Privacy & Cookies
Last updated: 8 November 2026.
This notice explains how UPOTY — Urban Photographer of the Year handles information through upoty.com and its photography competition. For privacy enquiries or requests, contact contact@upoty.com.
Information used to run UPOTY
We process information you provide when creating an account, entering the competition, uploading photographs, contacting us, subscribing to updates or making a payment. This may include your name, email address, country, account details, biography, entry information, photographs and supporting verification material. Technical information, such as IP addresses, browser details and security logs, helps us operate and protect the website.
We use this information to provide your account and competition entry, process payments, communicate about entries and awards, verify eligibility, prevent misuse and meet applicable obligations. The relevant basis may be providing a service you request, our legitimate interests in running and securing the competition, a legal obligation, or your consent, depending on the purpose and applicable law.
Photographs and public competition information
As described in the competition rules, UPOTY may publish entrants’ names and countries, submitted biographies, selected images and their titles and descriptions, relevant entry details, results and award information. Publication and image use follow those rules. Private contact information, payment information and verification documents are not intended for public publication.
Photographs can contain embedded metadata, including location or camera information. Review files before uploading them and contact us if you have concerns about sensitive metadata.
Payments, hosting and service providers
We use service providers to host and secure the website, deliver email and process payments. These include Hostinger, our email-delivery providers, and Stripe or PayPal when you choose the corresponding payment method. Payment providers process payment details under their own privacy notices. UPOTY receives the transaction information needed to administer your payment; full card details are handled by the payment provider.
Security and anti-spam services, including Cloudflare Turnstile where used, may process technical information needed to protect forms. Some site resources, such as fonts, may be delivered by external providers. We share information as needed to provide these services, administer the competition, respond to lawful requests or protect rights and security.
Essential cookies and your choices
Essential cookies support functions such as security, sign-in, shopping-cart sessions and remembering your cookie preferences. These remain available when you reject optional cookies. Your browser also lets you manage stored cookies, although disabling essential cookies can affect account and payment functions.
Use the cookie banner or the cookie-preferences control to accept or reject optional statistics cookies. Optional categories start off. You can change your choice later; withdrawing consent does not affect processing that occurred before withdrawal.
Visitor statistics and campaign attribution
Our optional statistics setup uses Google Analytics 4 to understand website visits, sessions, approximate countries and cities, devices, pages, engagement and traffic sources. Campaign links may contain UTM parameters identifying the campaign, source, medium and creative. Google Analytics follows your Statistics choice. WooCommerce also uses existing session attribution cookies with names beginning sbjs_ to associate an order with its traffic source; these follow the separate Campaign attribution choice. Neither optional category is required to enter or pay.
Google derives approximate location from an IP address and states that GA4 does not log or store individual IP addresses. Analytics is not intended to receive your name, email address, payment details, private submissions or uploaded photo contents. Email-address and sensitive URL-parameter redaction are used as additional safeguards. Location and visitor counts are estimates and may be incomplete because of consent choices, browser protections or network routing.
GA4 user-level and event-level data retention is set to 14 months where supported. Aggregated reports may remain available for longer. Analytics cookies such as _ga and _ga_* can last up to two years, subject to configuration and browser limits. Your cookie preference is normally remembered for six months. WooCommerce attribution cookies are session-based; its attribution-session cookie normally lasts 30 minutes.
Search Console provides Google Search performance and indexing information. PageSpeed Insights provides performance reporting. Neither is used here to add another visitor-tracking system. We do not use Meta Pixel, Microsoft Clarity or a custom server-side marketing tracker in this setup. For Google’s processing, see Google’s Privacy Policy and how Google uses information from partner sites.
Email updates
Marketing subscriptions require a separate choice. You can unsubscribe using the link in a marketing email or contact us. Operational messages about an account, entry, payment or award may still be necessary to provide the service.
Retention, international processing and security
We retain account, entry, payment and verification information for as long as needed for the competition, service administration, dispute handling, security and applicable legal or accounting obligations. Different records may have different retention periods. Results and published competition archives may be kept as part of the competition’s continuing record.
Our providers may process information in countries other than your own. Applicable provider terms and transfer safeguards govern that processing. We use access controls and other reasonable security measures, but no online service can guarantee absolute security.
Your rights and enquiries
Depending on applicable law, you may have rights to access, correct, export or erase your information, restrict or object to processing, or withdraw consent. Some requests may be limited by obligations to retain records, the competition rules or other lawful grounds. Contact contact@upoty.com; we may need to verify your identity before acting. You may also contact the relevant data-protection authority where applicable.
We may update this notice when the website or its processing changes. The date above identifies the latest version.