Your rights, and how to use them
The law gives you rights over information about you. This page explains what each one means, who may use it — you, a parent, or either — and what happens when you ask. It is written for young people and for parents at the same time, so that both of you can read the same page.
Contents
- Who can ask — you, your parent, or either
- Seeing what we hold about you
- Correcting something that is wrong
- Having your data erased
- Objecting, and asking us to stop for now
- Getting a copy you can take elsewhere
- Withdrawing consent
- What changes when you turn 18
- How long we take to answer
- How to ask
- Complaining to the ICO
1. Who can ask — you, your parent, or either
If you are the young person: the data is about you and the rights are yours. You do not lose them because you are under 18, and you do not need a parent's permission to use them.
If you are a parent or guardian: while your child is under 18 you can exercise these rights on their behalf. The data is still theirs, and where a child understands what they are asking for, their wishes about their own data count. The principle Recov is built on is that the child is told first.
One thing works differently from the rest, because Recov enforces it in code rather than leaving it to judgement: who may give and take away consent.
| Action | Under 18 | 18 and over |
|---|---|---|
| Giving consent | Only a linked guardian. A child cannot give it themselves. Where there is more than one guardian, any one of them can | Only the athlete. A guardian cannot |
| Withdrawing consent | Either the athlete or any one linked guardian, at any age. A young person can always take away a consent they were never allowed to give | Either the athlete or any one linked guardian, if a link still exists |
| Asking to see, correct or erase data | The athlete, or a guardian on their behalf | The athlete |
If a date of birth is missing or cannot be read, Recov refuses to accept a new consent — it fails safe rather than guessing whether someone is a child. A withdrawal is never blocked, for that or any other reason.
2. Seeing what we hold about you
What the right is. You can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, and to be told what we do with it and who we share it with.
What you can already see for yourself. If you are the athlete, your own screens show your own data — training, fuelling, journal, sleep and soreness, injury reports, and the permissions page listing your consents. An athlete can never see another athlete's data; that is enforced structurally, before any other check runs.
What a parent sees in the app is much less, and it surprises people, so it is worth being direct. A guardian's screens show the names of their children, their age category, and their consent settings. They are not a window into the child's data. A guardian cannot see the journal, the soreness log, the recovery markers or the meal photographs at all. What a guardian can see is always a subset of what the coach can see, never more.
To get the rest, ask. We assemble a copy of everything we hold and send it to you within one month.
3. Correcting something that is wrong
What the right is. If something we hold about you is wrong or incomplete, you can have it corrected. Ask us, and we will correct it within one month.
How correction works in Recov, and why it is unusual. Recov's core records are append-only: a correction is made by adding a new record that supersedes the old one, and the earlier version stays alongside it. So a correction means that the right answer is the one that now applies, not that the earlier version disappears.
That is deliberate. A consent history that could be edited would prove nothing, and an audit log that could be tidied is not an audit log. It is also why an erased account can never be quietly brought back to life under someone else's name.
A self-service correction screen is switched on. An athlete can correct their own name, email address, or fix a typo in their date of birth, from inside the app — and a parent or guardian can correct a linked child's name or fix a typo in their date of birth the same way (not their email address, which only the young person themselves can change). Two things it does not do: it cannot add a date of birth where none is on file, and it cannot be used to change which age category — under 18 or 18-plus — someone falls into. Anything it cannot do still means asking us.
Numbers read from a phone. If wearable sync has read a wrong resting heart rate, sleep or HRV for this morning, the athlete can type the right one in. The correction stays for that number, and the phone keeps updating the others. A number typed before the phone sent one is replaced by the phone's. For any other wrong number read from a phone, including VO2 max or a number for an earlier morning, ask us (section 10).
4. Having your data erased
What the right is. You can ask for your personal data to be erased. It is at its strongest exactly here: health information, about children, gathered by an online service. There are narrow situations in which the law allows us to refuse, and we set those out in advance rather than only when you ask.
What we do. On an erasure request we delete your account and identity records, and your athlete records in every category the retention schedule marks as deleted — including the journal, meal photographs and meal descriptions, which go without any adult at the club being asked to approve it. We confirm what was done within one month.
What we keep, and why. Injury reports are retained until your 21st birthday, because a claim about an injury can be brought years later, after you turn 18. Safeguarding, consent and audit records are retained until your 25th birthday. If a concern has ever been raised about a young person, the record that it was raised has to survive an erasure request — including a request from the person the concern is about, because a safeguarding record an adult can delete is worse than no record at all.
Those periods and the legal grounds for them are published in the retention schedule, generically and in advance, so that our answer to you never reveals whether any particular record exists.
5. Objecting, and asking us to stop for now
What the rights are. You can object to us using your data in a particular way, and you can ask us to restrict processing — to hold the data but stop doing things with it — for example while a disagreement about accuracy is sorted out.
