Privacy Policy

01We never sell your data

When a student books, we pass their name, email, phone number, FIDE details and message to the coach or academy they booked, so the session can be arranged, and the booking opens a chat between the two of you on ChessDial. That is the product working, and it is what the convenience fee buys. We do not give a coach’s phone number or email to students, and we do not hand a student’s details to anyone else.

02Who holds your data

ChessDial is run by ChessBase India. Under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 we are the Data Fiduciary for everything described here, and you are the Data Principal.

Legal name

ChessBase India 64 Squares Private Limited

CIN

U93000MH2016PTC272155

GSTIN

27AAGCC3169H1ZK

Registered address

301, Damji Shamji Trade CentreKirol Road, Vidyavihar (West)Mumbai 400086, Maharashtra, India

Privacy and grievances

support@chessbase.in

03What we collect

From everyone with an account

• From Google, when you sign in: your name, your email address, your profile picture, and an identifier for your Google account. We never see or store your Google password.
• Your country, worked out once from your IP address at your first payment and then stored. It decides your currency and which payment gateway you use.
• Your phone number - used to fill in your payment, so we can reach you about a booking, and passed to the coach or academy you book so they can reach you.
• Your FIDE ID, rating and title, if you choose to link them.

When you book a session

• The booking itself: which coach or academy, which centre and trainer where that applies, the amount, the currency, the message you wrote to the coach, and which version of the booking terms you accepted and when.
• A reference to your payment from Razorpay or Stripe. We do not receive or store your card number, UPI PIN, CVV or bank credentials - the gateway handles all of that on its own pages.
• Which coaches and academies you have opened a chat with, and when - that record is what lets you message them and, later, review them.
• If you report a problem: the ground you picked and anything you wrote about what happened, which we show to the coach so they can respond.
• Your billing details, from 1 November 2026: the state you choose at checkout and, if you add them, a billing name and address. They go on the receipt and invoices for your booking: the invoice for the session, issued in the coach’s or academy’s name, and ours for the convenience fee.
• Your business’s GSTIN, if you ask for a GST invoice, with the legal name and address you confirmed for it. One GSTIN can be on only one account, and you can remove it whenever you like.

If you list as a coach or academy

• Your public profile: name, photo, bio, locality, city and state, languages, teaching modes and venues, fee range, coarse availability and timezone, session formats, experience and student-count bands, achievements, FIDE details, and for an academy its centres and trainer roster.
• Your contact details - email, mobile and WhatsApp number - so we can reach you about your account and your bookings. Students never see them, unless you choose one of them as the way students first reach you - then a student who books you sees that one.
• Two map points: the pin you actually dropped, which stays private, and a deliberately shifted version of it, which is published. See section 6.
• Payout details: the account holder name, and whatever you give us to be paid through - your bank account number with its IFSC, or your UPI ID, or the email address on your PayPal account - together with your PAN or taxpayer identification number. We hold these in full, because a transfer cannot be made from a partial account number and we are required to report what we pay you against a complete tax identifier. They never appear on your public listing, and reach only you and the people who prepare payouts.
• Your tax details: your legal name and address, whether you are registered for GST, your GSTIN and Letter of Undertaking reference if you have them, and what we deduct or collect from your payouts as TDS and TCS. Your name, city and state appear on the invoices we issue in your name; a tax invoice also carries your GSTIN and full address, because GST law requires it.
• An identity document, if you send one. See section 7.
• Your date of birth. Everyone who lists gives it. It is never public and cannot be changed once saved. We use it only to tell whether you are an adult, between 14 and 17, or under 14 and too young to list.
• If you are under 18, your parent or guardian’s details: their name, their relationship to you and, if they choose to give them, their phone number and their email address. Their identity document and payout details take the place of yours.
• Who accepted the terms, which version and when - you, or for an under-18 your parent or guardian, together with their agreement to supervise contact with students and to be responsible for the account.
• Booking and reliability figures we calculate - how many bookings you took, how often you scheduled, how many disputes went against you - over a rolling 90-day window.

