Privacy Policy

Last updated: June 2026

1. Introduction

Canasta League of America, LLC (“the CLA,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) runs a membership community for people who love Modern American Canasta, together with our website at canastaleague.org (the “Site”). We respect your privacy, and we’ve tried to write this Policy the same way we wrote our Terms of Service — short, plain, and honest.

This Policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use it, when (and the very limited circumstances in which) we share it, and the choices and rights you have. It covers the CLA and the Site. It does not cover other companies’ websites or services that we don’t control, even if you reach them through a link from us.

The short version: we do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for anyone else’s marketing. The only time we share a member’s information with a partner is to confirm and administer a dues exemption — and only for members who claim one. The rest of this Policy fills in the detail.

Questions? Reach us any time at support@canastaleague.org.

2. What We Collect, and Why

Here is a summary of the personal information we collect, why we use it, and how long we keep it. The sections that follow add detail.

Legal bases (for members in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland). Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, we rely on the following legal bases to process your information:

• Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) — to provide your membership, run your account and the directory, and process dues.
• Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) — to meet accounting, tax, and similar requirements.
• Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — to keep the Site secure, prevent abuse, enforce our anti-spam and anti-scraping rules, and understand general usage.
• Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) — for optional things such as appearing in the directory, receiving marketing emails, and non-essential cookies.

3. Where Your Information Comes From

• You — when you register, build your profile, contact support, or message another member through the Site.
• Your device — cookies, server logs, and similar technical signals.
• Stripe — confirmation that a payment succeeded, and a secure token; never your full card or bank number.
• Partner organizations — a limited confirmation that a member qualifies for a dues exemption (see Section 6).
• Other members — reports or flags about conduct or misuse.

4. How We Use Your Information

• Create, run, and secure your membership and account.
• Operate the member directory and the member-to-member contact feature, according to your choices.
• Process dues through Stripe, manage renewals, and administer any dues exemption.
• Respond to your questions and provide support.
• Enforce our Terms of Service — including our rules against spam, solicitation, and scraping or harvesting member information — and keep the community safe and civil.
• Send you CLA news and updates, in line with your email preferences.
• Understand general, aggregate usage so we can improve the Site, and fix problems.
• Meet our legal obligations and respond to lawful requests.

5. When We Share Information — and When We Don’t

We do not sell your personal information. We do not rent or trade it, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing. There is one narrow exception, and it exists only to benefit members: to confirm and administer a dues exemption, we exchange limited information with the relevant partner organization, as described in Section 6.

Otherwise, we share information only in these ordinary, expected ways:

• Service providers — the vendors that help us run the CLA, such as our website host, Stripe (payments), and the tools we use to send email and handle support. They act only on our instructions, under contracts that limit how they may use your information.
• Legal and safety — when the law requires it, or where we reasonably need to protect our members, the public, or the CLA.
• Business transfer — if the CLA is ever sold, merged, or reorganized, member information may transfer as part of that, and would remain subject to a policy at least as protective as this one.

6. Partner Organizations & Dues Exemptions

Some members do not pay CLA dues — or pay reduced dues — because of a relationship they hold with one of the CLA’s partner organizations. Our Terms of Service explain who qualifies.

To confirm that a member is entitled to an exemption, we need to check their standing with the relevant partner. To do that, we exchange a limited amount of identifying information — typically the member’s name, email address, or a membership reference — with that partner, strictly to verify eligibility for the exemption.

This is the only situation in which we share a member’s personal information with a partner, and it happens only for members who are claiming or already hold an exemption. The information is used solely to verify and administer the exemption — never for marketing, advertising, profiling, or any other purpose. No payment details are involved, because exempt members are not charged.

Each exchange is governed by a written agreement that limits how the partner may use the information.

Legal basis and retention. Our legal bases are contract necessity — administering the membership and exemption you have asked for — and our legitimate interest in running the exemption program fairly. We keep exemption records for as long as you hold the exemption, plus the accounting period noted in Section 10.

Separately, the CLA works with a partner that offers Canasta products and training through CLA-certified teachers. If you choose to buy products or enroll in training, you deal with that partner directly, under its own terms and privacy practices, and the CLA does not receive your payment details from those purchases.

7. Your Profile, the Directory & Member Contact

• The directory is opt-in. You appear in it only if you choose to, and you can remove yourself at any time. Your profile is yours to edit or delete.
• Your contact details stay private. Even when you’re listed, other members can’t see your email address or phone number. Member contact is routed through the Site, so you decide whether and how to respond.
• No spam, no harvesting. Using the directory to send spam or any non-Canasta solicitation is prohibited, as is collecting, copying, scraping, or harvesting member information. We watch for this kind of misuse, act on it, and may suspend accounts that engage in it, as set out in the Terms of Service.

8. Cookies & Similar Technologies

We use cookies and similar technologies for essential functions (such as keeping you signed in and remembering your preferences), for security, and to understand general, aggregate usage of the Site.

We do not use member information for cross-site behavioral advertising, and we do not let advertising networks track members across other websites through our Site. You can control cookies through your browser settings, and where required we honor Global Privacy Control (GPC) signals. Turning off some cookies may affect how parts of the Site work.

9. Your Privacy Rights & Choices

Depending on where you live, you have rights over your personal information.

If you are in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, you have the rights to:

• access the personal information we hold about you;
• correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• ask us to erase it (the “right to be forgotten”);
• restrict or object to certain processing, including direct marketing;
• receive your information in a portable, machine-readable format; and
• lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

If you are in California or another U.S. state with a privacy law, you may have rights to know, access, correct, and delete your personal information, and to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information for targeted advertising. Because we do not sell or share personal information for those purposes, there is nothing to opt out of — but you can still exercise your access, correction, and deletion rights. We will not treat you differently for exercising any of your rights.

How to exercise your rights. Email us at support@canastaleague.org from the address on your membership, or include your username. We’ll verify your identity before acting on a request, and you may use an authorized agent where the law allows.

10. How Long We Keep Information

We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purposes in this Policy, and then delete or de-identify it. In practice:

• Account and profile data — while your membership is active, and up to 3 years after your account is closed.
• Payment and invoice records — 7 years, to meet accounting and tax obligations (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR). During this period, access is limited to those compliance purposes.
• Communications and support records — about 2 years, or longer if a matter is under review.
• Security and server logs — about 90 days, longer if we’re investigating a problem.

We may keep aggregated or de-identified information, which no longer identifies you, for analytics and improvement.

11. International Data Transfers

The CLA is based in the United States, and we process information here. If you are in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, any transfer of your information to the United States relies on Standard Contractual Clauses or other appropriate safeguards. Our main service providers — our website host, Stripe, and our email and support tools — are bound by contract, including those safeguards where they apply.

12. Security

We use administrative, technical, and organizational measures to protect your information — including encryption in transit, access controls, and monitoring. No system is ever perfectly secure, so please use a strong, unique password and tell us promptly at support@canastaleague.org if you suspect any unauthorized access to your account.

13. Children’s Privacy

The CLA is for adults. Membership and the Site are intended for people 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a minor has provided us with personal information, contact us at support@canastaleague.org and we will remove it.

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we’ll let members know by email or with a notice on the Site. The “Effective” date at the top always shows the current version.

15. How to Contact Us

For any question, concern, or privacy request, contact us at:

© 2026 Canasta League of America, LLC.