Privacy policy

Most people entering this competition are children, so we treat children's data as the normal case rather than an exception.

We ask a parent or guardian to enter on a child's behalf, using the adult's own email address. Nothing is collected from a child directly, and no child is given a login.

We collect as little as we can: an age group rather than a date of birth, an optional city rather than an address, no phone number, and no video files — only a link to one.

We email you about your entry and nothing else. No newsletters, no marketing, and we never share your address with anyone else.

World Harmonies, of Seattle, Washington, United States, decides how and why this data is used and is responsible for it.

Questions, or a request to see, correct or delete data, go to info@theworldharmonies.org.

When an entry is submitted: the participant's first, middle and last name; the email address of the person entering; the age group and instrument chosen; the country of residence; optionally a city; and optionally a link to a performance video on YouTube.

Optionally, the name and email address of an instructor and of an accompanist. These are supplied by the person entering. We do not email anyone named in these fields, and they are held for the organizers' reference only.

A record of consent: the name of the parent or guardian giving it, the date and time it was given, the versions of these documents shown at the time, and the IP address the consent came from. Where the participant's country requires separate consent to transfer data abroad, that is recorded with its own timestamp.

Payment records from our payment provider: an identifier for the payment, the amount and currency charged, and whether it succeeded. We do not receive or store card numbers.

Judges' scores and comments, after the competition is judged.

Records of when access links to manage an entry were requested and used, including the IP address of the request.

To run the competition — taking your entry, taking payment, letting you manage your entry, and judging it — we rely on performing the agreement created when you enter.

To publish a winner on the winners page, we rely on the separate, optional agreement given at registration. It can be withdrawn.

Where a participant is a minor, the parent or guardian gives that agreement on their behalf. We require this for every minor, rather than applying different age thresholds in different countries.

To keep records we are required to keep for tax purposes, we rely on our legal obligations.

The entry is submitted by an adult and paid for with that adult's own payment instrument. That payment is what verifies the consent, and the consent record is linked to the payment reference.

This is why an entry that is never paid for is not treated as consented to for anything beyond holding the unpaid record.

Most entrants are children, and the youngest age group starts at 4. So rather than say we do not collect data about children — which would be untrue — here is what we actually do.

We never ask a child for their details. An entry for a child is made by their parent or guardian, who fills in the form, gives us the child's name, age group, instrument and country, and pays the fee from their own payment method. Everything we hold about a child reached us from an adult acting for them.

We collect nothing about a child beyond what is needed to judge the entry and to say who won. No date of birth, only an age group. No address, only a country and optionally a city. No account, no password, and no tracking of a child across other websites.

A parent or guardian may ask at any time to see everything we hold about their child, have it corrected, or have it deleted, by writing to us. We will not ask the child to confirm the request.

Where an entry is for a child, the email address we hold is the guardian's, and it is the only address we write to. Write to info@theworldharmonies.org and we will deal with you, not with them.

Our hosting and database providers, who store the entry data. The database is hosted in the United States (US East).

Our payment provider, who takes the payment and holds the card details we never see.

Our email provider, who delivers the messages we send you.

That is the complete list. We do not sell data, share it with advertisers, or pass it to other competitions.

Entries arrive from many countries and are stored in the United States, so data crosses borders on the way to us and to the providers above.

For entrants in the European Union and the United Kingdom, we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses with those providers.

For entrants in China, we ask separately at registration for agreement to transfer the participant's data out of China, because that agreement has to be given separately rather than bundled into a general acceptance. The transfer itself relies on a standard contract filed with the authorities.

[TRANSFER MECHANISMS — for counsel to confirm, per PRD OQ-1(c).]

Entry data — names, email address, city, payment records, scores, judges' comments and access links — is deleted or anonymised twelve months after the competition closes.

Payment records are kept for as long as tax law requires, which may be longer.

A published winners record is kept indefinitely as a permanent honour roll. It is deliberately small: a year, a competition name, a display name, an age group, an instrument, a country, a prize, and a video link. It holds no email address, no city, no score and no judge's comment. It exists only where it was separately agreed to, and is removed if that agreement is withdrawn.

A request to delete data sooner is honoured, except where we are required to keep a record.

A copy of the data held about the participant, a correction to it, or its deletion.

Withdrawal of agreement to appear on the winners page, at any time.

A restriction on how we use it, or an objection to our using it.

Requests go to info@theworldharmonies.org. Depending on where you live you may also have the right to complain to your data protection authority.

Access to entries is restricted to the organizers.

The links we email for managing an entry are long, random, usable once, and expire. Only a hashed form is stored, so the links cannot be recovered from our records.

Asking for a link never reveals whether an address has an entry.

All traffic to the site is encrypted.

Each version of this policy has a version number and stays available at its own address, so the exact wording agreed to at the time of any entry can always be produced.

Where a change materially affects entries already submitted, we will tell the affected entrants by email.