Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy
BTFNews.com website (hereafter referred to as the ‘Website’) respects the privacy of all parties viewing and otherwise making use of the Website, hereafter referred to as the ‘Visitors’, and is committed to protecting their privacy.
From time to time, and only with their prior consent, the Website collects and uses ‘Personal Data’ (defined hereunder) relating to its Visitors in order to provide them with the services provided by the Website and only for any purpose which has been expressly stated hereunder.
This Privacy Policy complies with international Conventions, and EU Directives, as transposed into Maltese law in Data Protection Act (Chapter 440 of the laws of Malta), the Processing of Personal Data (Electronic Communications Sector) Regulations (Legal Notice 16 of 2003 inclusive of the later amendments), it adopts Recommendation 2/2001 of the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, adopted on 17 May 2001, on certain minimum requirements for collecting personal data on-line and implements also any other applicable rules and practices.
Collection of Personal Data
The Website does not collect any Personal Data when Visitors simply browse the Website. However, the Website does require that Visitors supply some Personal Data when using additional or advanced services provided on the Website after the registration. On these occasions the Website will ask Visitors for their respective consent prior to the collection and use of the Visitors’ Personal Data. Upon registration or at other times the Website may ask Visitors to submit their login e-mail address and password.
Visitors are under no obligation to provide their Personal Data or to permit their Personal Data to be collected by the Website. However, the Website may not be able to provide the Visitors not consenting to the collection their Personal Data with all services offered by the Website.
Although Visitors may have consented to the Website our using their respective Personal Data, they are entitled to subsequently revoke their respective consent by providing the Website with compelling legitimate reasons.
The Right of Access
Visitors are entitled to request that the Controller (defined hereunder) provides them with written information on which of their respective Personal Data it has collected and/or used. A request can be made by submitting a request in writing to the Controller (defined hereunder).
The Website undertakes to make all reasonable efforts to keep the Personal Data collected updated. However Visitors are invited to inform the Website of any changes to their Personal Data which is held by the Website.
Visitors who consider that any of their respective Personal Data is inaccurate, may request the Controller in writing to correct the data. Visitors also have the right to request the Controller to block or delete their respective Personal Data if it has been processed unlawfully.
Purposes for the collection and use of Personal Data
The Personal Data collected by the Website shall be processed in accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act (Chapter 440 of the Laws of Malta) and subsidiary legislation enacted there under and solely processed for the purposes of:
- 1. Communicating with the Visitors;
- 2. Sending Visitors forgotten password to their respective personal account;
- 3. Sending Visitors information which the Website thinks they will find useful, including information on products, services information and commercial / advertising materials on offer by the Website / advertising materials on offer by third parties the Website cooperate with;
- 4. Providing any advanced services which are possibility to configure website to some extent;
- 5. Improving the content offered by the Website;
- 6. Providing Visitors with personalised Website content and/or layout.
Disclosure of Personal Data to third parties
The Website does not sell, trade or rent or otherwise disclose Personal Data appertaining to Visitors to any third party without their prior respective consent. However Personal Data would be disclosed to third parties in the eventuality of a sale of the Website.
The above is without prejudice to any legal obligation incumbent on the Website to disclose Visitors’ Personal Data to third parties.
The above is also without prejudice to disclosures which are absolutely necessary as part of one or more of the Purposes for collecting and using Personal Data. In this case the Website shall seek the prior express consent of the Visitors concerned.
The Website reserves the right to provide statistics about Visitors, sales, traffic, and other statistical information relating to the Website to third parties, however, without identifying any particular Visitor.
Log Files
In order to better administer the Website and to collect broad demographic information of Visitors for aggregate use, the Website automatically logs the IP address of all Visitors and the pages viewed by each Visitor respectively.
Cookie Disclaimer
A "cookie" is information stored on a Visitor’s computer by a web server and used to customize their web service in some way. The Website uses cookies to store information about Visitors’ interactions that may be needed later to perform a function. Visitors can choose not to accept cookies and still use services provided by the Website. However, such refusal might cause cookie-dependent features on the Website not to function as intended or at all. Visitors should refer to the help information on their browser for instructions on how to disable cookies.
Security
The Website and the Controller have adopted various measures, both technical and organizational, to help protect against the destruction, loss, misuse and alteration of Personal Data which has been collected and used. Notwithstanding these efforts, the Website cannot guarantee that such event will not occur.
