Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible for your data

Targetlocal Limited (Companies House registration number 02662814) operates MessageBet and is the controller of your personal data. That means we decide how and why it is used, and we are responsible for protecting it under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Our address is Ken Howells Sports Betting, 65 Wind Street, Ammanford, SA18 3DT, United Kingdom. For anything to do with your personal data, email privacy@messagebet.co. For general account questions, use support@messagebet.co.

2. What we collect

Account and identity details

Your name, date of birth, home address, city and postcode, email address, mobile number and login details. We also hold the results of identity checks, copies of any documents you upload, and your verification status.

Payments and financial information

The details needed to identify your Visa debit card and process payments, your deposits, withdrawals and balance, and any source of funds documents you send us, such as payslips or bank statements. If we carry out financial risk checks, we also hold what credit reference agencies tell us about your financial circumstances.

Betting and gaming activity

Bets you place and how they were settled, casino rounds with their stakes and returns, when you are active, and the responsible gambling tools you use, including limits, time-outs and self-exclusion.

Message Betting

If you connect Message Betting, we collect:

• the mobile number you link and the channel you choose;
• the identifier WhatsApp or Telegram uses for your account, and the display name or username you have set there;
• the content of every message you send us and every message we send you through that channel, including bet requests, quotes, confirmations and acceptances;
• the time our system received or sent each message, and any delivery information the service passes to us.

We cannot see your other conversations, your contacts or anything else in your WhatsApp or Telegram account.

Technical information

Your IP address, device and browser type, the pages you visit and the times of your sessions. We use your IP address to estimate your location so that we can confirm you are in Great Britain. Cookies and browser storage are covered separately in our Cookie Policy.

Your contact with us

Emails, contact form messages, complaints, and notes our team makes while helping you.

Sensitive information

If you tell us about your health, such as a gambling problem or a condition that affects your decisions, or if our checks bring it to light, we treat it as special category data. We may also hold information about suspected or proven fraud and other offences. We keep either kind only where we need it for the purposes in section 4.

3. Where the information comes from

Most of it comes from you: when you register, upload documents, bet, send us messages or get in touch. The rest comes from:

• identity verification services and credit reference agencies, which confirm your name, age and address and, for financial checks, report on your financial circumstances;
• GAMSTOP, which tells us whether you are registered with the national online self-exclusion scheme;
• our payment service provider and your card issuer, which confirm the outcome of each card transaction;
• WhatsApp or Telegram, which pass your messages and the account details listed in section 2 to us;
• sanctions lists, lists of politically exposed persons and other official sources used in anti-money laundering checks;
• the Gambling Commission, the police, sports integrity bodies and IBAS, where they contact us about you.

4. Why we use your data and our lawful basis

UK GDPR lets us use personal data only where we have a lawful basis for it. The table sets out what we do and the basis we rely on for each purpose.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed our interests against your rights. You can ask for details of that assessment, and you can object (see section 10).

For special category data and criminal offence data we also rely on conditions in Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018, mainly those covering regulatory requirements, preventing fraud and safeguarding individuals at risk, or on your explicit consent where that is the right basis.

If you do not give us information we need to meet a legal obligation or to perform our contract with you, we cannot open your account or keep it running.

5. Identity, age and financial checks

When you register, we send your name, date of birth and address to an identity verification service. It compares them with sources such as the electoral roll and credit reference data and tells us whether they match. The search is made to verify your identity and is not an application for credit, although the credit reference agency may keep a record that it took place.

If the electronic check does not confirm your details, we ask for documents, which our team reviews. Details of what we accept are on the Account Verification page.

Financial risk checks work in a similar way. We may use information from credit reference agencies to look for indicators of financial difficulty, such as county court judgments or insolvency, and we may ask you for documents about your income or savings.

Some of these checks run automatically. If a decision made solely by automated means has a significant effect on you, for example where an automated check stops you opening an account, you can ask for a member of our team to review it, tell us your point of view and challenge the decision. Email privacy@messagebet.co to do this.

6. Message Betting and your data

When you link your number, you are asking us to exchange messages with you through WhatsApp or Telegram. We use the data listed in section 2 to check that each message comes from your linked number, to understand what you want to bet on, to send quotes and acceptances, and to add accepted bets to My Bets.

WhatsApp and Telegram are run by separate companies. They handle messages on their platforms under their own terms and privacy policies, and they may store data outside the United Kingdom. Read those policies before you connect a channel.

We keep the content of Message Betting conversations as part of your betting records, because they show what was requested, quoted and accepted. They are kept for the same period as our other transaction records (section 9).