About students listed on a profile

A coach can list notable students they have taught. For those people we hold a FIDE ID, a name, titles and a photo, plus what is needed to confirm the claim: whether they are an adult or a minor, a contact number, and - for a minor - the name of the parent or guardian who confirmed it and their identity document. For anyone under 18, the contact number we hold is the guardian’s. We hold no contact details for an under-18 student.

From using the site

• Profile views:which profile was viewed and when, and your account if you were signed in. This powers the view counts a coach sees on their own dashboard. A coach’s own visits to their own profile are not counted.
• Reviewsyou write - the rating and the text. A review is published on the coach’s or academy’s profile with your name and profile photo, so anyone visiting that profile, the coach included, can see who wrote it. Your reviews stay up if the coach or academy unlists their profile, and if you delete your account - but then they show as “Anonymous”, without your name or photo.
• Chat messages between a student and a coach or academy they booked, and the reports and blocks either of them makes. See section 8.
• Feedback you send through the Feedback button, and the email address you attach to it.
• Server logs: IP address, browser and device string, which pages you requested and when. Used for security, rate limiting, bot detection and debugging.

04Why we collect it

Every purpose in the table below is either necessary to give you what you asked for, or necessary to keep the marketplace honest. There is no category of data we collect “in case it is useful later”.

Running your account

Signing you in, knowing which profiles are yours, and showing you your own bookings.

Taking bookings

Charging the right amount in the right currency, opening the chat you paid for, and passing your name, email, phone number, FIDE details and message to the coach so they can arrange the session.

Paying coaches

Working out what is owed, holding it for the dispute window, and settling it to the account you gave us.

Reviewing listings

Letting a person read every profile - and its identity document, where there is one - before students can see it.

Protecting under-18s who list

Using a date of birth to unlist anyone under 14 and to tell whether a parent or guardian has to take over the account, checking their consent and identity, keeping contact with students to ChessDial Messages, and telling our team when an under-14 tries to list, when something is outstanding or when an under-18 turns 18.

Deciding disputes

Reading both sides of a reported problem and refunding where the session did not happen.

Keeping it honest

Anti-bot checks, rate limits, spotting faked bookings and reviews, and calculating the reliability figures shown on profiles.

Discovery

Search, distance sorting, filters, and the anonymous activity feed on the landing page - which shows that a booking happened, never who made it.

Chat

Delivering messages between a student and the coach or academy they booked, warning before a phone number, email address or link is sent, and acting on reports, blocks and abuse.

Support

Answering you when you write in, and fixing what you report.

Emailing you about your account

Telling you when a booking is confirmed, a profile is listed, a refund is issued or a payout is sent.

Emails we send you

Most of what ChessDial sends is service email - a booking confirmation, a change to your listing’s status, the outcome of a reported problem, a payout notice, or a reminder that chat messages are waiting for you. These are part of the service you asked for rather than marketing, so there is no unsubscribe link and they cannot be turned off while you have an account.

Now and then we also send a short update about ChessDial itself: what has changed, what is new, and a request for your feedback. It goes to the email address on your account and uses only your name. We note whether each update was opened, and nothing more, so we can tell whether they are worth sending. Every update has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing stops only these updates - your bookings, your listing and every service email carry on as before. We never send promotions for anyone else, and your email address is never sold or added to anyone else’s list.

Where the law needs a legal basis for this, ours is your consent, given when you create an account or make a booking, and the necessity of processing to perform the contract you entered into. You can withdraw consent - see section 14 - though some of it we must keep for as long as tax and accounting law says. For updates about ChessDial, the unsubscribe link withdraws it in one click.

05What is public, and what never is

Some of a coach’s data is meant to be seen - that is the point of a listing. The line matters, so here it is precisely.

Public to anyone, signed in or not

• A coach’s or academy’s profile: name, photo, bio, locality and city, languages, modes, fee range, availability bands, achievements, FIDE rating and titles, and the shifted map point.
• Their rating, reviews and reliability figures. Each review shows the reviewer’s name and profile photo.
• Notable students a coach has listed, and whether each claim has been confirmed by the student.