The period for which Personal Data is kept
The Personal Data is kept only for the time period required to meet the purposes for which it was collected. In case of user account inactivity for 3 years all collected user Personal Data will be deleted.
Third party websites
Third party websites are not covered by this Privacy Policy. The Website provides links to other sites for the convenience of Visitors. The Website is not responsible for the contents displayed on third party websites and measures they adopt to protect your privacy. Any other website which Visitors access from the Website may not have an adequate Privacy Policy.
Log Files
The Visitors’ consent to the collection and use of their respective Personal Data by the Website and the Controller is made subject to the Privacy Policy set out above.
Visitors are advised to view the Privacy Policy on a regular basis in order to become familiar with the terms and clauses therein and with any amendments which from time to time may be implemented by the Website.
Data Protection (GDPR) — updated 3 September 2026
Who is responsible for your data. BTFNews is the data controller for this website. You can reach us at info@btfnews.com.
What we collect and why.
- If you only browse: we do not ask you for any personal data. Cookies are covered below.
- If you register an account: username, e-mail address, password (stored hashed), and any optional profile details you choose to add. Legal basis: performance of a contract — we cannot give you an account without them.
- Sign-in security: we record the IP address and time of login attempts to detect and block brute-force attacks. Legal basis: legitimate interests (keeping accounts secure).
- Optional cookies: advertising and notifications, only if you switch them on. Legal basis: your consent, which you may withdraw at any time.
- Visit counts: we count how many times each page is viewed, and which sites link to us. This is done on our own server. It sets no cookie, and it records no IP address and nothing else that could identify you or recognise you on a later visit — only a running total per page per day. Legal basis: legitimate interests (knowing which of our articles are read). Because nothing is stored on or read from your device and no personal data is kept, this needs no consent — but we tell you it happens, both here and in the banner.
Cookies this site uses. The first four are strictly necessary and are used whatever you choose; the rest are only ever set if you consent to them. Our visit counting is not in this table because it uses no cookie at all.
| Cookie | Purpose | Lasts | Needs consent? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 923257om8784Y2n5q59l | Your sign-in session | Until you close the browser | No — strictly necessary |
| btf_consent | Remembers this cookie choice | 1 year | No — it records your choice |
| tz | Shows kick-off times in your timezone | 1 year | No — a display preference you set |
| verify | Protects image requests | 1 hour | No — strictly necessary |
| OneSignal storage | Push notification subscription | Until you unsubscribe | Yes — Notifications |
| AdCookie | Stops a promo popup reappearing | 7 days | Yes — Advertising |
You can change or withdraw your choice at any time using Cookie settings at the bottom of any page. Withdrawing is as easy as giving consent, and refusing costs you nothing: the site works fully with only the necessary cookies.
Who else receives data, and where. If — and only if — you consent to notifications, your browser contacts OneSignal, which will see your IP address and may process data outside the European Economic Area under the transfer safeguards it publishes. Without your consent your browser never contacts it at all, because we do not place its code on the page.
We no longer use Google Analytics. It was removed on 4 September 2026 and replaced with the first-party counting described above. Nothing about your visit is sent to Google, or to any other analytics provider, and no visit data leaves our server.
Two further third parties are contacted for appearance and content regardless of consent, because the page cannot render without them: Google Fonts and Font Awesome (via BootstrapCDN) for typefaces and icons, and BTFScores for the live-score panel. These receive your IP address as part of serving the file.
How long we keep it. Account data is kept while the account exists; after three years of inactivity it is deleted, as described above. Login-attempt records are kept only as long as needed for security monitoring.
Your rights. Under the General Data Protection Regulation you have the right to:
- ask what personal data we hold about you, and get a copy of it (access);
- have inaccurate data corrected (rectification);
- have your data deleted (erasure — the “right to be forgotten”);
- ask us to limit what we do with it (restriction);
- receive your data in a portable, machine-readable form (portability);
- object to processing carried out on the basis of our legitimate interests;
- withdraw consent at any time, without affecting anything done before you withdrew it; and
- lodge a complaint with your national data protection supervisory authority.
To exercise any of these, e-mail info@btfnews.com. We will respond within one month. There is no charge, and you do not have to give a reason for an erasure request.
Automated decision-making. We do not carry out automated decision-making or profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects.