Privacy Policy

AthletesTogether Inc. (“AthletesTogether,” “we,” “us”) builds a mental performance and wellness platform for athletes. This policy explains what we collect, what we can and cannot see, how we use it, and the choices you have — including your separate choice about whether your data is used in scientific research.

This policy covers our mobile application, website, and related services (the “Services”).

We have written this in plain language on purpose. If anything here is unclear, email us at admin@athletestogether.com and we will explain it.

Most people reach us one of two ways:

• Through an organization. Your team, club, school, or athletics department provides your account. Your organization can see aggregated, group-level information about the squad. They cannot see your individual entries. See Section 8.
• On your own. You created your own account directly.

In both cases, this policy governs what we do with your information.

You must be at least [13] years old to use AthletesTogether.

If you are under 18, we require verifiable consent from a parent or legal guardian before your account is activated, in addition to your own agreement to these terms. Your organization may facilitate this, but consent must come from your parent or guardian, not from your coach or club.

Young athletes are not enrolled in research by default. Data from users under 18 is excluded from any research use unless a parent or guardian has given specific, separate consent for that purpose and the young athlete has agreed as well. See Section 7.

We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under [13]. If we learn that we have, we delete it.

A. Information you give us

• Account information. Name, email address, password, sport, age or date of birth, and your team or organization affiliation.
• Structured check-in inputs. Slider and scale responses, including emotional stress, motivation to train, muscle soreness, and overall mood.
• Free-text entries. Text you write in the Playbook and in the Daily Goals section of the Daily Warm Up. These are short, goal-oriented fields. We ask that you not include information that identifies you or another person by name.
• Activity and game data. Your participation in and results from performance games and wellness activities.
• Support correspondence. What you send us when you contact us for help.

B. Information collected automatically

• Usage data. Which features you open, how long you spend, when you are active.
• Device data. Device type, operating system, device identifiers, IP address.

We think you should know this specifically, because it is unusual and it matters.

We can see: that you have an account, that you are active, and the general pattern of that activity.

We cannot see, through our internal tools: your individual slider values, your individual game scores, or your individual activity results. Those exist in our systems in a linkable form — they have to, for the platform to show you your own history and baseline — but our staff dashboards surface them only in aggregate.

Playbook content is visible to us without attribution, with one exception: if our safety monitoring flags an entry as indicating a credible threat of self-harm or harm to others, we may identify who wrote it in order to take precautionary steps, as described in our Terms of Service. Outside of that exception, we can read the content of a Playbook entry and see which resources it drew on, but we cannot see who wrote it.

An honest note on de-identification. Because our systems must be able to connect your entries to your own account over time, most of your data is pseudonymised rather than fully anonymous — direct identifiers like your name are separated from the record, but a key exists that could link them. We use the word “de-identified” only for data from which that key has been permanently severed. We think the distinction matters and we would rather state it plainly than blur it. Section 7 describes exactly how this works when data is prepared for research.

• To run the platform. Create and manage your account, show you your own history, generate your insights and feedback, track your baseline and how you move against it, process payments through third-party processors.
• To protect safety. Identify entries that indicate a credible threat of self-harm or harm to others, and, where necessary, attribute a flagged entry to you so we can take precautionary steps. See Section 5 and our Terms of Service.
• To produce group-level reporting for your organization, under the constraints in Section 8.
• To improve the product. Understanding which features work, fixing what breaks.
• To communicate with you. Service notices, security alerts, and — only if you opt in — marketing.
• For research, if you choose to participate. Section 7 sets this out in full.

This section is separate from the rest of the policy because your choice about research is separate from your use of the app.

What research means here

We conduct and collaborate on scientific research into athlete mental performance and wellbeing. This includes studying how an individual athlete’s own patterns change over time, and what those changes indicate about wellbeing and readiness. Our approach is within-person: we are interested in how an athlete moves relative to their own baseline, not in ranking athletes against each other.

Your choice

Research participation is optional and always has been separable from using AthletesTogether.

• You can decline, or withdraw later, at any time.
• Declining changes nothing about your access to the platform or any feature of it.
• Your coaches, administrators, and organization are never told who participates and who does not, and we will not disclose it to them.
• To opt out, use the research setting in your account or email admin@athletestogether.com.

We ask for research consent separately from your acceptance of this policy. Continuing to use the app is not, by itself, agreement to take part in research.

What we share with researchers, and how

Where research is conducted with an external institution, researchers never receive your identity. They receive a coded dataset, prepared as follows.

Coding. Each athlete included in a study is assigned a research code. The dataset provided to researchers contains that code and behavioural data only — check-in inputs, game and activity results, and participation timing. Names, email addresses, contact details, and device identifiers are removed before anything leaves our systems.

The key stays with us. The list connecting research codes to real accounts is held by AthletesTogether, stored separately from the research dataset, and is the responsibility of a named individual here. It is never provided to an external collaborator, a partner institution, or an organization. We keep it for one reason: so that if you withdraw, we can find your records and remove them.

Indirect identifiers. Removing your name is not sufficient on its own. In a small squad, a combination of details can identify a person as effectively as a name can. So research datasets use age bands rather than dates of birth, generalise or omit position and role where a group is small enough for it to matter, and replace calendar dates with day numbers relative to that athlete’s own start — day 1, day 2, day 47 — so that entries cannot be matched to known events, fixtures, or injuries.

Free text. Playbook and Daily Goals entries are excluded from research datasets by default. Where a study specifically requires them, they are screened for identifying content first, and that use is described to you before it happens.

Governance. Any external research is governed by a written agreement covering what may be accessed, for what purpose, and for how long, and — where the institution requires it — by the approval of a human research ethics committee.

Publication

Research findings may be published in academic journals, conference proceedings, or white papers, and may be referenced in our own materials. Published results describe patterns across groups or de-identified individual cases. You are not identified in any publication.

Young athletes

Data from users under 18 is excluded from research unless a parent or guardian has given specific consent for that purpose and the young athlete has also agreed. Guardians can withdraw that consent at any time.

If your organization requires you to use the app

Some athletes use AthletesTogether because their program asked them to. That does not extend to research. Your program can require you to use the platform; it cannot enrol you in a study, and it will not know whether you took part.

If your account comes through a team, club, school, or athletics department, administrators receive aggregated, group-level reporting only. This includes squad-level summaries of check-in inputs and participation in games and activities.

Administrators do not receive:

• Your individual slider responses or scores
• Your Playbook or Daily Goals text
• Any report that attributes an input to a named athlete

Small-group protection. We do not display aggregated reporting for any group smaller than [5] athletes, because in a small enough group an average can identify an individual. Where a squad falls below that threshold, reporting is suppressed rather than shown.

We use natural language processing to analyse free-text entries and generate feedback and insights, and we use platform data to develop and improve the models behind those features.

Where data is used to train or improve models, we use pseudonymised or de-identified data. You can opt out of having your content used for model development by emailing admin@athletestogether.com. Opting out does not affect your use of the platform.

We do not sell your personal data. We have never sold it and we do not intend to.

• Service providers. Cloud hosting, analytics, customer support, and payment processing vendors, contractually bound to protect your data and to use it only on our instructions.
• Legal requirements. Where we are legally compelled by valid process.
• Business transfers. If we are acquired or merge, data may transfer as part of that transaction. You will be notified, and this policy continues to apply until you are told otherwise.

AthletesTogether Inc. is based in the United States, and our servers are located there. If you use the Services from outside the US, your information is transferred to and processed in the US.

Australian users. We take reasonable steps to ensure that overseas handling of your personal information does not breach the Australian Privacy Principles. Mental wellness information is sensitive information under Australian law and we treat it as such. Where research is conducted with an Australian institution, data may be transferred to that institution under a written agreement.

Canadian users. Information held in the US may be accessible to US authorities under US law.

We keep your personal data while your account is active and for as long as needed for the purposes in this policy.

When you delete your account, we delete your personal data within [30] days, except where we are required to retain something by law.

Research data. Where data has already been included in a study, we retain the de-identified research dataset for as long as scientific integrity requires — replication, verification, and longitudinal follow-up. This data cannot be linked back to you. If you withdraw from research, we stop including you in new analysis and remove you from ongoing datasets where it remains technically possible; we cannot retract findings already published.

We use administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect your information, including separation of direct identifiers from behavioural records and restricted internal access.

No system is perfectly secure, and we will not claim otherwise. If a breach affects your data, we will notify you as required by law.

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Access a copy of the data we hold about you
• Correct anything inaccurate
• Delete your account and personal data
• Port your data to another service
• Withdraw from research at any time
• Opt out of model development
• Opt out of marketing

Email admin@athletestogether.com to exercise any of these. We respond within [30] days.

AthletesTogether is a mental performance and wellness tool. It is not a medical device, and we are not a healthcare provider or a covered entity under HIPAA. What you record here is not Protected Health Information under HIPAA, and nothing in the platform is a diagnosis, a clinical assessment, or a substitute for care from a qualified professional.

Some jurisdictions regulate consumer health data separately from HIPAA. Where those laws apply to you, we honour the rights they give you.

If you are struggling, please talk to a doctor, a licensed mental health professional, or someone you trust.

We may update this policy. If we make a material change — particularly to how research works or what your organization can see — we will notify you in the app or by email before it takes effect, and where the law requires it we will ask for your consent again.

AthletesTogether Inc.

admin@athletestogether.com