode based on system preferences and will determine your time zone also from your device preferences so we can show you when the tournament begins relative to you. But this data is not stored.
If you log in via Discord (currently the only way to create an account with us), a file will be made in our database that takes note of your unique Discord ID. This becomes your user account for our site.
If you signup, that's when we get more data that is stored within our online database. We collect all the information you provide (splashtag, friendcode, weapons, etc.). But we also collect four more pieces of data when you signup. The first one is that we collect your timezone and use this as a part of our balancing. Now if you've played in any of our tournaments, you might be questioning this, as often timezones don't align on your team. This is because timezones are the least important in terms of the hierarchy when creating teams. But, we try to have each team have a maximum of two timezone groups (but this isn't always possible).
The other data we collect when you signup are the date / time you registered, when you last modified your signup form, and your signal strength.
And that's it. That's all we collect.
Well mostly. For our shop, we do have to collect a bit more personal details, including name and address, but this is for the purpose of shipping products and is stored entirely separate from our central database, and is operated by the organisation that hosts and manages the technical side of the shop (of which they may also collect some data that we're unaware of).
Hopefully, this has eased the minds of many of you, but if you have any enquires about your data, please send me a DM. Also, you can delete your data anytime by going to your profile and hitting the delete icon.