Linking a channel does not sign you up for marketing. We use it for messages about your message bets. If you unlink your number, we stop sending and receiving messages through that channel, and records of past message bets are kept as described in section 9.

7. Who we share data with

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only where we need to, with:

• service providers working for us under contract, such as hosting, identity verification, payment processing, messaging and customer support providers, who may use your data only on our instructions;
• WhatsApp or Telegram, when you use Message Betting;
• GAMSTOP, to check whether you have self-excluded;
• credit reference agencies, for the checks described in section 5;
• the Gambling Commission, including its Sports Betting Intelligence Unit, and other regulators, when they ask for information or when we must report something to them;
• the police, the National Crime Agency and other law enforcement bodies, including through suspicious activity reports we are required to make;
• sports governing bodies, where betting on an event raises integrity concerns;
• IBAS, if you refer a complaint to it;
• our lawyers, auditors and insurers;
• a buyer or prospective buyer of our business, under a duty of confidentiality.

8. Transfers outside the UK

Some of our service providers may process personal data outside the United Kingdom, and WhatsApp and Telegram operate internationally. Where we transfer personal data abroad, it is protected by one of the safeguards UK law provides: the destination country is covered by UK adequacy regulations, or we use the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses.

You can ask for more information about a particular transfer by emailing privacy@messagebet.co.

9. How long we keep it

We keep personal data only for as long as we need it. The main rules are these:

• Identity and transaction records, including records of bets placed online and by message: at least five years after our business relationship with you ends, as UK anti-money laundering rules require. The relationship normally ends when your account is closed.
• Self-exclusion records: for as long as we need them to keep the exclusion in place and meet our licence conditions.
• Complaints and disputes: for as long as a legal claim could be brought, and longer if a dispute is still open.
• Marketing preferences: while you are a customer, plus a record of any withdrawal of consent so that we do not contact you again.
• Cookies and browser storage: for the periods listed in our Cookie Policy.

When we no longer need data, we delete it or anonymise it so that it can no longer be linked to you.

10. Your rights

UK GDPR gives you the following rights over your personal data:

• Access. Ask for a copy of what we hold about you, including your Message Betting records.
• Rectification. Ask us to correct data that is wrong or incomplete.
• Erasure. Ask us to delete data we no longer need. We cannot delete records the law requires us to keep, such as anti-money laundering records, or those we need to keep a self-exclusion in place.
• Restriction. Ask us to limit how we use your data, for example while you dispute its accuracy.
• Objection. Object to our use of your data where we rely on legitimate interests. You can object to direct marketing at any time, and we will stop.
• Portability. Receive data you gave us in a machine-readable format, where we process it on the basis of contract or consent.
• Withdrawing consent. Where we rely on consent, withdraw it at any time. This does not affect anything we did before.

Section 5 explains your rights over automated decisions.

To use any of these rights, email privacy@messagebet.co from the email address on your account, or write to us at the address in section 1. We may need to confirm your identity first. There is normally no charge. We will reply within one month, or, if your request is complex, tell you within that month that we need up to two further months.

11. Marketing

We send marketing only if you have agreed to receive it. The marketing tick box at registration is optional, and you can open an account without it.

You can change your mind at any time in My Account or through the unsubscribe link in any marketing email. Opting out does not stop the service messages we have to send you about your account, bets and payments.

We do not send marketing to anyone who has self-excluded, is on a time-out or is registered with GAMSTOP, and we stop it where we are concerned that gambling may be harming you.

12. Keeping your data secure

We protect personal data with technical and organisational measures suited to the risk, including encrypted connections to the website, staff access limited to what each role needs, and monitoring for unusual account activity. Our service providers are bound by contract to protect the data they handle for us.

No system is completely secure, and you can help. Use a password you do not use anywhere else, keep your phone locked, and tell us straight away at support@messagebet.co if you think your account or linked number has been compromised. We will never ask for your password or card details by message.

If a personal data breach is likely to put your rights at high risk, we will tell you without undue delay.

13. Under-18s

MessageBet is for adults only, and we do not knowingly collect data about anyone under 18. If we find that we have, we close the account and keep only what the law requires, such as the record showing what action we took.

14. Complaints about how we use your data

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, please contact privacy@messagebet.co first so that we can try to put things right.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK regulator for data protection, through its website at ico.org.uk.

15. Changes to this policy

We update this policy when the way we use personal data changes, for instance if we add a messaging channel or begin using analytics cookies. The date at the top of the page shows the current version. If a change affects you significantly, we will tell you by email or when you next sign in.