Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains what Chandler Pickett, an individual trading as Ares United (“we”, “us”, “our”), does with your personal information when you use aresunited.gg or join the Ares United Council.

Ares United is a sole proprietorship, not a company. The person named above is the data controller.

The short version

• We collect your name, email and billing address when you join the Council, plus basic technical data when you visit the site.
• We never see or store your card number. Stripe handles payments.
• We do not sell your data. We do not buy data about you from anyone.
• We do not run advertising trackers or targeted advertising.
• Only your chosen display name is ever published, and only from the Warrior rank up. Never your email or address.
• You can ask us for a copy of your data, or ask us to delete it, by emailing us.

1. What we collect

Information you give us

• Name and email address, when you join the Council or contact us.
• Billing address, where Stripe requires it for tax and card verification.
• Your chosen display name, if you want to appear on the Council wall.
• Your chosen creator, so we know where to route your gifted sub.
• Anything you put in an email or an application to us.

Payment information

Payments are processed by Stripe. Your card number, expiry and security code go directly to Stripe and never touch our systems. We receive only the last four digits, the card brand, and whether a payment succeeded. Stripe’s privacy policy is at stripe.com/privacy.

Information collected automatically

Like most websites, our host and CDN log technical data when you visit: IP address, browser type and version, operating system, referring page, and the pages you viewed with timestamps. This is used for security and to keep the site working. It is not used to build a profile of you.

What we do not collect

We do not collect special category or sensitive personal information: no health data, no biometrics, no race or ethnicity, no political or religious beliefs, no precise geolocation. We do not buy personal data from third party brokers.

2. Why we use it

• To run your membership. Take payment, give you access, route your gifted sub, and let you vote.
• To talk to you. Answer your emails, tell you about changes to your membership, send the monthly report if you asked for it.
• To publish transparency reports. Aggregate figures always. Your display name only if you are Warrior or above and chose one.
• To keep the site secure and prevent fraud and abuse.
• To meet legal obligations, such as keeping tax records.

We do not use your information for automated decision making or profiling.

3. Legal bases

If you are in the UK, EU, EEA or Switzerland, we rely on:

• Contract: to provide the membership you paid for.
• Legitimate interests: to keep the site secure and to run the org, balanced against your rights.
• Consent: for the newsletter and for appearing on the Council wall. You can withdraw either at any time.
• Legal obligation: for tax and accounting records.

4. Who we share it with

We share personal data only with the services needed to run the org:

• Stripe for payments.
• Our web host for site delivery and logs.
• Discord, if you join the Council Discord, under Discord’s own terms.
• Streaming platforms such as Twitch or YouTube, only to the extent needed to deliver a gifted sub. We do not pass them your email or billing details.
• Google Fonts, which serves typefaces on this site. Your IP address is disclosed to Google when a page loads. If you would rather that did not happen, tell us and we will self host the fonts.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross context behavioural advertising.

We would disclose data if legally required to, or to protect someone from harm. If Ares United were ever sold or transferred, member data would move with it and you would be told first.

5. What gets published

This matters more here than at most orgs, because publishing is the point of the model. To be exact about it:

• Always published: aggregate financial figures, and the names and amounts of payouts to signed creators, who agree to that as a condition of being signed.
• Published only with your choice: your display name on the Council wall and in credits, at Warrior rank and above.
• Never published: your real name, email, billing address, card details, or which creator you personally chose.

6. Cookies

See our Cookie Policy. Short version: a security cookie, a WordPress session value, and no advertising or analytics trackers.

7. International transfers

We are based in the United States and our servers are in the United States. If you are outside the US, your information is transferred to and processed there. Where we rely on providers such as Stripe, they operate their own safeguards for international transfers.

8. How long we keep it

• Membership records: while you are a member, then up to seven years for tax and accounting.
• Emails: up to two years, unless the thread is a live matter.
• Server logs: typically 30 to 90 days, set by our host.
• Newsletter: until you unsubscribe.

9. Security

The site runs over HTTPS, payments are handled entirely by Stripe, and access to member data is limited to the person running the org. That said, no transmission over the internet can be guaranteed completely secure, and it would be dishonest to claim otherwise.

10. Children

We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13, and Council membership requires you to be 18 or over. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we will delete it.

11. Your rights

Wherever you are, you can ask us to:

• Give you a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Correct anything that is wrong.
• Delete your data, subject to records we must keep by law.
• Stop sending you marketing, at any time.
• Port your data to you in a portable format.

If you are in the UK, EU, EEA or Switzerland you also have the right to object to or restrict processing, to withdraw consent, and to complain to your national data protection authority.

If you are in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia or another US state with a privacy law, you have rights to know, access, correct, delete, obtain a copy, and to opt out of sale, targeted advertising and profiling. We do not sell data, do not run targeted advertising and do not profile, so those opt outs have nothing to apply to, but the rights stand. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of them.

Categories we actually collect

For US state law purposes, of the statutory categories we collect:

• Identifiers (name, email, billing address, IP address) — yes. Purpose: running your membership and securing the site. Not sold, not shared for advertising.
• Commercial information (your membership, transaction history) — yes. Purpose: running your membership and keeping tax records. Not sold, not shared for advertising.
• Internet activity (pages viewed, referring page, in server logs) — yes. Purpose: security and site reliability. Not sold, not shared for advertising.
• Approximate location derived from IP address — yes, incidentally in logs. Not used to target you.
• All other statutory categories, including biometric data, protected classifications, education records, sensory data, professional information and inferences — no, we do not collect these.

How to exercise your rights

Email [email protected] with Privacy in the subject line. We may ask you to confirm the email address on your membership so we do not hand your data to someone else. We aim to respond within 30 days. If we refuse a request we will say why, and you can appeal by replying to that email.

12. Do Not Track

There is still no agreed standard for Do Not Track signals, so we do not respond to them. It makes little practical difference here, because we do not track you across sites in the first place.

13. Changes

We may update this policy. The date at the top shows when it last changed. If a change materially affects how we handle your data, we will tell paying members directly rather than quietly editing the page.

14. Contact

[email protected]

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