Where an objection bites. Most of Recov's processing rests on the club's legitimate interests, and you can object to any of it. We then stop unless we can show compelling legitimate grounds that override your interests — and for safeguarding and injury records, we will say so plainly rather than quietly carrying on. Where a consent setting controls the processing — meal photographs and fuelling, and body measurements — withdrawing consent is the simpler route, and section 7 explains it. Wearable sync is different: withdrawing it stops new numbers being read, but numbers already sent stay in the record and the coach can still see them. To ask for that to change, contact us (section 10).
6. Getting a copy you can take elsewhere
What the right is. Where we hold data because you consented to it, or to perform a contract, you can ask for it in a common, machine-readable format so that you can take it to another service.
Ask, and we provide it within one month as structured data you can open and re-use.
7. Withdrawing consent
What the right is. Where you agreed to something, you can un-agree, and it must be as easy to take back as it was to give.
How it works in Recov. Which consent categories can be turned on depends on the squad: core, wearable sync and body measurements always; meal photos only when one of the athlete's squads is on development or performance; wellbeing logging not yet. Every setting starts off; only an explicit yes creates a record. Consent is checked against the database on every single request and is never cached in a sign-in token, so a withdrawal takes effect immediately. The consent record is append-only — a withdrawal is a new entry, never an edit — so the full history of decisions is preserved.
What withdrawing consent does not do
- It does not delete anything. Withdrawal works forwards: the next request in that area is refused. For wearable sync, that means the phone sends no new numbers; numbers already sent stay in the record, and the coach can still see them. To have data removed, make an erasure request — section 4.
- It does not stop the categories that are not consent-based. The journal, the soreness log, injury reports and hand-entered recovery markers are processed under legitimate interests and the safeguarding condition, and are limited by role instead. Your route there is an objection — section 5 — or an erasure request.
- The "core" category records your acknowledgement of the privacy notice and the club's use of Recov. Withdrawing it changes what the app displays; it is not itself the gate on any processing.
A young person can always withdraw a consent, at any age, even though they were not allowed to give it. So can any one linked guardian. Neither of you needs the other's agreement.
8. What changes when you turn 18
- A guardian's access ends on the eighteenth birthday. An adult athlete still appears in a guardian's list, but the guardian can no longer open anything.
- Processing that rests on the consent the guardian gave continues for 30 days, and then pauses — it does not erase. From 18, only the athlete can give consent, so this is the window in which to give it in your own name. While paused, nothing new is accepted for those permissions, you can still see what is already saved, and you can turn them back on yourself. Recov asks you in the app during the 30 days and after the pause.
- Withdrawal is unchanged: either the athlete or a linked guardian may withdraw, at any age.
- The data does not reset on that birthday. Everything collected while the athlete was a child is still held, on the schedule set out in the retention schedule. Turning 18 changes who may act, not what is held.
Two related rules are worth knowing: the last guardian of a child under 18 cannot unlink themselves — the system refuses — and a guardian cannot be erased while they still guard a live child athlete.
9. How long we take to answer
We respond within one month of receiving your request.
That month can be extended by up to two further months where a request is especially complex or where several have been made at once. If we need to extend it, we tell you inside the first month and explain why.
Using these rights is free. In rare cases the law allows a charge for a manifestly unfounded or excessive request; we would tell you before doing anything of the sort.
10. How to ask
Write to us in plain words. "Please send me everything you hold about my daughter", or "please delete my journal", is enough. Tell us who you are and which club you are at, so that we can be sure we are giving data to the right person.
Two routes, and either works:
- Your club — the administrator or welfare officer who sent your invitation. Your club is the controller of the data and is usually the fastest route, particularly for anything about who can see what.
- Recov's data protection contact — for anything about the software itself, about the companies we send data to, or if you would rather not go through the club.
If you are worried about a young person right now, contact your club's welfare officer directly by the club's own route. Recov does not raise alerts and will not tell anyone for you.
11. Complaining to the ICO
If you are unhappy with how your data has been handled, you can complain to the UK's data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office. You can do this at any time, it is free, and you do not need our permission or the club's.
Information Commissioner's Office
Online: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint
Helpline: 0303 123 1113
By post: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
We would rather you told us or the club first, because most things are quicker to fix that way, but that is a preference and not a condition. You can also bring a claim in court. Nothing in this document limits that.
A young person can complain to the ICO themselves. You do not need a parent to do it for you.
Related reading. How long we keep data — what we keep, for how long, and where we refuse an erasure request. Sub-processors — the four companies that receive data from Recov.
What changed in version 1.3 (10 October 2026). Sections 3, 5 and 7 now cover numbers read from a phone by wearable sync, and section 7 says which consent categories can be turned on. The rest of this page was last fully reviewed on 10 September 2026.
Version 1.3 · Effective 10 October 2026 · Last reviewed 10 September 2026 · Audience: everyone