We take your privacy seriously. This policy explains what personal information we collect for the Advice Wanted writing contest, what we do with it, and the choices you have.
Advice Wanted ("we", "us") is based in the United States. We're responsible for your personal information (in GDPR terms, the "controller"). The contest is sponsored by a company we'll name soon (the "Sponsor"). You can reach us at contest@advicewanted.dev.
What we collect
| When | What we collect |
|---|---|
| You sign up on the site | Your email address, whether you opted in to hear about future contests and projects, when you agreed to the Terms and which version you agreed to, and your IP address (which helps us keep out spam and bots) |
| You enter | Your name, email address, and entry (and a pen name, if you'd like to be credited under one), plus anything else you include in your email |
| You win | What we need to verify and pay you: your legal name, country of residence, payment details, any tax forms the law requires (which may include a tax ID number such as a U.S. Social Security number), and a short bio if you choose to give one |
| You email us | Your email address and whatever you write |
| You visit the site | Anonymous usage statistics (see "Website analytics" below) |
Please don't put sensitive personal information (about you or anyone else) in your entry unless it's needed for the piece. Anything in your entry may be published by us or the Sponsor, credited the way you choose (your name, a pen name, or no name).
Why we use it
We use your information to run the contest and to publish entries with author credit. If you're in the EU, UK, or a place with similar laws, these are our legal bases:
| Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Sending you the rules and updates about this contest; receiving, judging, and responding to entries; contacting winners | Performing our agreement with you (the contest Terms) |
| Paying prizes, verifying winners, tax reporting and record-keeping | Legal obligation, and performing our agreement with you |
| Publishing and promoting entries with author credit, and passing entries and author names to the Sponsor to do the same | Performing our agreement with you, under the license in the Terms |
| Keeping a record of the contest, preventing fraud, enforcing the Terms | Our legitimate interest in running a fair contest |
| Sending occasional updates about future contests and similar projects to people who opted in | Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time |
| Website analytics | Our legitimate interest in understanding site traffic, using anonymized data |
Who we share it with
We do not sell your personal information, and we don't share it for advertising. We share it only with:
- The Sponsor: entries and their authors' names (for any entrant, not only winners), so the Sponsor can publish them with author credit under the license in the Terms. The Sponsor handles that information under its own privacy policy. We don't give the Sponsor the email addresses of people who sign up or enter, or winners' payment and tax details.
- Judges: entries, without author names.
- Service providers who help us run the contest, such as our website host, our email and newsletter providers (including Buttondown), file and spreadsheet storage (including Google), spam and bot protection (Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks that a signup comes from a person, and ipify, which looks up your IP address when you sign up), and payment providers (such as Wise or Revolut). They handle your data only on our behalf and only for that purpose.
- Authorities and advisers: tax authorities when the law requires it, our professional advisers (such as accountants and lawyers), and anyone else where we must by law or need to protect our rights or someone's safety.
- A successor: if someone else takes over running the contest, your information may move to them under this policy.
If your entry is published, it will be public, credited the way you choose.
Website analytics
We use Fathom Analytics to see how many people visit the site, which pages they view, where they came from, and which country they're in. Fathom doesn't use cookies. It processes your IP address only briefly to count unique visits and then anonymizes it, so neither we nor Fathom can identify you from the statistics we see.
We don't track you across other websites, so we don't respond differently to browser "Do Not Track" signals. Our site and signup form don't use cookies. The site saves a small amount of information in your browser's local storage to make the site work for you. It stays on your device and isn't used to track you.
Emails
If you enter, we'll email you about your entry and the contest (for example, contacting you if you win or telling you about changes to the contest).
When you sign up on the site, you agree to receive emails about this contest, including the rules and updates. Separately, you can tick an optional box to hear occasionally about future contests and similar projects we run. If you don't tick it, we'll only email you about this contest. We don't email often. Every update email has an unsubscribe link, and you can also unsubscribe by emailing us. We won't add you to any other mailing list, and we won't give your email address to the Sponsor or anyone else for their marketing.
How long we keep it
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| Sign-up and entrant contact details | As long as we need them to run this contest and deal with anything that comes up afterward, such as prize, tax, or legal questions |
| Contact details of people who opted in to future updates | Until you unsubscribe |
| Entries | Kept as the record of the contest, and as long as we publish them under the license in the Terms |
| Winners' payment and tax records | As long as tax law requires (generally up to 7 years) |
| Emails you send us | As long as we need them to run this contest and deal with anything that comes up afterward |
Your rights
You can ask us to access, correct, or delete the personal information we hold about you, or to send you a copy of it. Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to object to or restrict how we use it, and to withdraw consent you've given. Email contest@advicewanted.dev. We may need to confirm your identity first. We won't treat you differently for using these rights.
There are limits. We may keep information we need to comply with the law (such as tax records) or to resolve disputes. If you ask us to delete your entry before the winners are announced, that withdraws it from the contest. Once an entry has been published under the license in the Terms, we'll stop using it in new materials if you ask, but we can't recall copies already distributed.
If you're in the EU or UK and unhappy with how we've handled your information, you can complain to your local data protection authority. We'd appreciate the chance to fix it first.
Everything else
International transfers. We're based in the United States, and our service providers may process data in the U.S. and other countries. If you enter from outside the U.S., your information will be transferred there, where data protection laws may differ from yours. We use providers that offer appropriate safeguards for these transfers where required.
Security. We use reasonable measures to protect your information, such as access controls and reputable providers. No system is perfectly secure. We only ask for payment details and tax forms after you've won, and only from contest@advicewanted.dev. We may collect them by email or through a payment service or form.
Age. The contest is for adults only (18+, or older where the law requires). We don't knowingly collect information from anyone younger. If we learn we have, we'll delete it.
California residents. We don't sell or share personal information as California law defines those terms.
Changes. If we update this policy, we'll post the new version here with a new "last updated" date. If a change is material, we'll email entrants where practical.
Contact. Questions or requests: contest@advicewanted.dev.
Last updated: October 26, 2026