COPPA notice

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act(COPPA) is a US federal law that limits what online services can collect from children under 13 without verified parental consent. It’s enforced by the Federal Trade Commission.

COPPA applies to services directed at children or services that knowingly collect data from children. WI Athleteis directed at Wisconsin high-school athletes, parents, coaches, and college recruiters — not at children — but we still display results from middle-school meets, so we take COPPA seriously and document our posture here.

We display the same data that appears in a printed meet program or on the host school’s athletics page:

• Name (first and last).
• School affiliation.
• Grade or graduation year.
• Event(s) competed in.
• Time, distance, or place.

This data comes from public timing-company feeds (AccuRace, AthleticLive, MileSplit, PrimeTime) and from HyTek result exports submitted by coaches. We never get it from the child directly.

Under FERPA, this set of fields is directory information (34 CFR §99.3) and is treated the same as a yearbook listing or a meet program: publicly available unless the student or parent has opted out at the school level.

None of the following is solicited or stored for any athlete under 13:

• Email address.
• Phone number.
• Direct-message inbox or chat history.
• Profile photo.
• Optional profile fields (GPA, test scores, social handles, personal statement).
• Geolocation beyond “the school the athlete competes for.”
• Behavioral advertising profiles.
• Persistent identifiers used for cross-site tracking.

The profile-edit page that lets families add GPA, test scores, and other optional data is gated by age: only 13-and-up athletes can be configured at all, and an authenticated parent or guardian is the only party who can edit those fields on behalf of a minor under 18.

College recruiters cannot message any athlete directly through the platform, regardless of age. The only outbound channel we expose is recruiter → HS coach. For more detail see our NCAA compliance posture.

If your child is under 13 and appears on WI Athlete, you can:

• Review the data we hold about your child. Email [OPERATOR: privacy@wiathlete.com] with proof of guardianship.
• Request removalof your child’s name from public listings. We’ll comply within 30 days. The underlying meet result stays in the historical record but is published anonymously (e.g. “Athlete A, Grade 7”).
• Refuse future collection by adding your child’s name to our suppression list. Future meet results matching that name + school will be auto-anonymized at import.
• Lodge a complaint with the FTC if you’re not satisfied with our response (see Section “Filing a complaint” below).

We don’t charge for any of these. The standard response window is 30 days; complex requests may take longer and we’ll tell you so in writing.

• We never display advertising on a child’s profile or meet-result page.
• We never use under-13 athlete data to train AI models offered to third parties.
• We never sell or transfer under-13 athlete data to a third-party data broker.
• We never deliver email, SMS, push notification, or any other direct communication to a child. All transactional email goes to a parent or coach.
• We honor school-level FERPA directory opt-outs. If a parent has filed an opt-out with their school district, tell us — we’ll suppress that child from our public listings on first request and keep them suppressed going forward.

If you believe a service has violated COPPA, you can file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission:

• Online: reportfraud.ftc.gov
• Phone: 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357).
• Mail: Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, 600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20580.

We’d also appreciate hearing from you first — most issues can be resolved within a few business days. Email [OPERATOR: privacy@wiathlete.com].

Name: [OPERATOR: COPPA compliance officer name — defaults to Kyle Van Dyn Hoven]
Email: [OPERATOR: privacy@wiathlete.com]
Mail: [OPERATOR: physical mailing address]