Never public, to anyone

• Identity documents, and everything on them. Only our reviewers see these.
• Payout details. Even the partial ones.
• A coach’s exact pin. Visible only to them and to our reviewers.
• A student’s email or phone number, except to the coach or academy they booked.
• A coach’s or academy’s email, phone or WhatsApp number, to anyone - except the one they chose as the way students first reach them, which a student who booked them sees.
• A student’s booking history, except that the coach they booked sees their own bookings with that student.
• Your date of birth, or your age.
• Anything about an under-18 who listsbeyond their public profile - the email they sign in with and their parent or guardian’s details included. Students reach them only through ChessDial Messages.
• Contact details for an under-18 student. We do not hold them at all.

Opened only by a booking

The receipt and invoices for a booking. The student who booked sees the coach’s or academy’s legal name, city and state on the invoice for the session, and on a tax invoice their GSTIN and full address too. The coach or academy sees only that invoice, with the billing name, state and address the student gave, or the business details if the student asked for a GST invoice.

A chat with a coach or academy. A booking opens it for that one student. It stays open until the booking is reversed, either side blocks the other, or - once the session is marked complete - either side closes it. A closed chat opens again only with a new booking.

The email, phone or WhatsApp number a coach or academy chose as the way students first reach them, if they chose one over ChessDial Messages. A booking shows it to that one student, and once seen it can’t be taken back.

Public profile pages are indexed by search engines. Once a page has been crawled, unlisting it from ChessDial does not immediately remove it from a search engine’s cache - that is between you and them, though we will help.

06Your location on the map

A chess coach’s address is usually their home, and often their family’s home. So we do not publish it.

The point students see on the map is your real pin moved by a fixed distance of up to about a hundred metres, in a direction unique to you, drawn as a circle roughly a city block across. The circle always contains your real location without being centred on it, so a student can tell which neighbourhood you teach in and cannot work out where you live.

The shift is deliberately the same every time. If it were re-rolled each time you saved, someone collecting enough published points could average them back to the truth. It is derived from a secret we hold on the server, so it cannot be reversed by anyone reading our code.

Coaches who only teach online never drop a pin at all - their point is the centre of the area they named, which is enough to be found by a nearby search and is not a real location.

07Identity documents

If you send us an Aadhaar, PAN, passport or similar document to verify a listing, we treat it as the most sensitive thing you have given us.

• It is used for one purpose only: checking that the name on the document matches the name on the profile - or, for a coach or academy owner under 18, the name of the parent or guardian in charge of the account. We do not use it for anything else, and we do not build a database of ID numbers.
• We never ask for an under-18’s own ID. Their parent or guardian sends theirs instead.
• It is never public, never shown to students, and never shown to another coach.
• It is stored in a private bucket, not on the public web. Our reviewers open it through a link that expires within a couple of minutes.
• We record the outcome, not the number. What stays on your profile is a verified flag and the name that was checked.
• Replace a document and the older one is retired from use.

Please do not send us an identity document we did not ask for, and do not send one by email. If you want a document deleted, ask us - see section 14.

08Chat messages

Once a student has booked a coach or academy, either of them can start a conversation with the other on ChessDial. After the session is marked complete, either of them can close it, and it stays closed until the student books again. Before you send or reply to your first message, we ask you to accept the chat code of conduct, and we record that you did and which version it was.

What we keep

• The messages you send and receive, when each was sent, and when it was read.
• Whether a message looked like it held a phone number, an email address or a link, and whether the sender chose to send it after our warning.
• Blocks and reports, with the reason given and anything written about it.
• Whether the abuse check below flagged a message, and for what.
• When a conversation was closed after a session, and which side closed it.
• When we last emailed you about unread messages in a conversation.

Who reads them

• The two people in the conversation.
• Our team, only when there is a reason: the conversation was reported or blocked, the abuse check flagged a message in it, or a booking between the two of you is in dispute. We do not browse conversations otherwise.
• The automated checks below.

Automated checks

Our own software checks every message for phone numbers, email addresses and links before it is sent. If it finds a phone number or email address, it warns you that it could be misused and lets you decide whether to send it anyway. Links are always delivered, with a warning to the person receiving them that a link can be harmful. This check runs on our servers and sends nothing to anyone.

