Privacy Policy

This policy explains what information escpredictions.com collects, how it's used, and what choices you have. This is an independent, fan-run site — it is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Voxovation, or any participating broadcaster.

What we collect

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how the site is used — which pages are read, roughly where in the world readers are, what kind of device and browser they use, and how they arrived. Google Analytics sets cookies in your browser to tell visits apart. We see this information only as aggregate statistics; we don't use it to identify you, and we don't combine it with anything else.

Google processes this data on our behalf. See how Google uses information from sites that use its services for the detail.

Photos and video from YouTube

The photos of the acts are stills from their official videos, and your browser loads them straight from YouTube's image servers. That means YouTube, which is owned by Google, sees a request from your device — your IP address and browser type — whenever a page with photos on it loads. We ask your browser not to say which page it was on, and those requests set no cookies.

Videos are different: nothing from YouTube's player loads until you press play. When you do, the player comes from youtube-nocookie.com, YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode, and from then on Google's privacy policy applies to what you watch.

Photos from Wikimedia Commons

The portrait on an artist's page in the history section is a freely licensed photo from Wikimedia Commons, and your browser loads it from Wikimedia's servers. Wikimedia, the non-profit behind Wikipedia, sees a request from your device when one of those pages loads. As with the stills, we ask your browser not to say which page it was on. Wikimedia's privacy policy covers what it does with that.

Messages you send us

The contact form opens your own email client and sends directly to us. Nothing you type into the form is stored on a server here; we receive only the email you choose to send.

The ranking tool

When you put a contest's songs in your own order, that order is kept in your browser's own storage, on your device, so it is still there when you come back. So are the name you type for your card, if you type one, and the look you chose for it. None of that is sent to us, and clearing this site's data in your browser removes it. The card itself is drawn in your browser; we never receive it.

A link you copy from the tool carries your order, and your name if you gave one, in the link itself. Anyone you send it to can see them, and so can anyone they pass it on to.

Google Analytics, described above, also records that the tool was used — that a ranking was started, a card made or a link copied, and for which contest — but not the order you chose or the name you typed.

Hosting

The site is delivered through Cloudflare, which — like any web host — processes technical information such as your IP address in order to serve pages and protect the site from abuse.

What we don't do

There are no advertising or ad-tracking scripts on this site, no accounts, and no newsletter sign-up. Fonts are served from this site itself rather than from a third-party font service.

Your choices

You can stop Google Analytics from recording your visits on any website by installing Google's opt-out browser add-on. Most browsers also let you block or delete cookies in their settings, and private browsing modes discard them when you close the window. The site works the same either way.

A ranking you have made is kept only in your browser, so clearing this site's data there removes it, as does the tool's own “Start again” button.

If advertising is added

We may add advertising in future to help cover hosting costs. If we do, the provider would use its own cookies to serve and, where permitted, personalise ads. This policy and the date at the top will be updated before that happens, with details of the provider and how to opt out.

Children's privacy

This site is about a music competition and isn't directed at children under 13. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children.

Third-party links

Pages on this site link out to broadcasters, official contest sources, artists' own websites and accounts, and platforms like YouTube, Spotify and Instagram. Those sites have their own privacy policies, which we'd encourage you to check — we're not responsible for how they handle your data.

Changes to this policy

If what we collect or how we use it changes, we'll update this page and the date at the top.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data can be sent to contact@escpredictions.com. See also our terms of service for the rules covering use of this site.