Privacy Policy

Effective 7 September 2026 · Version 1.0

This policy explains, in plain terms, what happens to information you give us through americankaratecenter.com. It covers the website only. Paperwork you fill in at the school in person — membership forms, waivers, anything you tell an instructor — is handled at the school and is not governed by this page.

1. Who we are

American Karate Center, 10910 Southlake Ct, North Chesterfield, VA 23236. Phone 804-323-1954. We are the ones who decide what happens to the information described here, and we are the ones you contact about it.

2. What we collect

Information you type into the contact form

The contact form at the bottom of our home page asks for:

• First name and last name — required, so we know who we are talking to.
• Email address — required, so we can reply.
• Phone number — optional.
• Which program you are interested in — optional, chosen from a list.
• Your message — optional, free text.

There is also one hidden field on the form, labelled “Company”, that you will never see and should never fill in. It is a spam trap. If it comes back filled we label the enquiry as likely automated, but we still keep the message rather than throw it away, in case a browser filled it in by accident.

Along with what you type, we store the date and time you sent it, and a note of which form it came from.

Information collected automatically

Our website host records standard technical information for every visit — your IP address, your browser type, and which page you asked for — in order to serve the site and protect it from abuse. We do not use this to identify you, and we do not build profiles from it.

What we deliberately do not collect

• No health or medical information. There is no allergies box, no injuries box, no medical history field anywhere on this site. The note under the message box asks you not to type health details there either — raise those with an instructor in person, where they belong.
• No dates of birth and no ages. The form never asks how old anyone is.
• No payment details. You cannot pay, book, or enrol on this website. Nothing on this site takes a card number.
• No accounts or passwords for visitors. There is nothing to sign up for.
• No analytics, no advertising pixels, no tracking scripts. There is no Google Analytics on this site, no Meta or Facebook pixel, no session recording, and no advertising network of any kind.

3. Why we use it, and what we never do with it

We use what you send us for one purpose: to answer you and talk to you about training at American Karate Center. That includes replying to your question, arranging a trial class, and following up if we have not heard back.

We do not sell your information, exchange it for anything of value, rent it, or hand it to advertisers. We do not use it for targeted advertising, and we do not use it to make automated decisions about you.

4. Who else sees it

Running a website means a handful of other companies necessarily handle some of your information. This is the complete list for this site.

We may also share information if the law requires it — a court order, a lawful request from an authority — or if we ever sell or transfer the business, in which case enquiries would pass to the new owner under this same policy.

5. Cookies and similar technologies

This website sets no cookies of its own. It does not store anything in your browser to recognise you, and it has no advertising or analytics cookies.

One thing is worth being straight about: the Google map in our contact section is loaded from Google, and Google may set its own cookies when it loads. That happens as the map comes into view. If you would rather it did not, most browsers let you block third-party cookies, and the rest of this page works perfectly well without the map.

Our staff-only admin page keeps a small marker in the browser to remember a signed-in device. That is on the admin side and never runs for visitors.

6. Children

We teach children — our Kids Karate program starts at age 5 — but this website is written for adults. It is aimed at parents and at adult students, and the contact form is meant to be filled in by an adult.

We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13, and there is nothing on this site that asks a child for their name, age, birthday, or anything else. If you are a parent enquiring about your child, you do not need to give us your child’s name or age on this form — your own name and a note of what you are interested in is plenty, and we will take the rest in person or on the phone.

If you believe a child under 13 has sent us information through this website, call us on 804-323-1954 and we will delete it.

7. How long we keep it

We keep your enquiry for as long as we are in touch with you about training, and afterwards as a record of who has contacted the school. There is no automatic deletion timer on this website — we are telling you that plainly rather than quoting a retention period we do not actually enforce. If you want your enquiry removed sooner, ask us and we will remove it; see the next section.

The technical logs kept by our website host are held on their systems, on their schedule, not ours.

8. Your choices

Whoever you are and wherever you live, you can ask us to:

• Tell you what we hold about you from this website.
• Correct it if it is wrong.
• Delete it. We will remove your enquiry from our database.
• Stop contacting you. Tell us and we will stop.

Call 804-323-1954 or write to us at 10910 Southlake Ct, North Chesterfield, VA 23236. We will need to be reasonably sure it is really you before we hand over or delete anything, which usually just means confirming a detail from the enquiry itself. We do not charge for this.

Virginia residents: Virginia has a consumer data protection law that gives residents rights over their personal data. It applies to businesses above a certain size, and a single martial arts school is well below that line — but the requests above are open to you regardless, and we will honour them. We do not sell personal data and we do not use it for targeted advertising, so there is nothing here to opt out of.

9. How we protect it

Our database is locked down so that the website itself can only add a new enquiry — it cannot read anyone’s. Reading enquiries requires a signed-in staff account on a separate, search-engine-blocked admin page, protected by a password, with passkey sign-in available on enrolled devices. The whole site is served over an encrypted connection.

No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. What we can say is that we keep the amount of information we hold about you as small as the job allows.

10. Changes to this policy

If we change how any of this works, we will update this page and change the effective date and version number at the top. The current version is the one shown there.

11. Contact us