Messages are also checked for abuse - harassment, threats, sexual content, scams and the like - before they are delivered. Our servers compare the message against our own list of abusive words and phrases, in English and Indian languages. This check runs on our servers and sends nothing to anyone. If it flags a message, the message is still delivered, but the person receiving it sees a notice that our spam & abuse filter blocked it instead of the text, and you are told it was reported to our team. Our team reads every flagged message, and a person decides whether any account is acted on - never the software alone.

Emails about unread messages

If a message waits unread for a while and you are not on ChessDial, we email you to say who wrote and how many messages are waiting - never what they say. We do not email you again about that conversation until you have read it.

Online status

While you have ChessDial open, the people you have a conversation with can see that you are online. We work that out from your live connection at the moment they look, and we do not keep a record of when you were online. A conversation that either of you has blocked never shows it.

09Children

Much of the chess coaching arranged through ChessDial is for children. The site itself is for adults, with one exception: a coach or academy owner aged 14 to 17 can list, with a parent or guardian in charge of the account. Nobody under 14 can list, and any profile they have is unlisted as soon as they give their date of birth.

• Students must be 18 or over to hold an account. A parent or guardian creates the account, makes the booking, and gives their own contact details.
• An under-18 who lists signs in with their own Google account, so we hold its name and email address. Everything else on the account is their parent or guardian’s: they accept the terms, verify with their own identity document, receive the payouts, and supervise every conversation with a student. Students reach an under-18 only through ChessDial Messages.
• Our team is told when an under-14 tries to list, when something is outstanding on an under-18’s account and when they turn 18, by an email to our own admin address with their name, age, parent or guardian and what is still pending.
• Beyond that, we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18, and we do not track, profile or advertise to children.
• The only other place a child’s details can appear is a notable-student listing, and there the confirmation and the contact number come from a parent or guardian.

If you believe a child has created an account, or that a child’s details are on this site without a guardian’s consent, write to support@chessbase.in and we will remove it promptly.

10Who we share it with

We share data in four situations: with the coach you booked, with the companies that run parts of the service for us, where the law requires it, and where we must to stop fraud or protect someone. That is the complete list.

The coach or academy you booked

Your name, email address and phone number, your FIDE rating where you linked it, your booking message and what you send in chat, so they can arrange the session. They are independent of us and responsible for their own handling of what they see. They may not add you to marketing lists or pass you on.

Companies that run parts of ChessDial

Each of these gets only what it needs to do its job, and none of them may use it for their own purposes.

Google

Sign-in, and the analytics described in section 11.

Razorpay

Payments and refunds in India. They receive your payment details directly; we do not.

Stripe

Payments and refunds outside India, on the same basis.

Amazon Web Services

Private storage of identity documents, and our message queues.

Bunny CDN

Storing and delivering profile and achievement photos.

MaxMind

Turning an IP address into a country, once, at your first payment.

Vercel

Hosting the website and telling us which country a visit came from.

OpenFreeMap and Photon (Komoot)

Map tiles and place search. Your browser talks to these directly when a map loads or you type a place name, so they see your IP address and what you typed.

We also read FIDE’s published ratings to keep profiles accurate. That is us reading public data, not us sending anything to FIDE.

Tax authorities

As an e-commerce operator we report what is sold through ChessDial to the GST Network, and what we deduct from coaches’ payouts to the Income Tax Department, against the GSTIN and PAN each coach gave us. Tax invoices to a business are registered on the government’s Invoice Registration Portal. These reports carry names, tax identifiers, addresses and amounts, and nothing else.

The law, and safety

We will disclose data where we are legally required to - a valid order from a court or an authority with the power to demand it - and where we believe in good faith that it is necessary to prevent fraud, enforce our Terms of Service, or protect someone from harm. Where a child’s safety is involved we will go to the authorities without waiting to be asked.

11Cookies and analytics

The cookie that signs you in

We use a single cookie to keep you signed in. It is only for authentication purpose; it is not used for tracking or advertising.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to count page views and see which parts of the site get used. It sets its own cookies and reports your approximate location, device and browser to Google. We use it to make decisions about the product, never to build a profile of you, and we do not run advertising or remarketing tags.

