Privacy Policy

Pageant Post runs pageant pages, registration, People's Choice voting and tools for pageant directors. This policy covers what we keep, who can see it, who we share it with, and how to change or delete it. Pageant Post is run from Tennessee, United States.

• Your account: name, email, phone if you add it, and your password, stored only as a scrambled hash. If you sign in with Google or Apple, they give us your name and email.
• Registering a contestant: the contestant's first and last name and date of birth, what you buy and pay. For a contestant under 18: the parent or guardian's name and the consent box, saved with the time, your IP address and the exact consent wording.
• Pageant paperwork: whatever the director asks for. That can be form answers (for example an emergency contact, school, activities), uploaded files, and signed agreements saved with the time, IP address and browser.
• Contestant profiles: name, date of birth, city, state, headline, bio, a photo, up to 12 gallery photos, social links, and resume lines: titles, pageant history, talents, education, awards and community service.
• Directors: pageant details and photos, contestants added by hand (name, photo, bio, social links, guardian name and phone), scores, judges' comments and results. Stripe collects the identity, tax and bank details needed for payouts.
• Directors' contact books: names, emails, phones, addresses, birthdays, households and notes that a director enters about families and contestants. When a registration is paid, the parent and the contestant are added to that director's book.
• Judges and vendors: profile details such as name or business name, bio, credentials or services, city, state, photos, website, price range, social links and resume lines.
• Voters: email, the votes bought, IP address, browser and country. Card numbers go to Stripe, not to us.
• Messages and reports: messages sent from a judge or vendor page (name, email, message, IP address), feedback you send (email, message, the page and browser), and content reports.
• Sign in and device records: your IP address when you sign up and sign in, and the IP address and browser of each device signed in to your account.
• Change history: for most records, including registrations, paperwork, profiles and contact books, we keep a history of what changed, when and by whom.

Many contestants are children. Here is how their information is handled.

• Children do not have accounts. Our Terms require account holders to be 18 or older. A parent or guardian holds the account and enters the child's information.
• A child's profile needs a parent's confirmation. The profile cannot be saved until the account holder confirms they are the child's parent or guardian.
• Registering a child needs consent. For a contestant under 18, the form requires the parent or guardian's name and this box: "I am the parent or legal guardian of this contestant and consent to their participation and to the display of their name and photo on this pageant's pages."
• Directors can add contestants too. The form asks the director to confirm they have a parent or guardian's permission to show the contestant's name and photo.
• Profiles start private. A contestant profile is public only after the parent turns on its public setting. A child's education lines start hidden, and any resume line shows only when the profile is public and that line is set to show.
• Dates of birth stay private. We use them for age divisions. They are not shown on public pages.
• Photo location data is removed. Before a photo for a public page is saved, we strip its hidden data, including GPS location.

If a child's name or photo is on Pageant Post without a parent's consent, email [email protected].

Anyone can see:

• Published pageant pages: name, dates, place, logo, photos, descriptions, divisions and sponsors.
• Contestants in a published pageant: name, photo, entry number, bio, social links and division. Vote counts or rankings when the director chooses to show them, and results once revealed.
• Contestant, judge and vendor profiles whose owner turned on the public setting. Public ones also appear in our directories.

Photo files: any uploaded photo opens for anyone who has its exact web address, even when the page it belongs to is private. Paperwork files are stored privately and open only for someone signed in who is allowed to see them.

Private, but seen by others with a reason:

• The pageant's director, and people the director gives access, see the registrations, paperwork and contact book for that pageant.
• Judges see what they need to score, and their scores and comments go to the pageant's team.
• Pageant Post staff can see account data to give support, keep people safe and stop fraud. When staff sign in as a user to help, it is logged.

• To run the service: pageant pages, registration, voting, scoring and payouts.
• To send email: receipts, registration and pageant updates, and sign in and security messages.
• To stop fraud and answer disputes. When a payment is disputed, we send Stripe the records that show it was valid, such as the payer's email, a voter's IP address, or the consent wording on a registration.
• To keep people safe: we screen uploaded photos, check public text for slurs and review reports.
• To find and fix errors, and to count page visits.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not give it to anyone for their advertising.

These companies run parts of the service for us:

Pageant directors. When you register for a pageant, its director gets your registration, paperwork and contact details, and they go into the director's contact book. The director controls that book; Pageant Post stores it for them.

Judges and vendors. A message you send from a judge or vendor page goes to that person by email, with your name and email so they can reply.

AI features. The interview practice coach and the pageant setup helper send what you type into them to OpenAI, which writes the reply. Nothing else you give us goes to OpenAI.

We may also share information when the law requires it.

• Session cookie: keeps you signed in and protects forms from forgery.
• Staying signed in: when you sign in, keeps you signed in for 90 days after your last visit. Signing out ends it. Admin accounts are never kept signed in.
• Referral: if you arrive from someone's referral link, remembers who sent you for 30 days.
• Google Analytics: its own cookies, to count visits.
• On your device: a draft of a form you are filling in, kept until you close the tab, and a judge's scores, kept until they reach us.

We do not use advertising cookies.

We do not delete old records on a schedule. Records stay until they are deleted as described here.

Deleting your account (the Delete account button on your account page) removes:

• your account, sign in records and devices
• your contestant profiles, with their photos and resume lines
• your judge and vendor pages
• your saved items, waitlist spots and your own contact book

What stays after you delete:

• Registrations and payments stay with the pageant as its financial record, no longer linked to your account. They still hold the contestant's name, date of birth, guardian name and paperwork.
• Contestant entries on pageant pages, and votes.
• Entries about you in a director's contact book.
• The change history described in section 2.

You cannot delete your account while you own a pageant, owe a balance or a fee, receive payouts for an organization, have a payout on its way, or have an active subscription. The page tells you which one to settle first. To ask about removing what stays, email [email protected].

• See and correct: edit your account, contestant profiles and judge or vendor pages yourself. To change a registration, ask the pageant's director.
• Public or private: turn a profile's public setting on or off, and show or hide each resume line.
• Get a copy: email us to ask for a copy of your data.
• Delete: see section 8.
• A director's contact book: ask that director to change or remove what they hold about you, or email us.

Email [email protected] for any of these.

• Every connection to the site is encrypted (HTTPS).
• Passwords are stored only as scrambled hashes.
• An account locks after 10 wrong passwords in a row.
• Paperwork files are stored privately and checked against your sign in before they open.

No system is perfectly secure. If you think your account was misused, email [email protected].

The service is for U.S. residents. Uploaded files are stored with DigitalOcean in New York.

When this policy changes, we post the new version here with a new "Last updated" date.

Questions or privacy requests: [email protected].