You can block it - most browsers’ tracking protection does, as does any content blocker, or Google’s own opt-out add-on. Everything on ChessDial works normally with analytics blocked.

What we do not do

No advertising cookies, no third-party trackers beyond the analytics above, no cross-site profiling, and no selling of any of it.

12How long we keep things

Your account

For as long as you have one. Ask us to close it and we delete what we are not required to keep.

Date of birth and guardian details

For as long as the account exists. When an under-18 turns 18 and takes the account over, we keep the record of what their parent or guardian accepted, because it covers what was done before.

Bookings and payments

At least eight years after the financial year they fall in, because Indian tax and company law requires it. These survive account deletion - they are our books, not your profile.

Receipts, invoices and tax details

For the same eight years, because GST and income-tax law require it. A billing address or GSTIN you change or remove stops appearing on new documents, but the documents already issued keep what they were issued with.

Chat access

The record that a booking opened a chat is kept with the booking, because it is what lets you message and review.

Identity documents

While the listing is live and for as long as we must be able to show why we verified it. A replaced document is retired immediately. Ask for deletion and we will delete it unless a dispute is open.

Reviews

Indefinitely, including after the coach or academy unlists their profile. Delete your account and your reviews stay up as “Anonymous”, without your name or photo - removing them would rewrite a coach's public record.

Disputes

With the booking they belong to, for the same period.

Chat messages

For as long as either person in the conversation has an account, so the history is still there for the other. A conversation that was reported, blocked or part of a dispute is kept for as long as we need it to resolve that.

Profile views

Rolling: counts and the 30-day chart a coach sees.

Server logs

A short rotation, for security and debugging only.

Anti-bot records

Deleted automatically when the challenge expires, within minutes.

13How we protect it

• Everything travels over HTTPS. The session cookie is HttpOnly, Secure and same-site.
• Identity documents sit in a private bucket, reachable only through short-lived links minted for a specific reviewer.
• Payout details are stripped from every public view of a profile at the database query, not filtered in afterwards, so they cannot leak through a listing, a search result or a shared page.
• A coach’s exact location is never sent to a browser other than their own.
• Access to production data is limited to the people who need it, and administrative tools are behind a separate permission that has to be granted deliberately.
• Payment credentials never touch our servers - Razorpay and Stripe hold them.

No system is perfect, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. If there is a breach affecting your personal data, we will notify you and the Data Protection Board as the law requires.

14Your rights

Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 you can ask us to do all of the following, and we will not charge you for it.

See what we hold

A summary of your personal data, what we are doing with it, and who we have shared it with.

Correct it

Fix anything wrong, complete anything missing, update anything stale. Most of it you can edit yourself from your dashboard.

Erase it

Delete your account and data, except what tax, accounting or dispute-resolution law requires us to keep, and reviews, which stay up as “Anonymous”.

Withdraw consent

Stop us processing what we hold on the basis of your consent - which in practice means closing your account.

Nominate someone

Name a person who can exercise these rights for you if you die or become incapacitated.

Complain

Raise a grievance with us first - see section 16.

Write to support@chessbase.in from the email address on your account, or use the Feedback button. We will acknowledge within 48 hours and act within 30 days. We may need to confirm who you are before handing over or deleting anything - a request from an unverified address is a way to attack someone else’s account, so we check.

15Changes to this policy

We will update this page when the product changes, and the date at the top will say when. If a change means we start doing something materially different with data we already hold, we will tell you directly rather than rely on you re-reading this page.

16Grievance officer

For anything about your personal data - a request, a complaint, or a question about this page - contact our grievance officer:

Name

Harsh Kumar, Engineer, ChessBase India

Email

support@chessbase.in

Post

Grievance Officer, ChessBase India 64 Squares Private Limited301, Damji Shamji Trade CentreKirol Road, Vidyavihar (West)Mumbai 400086, Maharashtra, India

Response time

Acknowledged within 48 hours, resolved within 30 days.