Privacy Policy

Last updated: 10 October 2026

You tell us about yourself and your academy when you book a call, join, cancel or write to us. We use it to answer you and to run your membership. We are in the United States, so that is where your details are held. We do not sell them. We only send you marketing if you tick a box asking for it, and you can stop it at any time. You can ask to see, correct or delete what we hold. If you think we have got it wrong, you can complain to us, and to the UK’s data protection regulator.

1. Who we are

This website is run by the Machado Method Jiu-Jitsu (MMJJ) Association. The association is operated by Alliance of Divine Love Inc, Affiliate Chapel 2317, CMJJ Headquarters. “We” and “us” mean the association and the organisation that operates it.

We decide how and why your personal information is used. In UK data protection law that makes us the “controller”. We are based in Texas, in the United States:

Machado Method Jiu-Jitsu (MMJJ) Association
2201 Midway Rd, STE 312
Carrollton, TX 75006
United States

Phone: +1 (972) 989-8846
Email: [privacy email to be confirmed]

Our representative in the UK: [UK representative to be confirmed]

We have not appointed a data protection officer. Questions about privacy go to the email address above.

This notice covers this website. It follows the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).

2. What we collect

Your contact details. Your name, email address and phone number, and your company name and VAT number if you give them.
Addresses. Your billing address, and your academy and delivery addresses if they differ, when you join.
Details about your academy. Your academy’s name, website, Google Business Profile and social media links, and what you tell us about your school, your students and your teaching.
Membership details. Your membership tier, belt rank, and kit and clothing sizes when you join; your join date, chosen end date, reasons for leaving and feedback when you cancel.
Details about your instructors. The names and email addresses of instructors you list, so they can be given access to the members’ area. Please tell them you are sharing their details and show them this notice.
What you write to us. The topic you pick and the message you send through a form or by email.
Your marketing choices. Whether you ticked a box to get news by text or by email, the words next to the box, and the date and time.
Technical information. Your IP address, browser type, device type and the pages you visit on this site, as recorded in standard server logs.

We do not ask for special category information through this site, such as information about your health, religion or ethnic origin. Please do not put it in a form or a message.

3. How we collect it

From you. When you book a call, fill in the onboarding form, the membership cancellation request form or the contact form, or when you call, text or email us.
Automatically. When your browser loads a page, our website host records basic technical information, such as your IP address and the page you asked for.
From someone else. An academy owner may give us an instructor’s name and email address. Our service providers tell us whether a text or email reached you, and whether you replied STOP.

Fields marked “required” on a form are the ones we need to do what you are asking. If you leave them out, we cannot book the call, set up the membership or process the cancellation.

4. Why we use it, and our lawful basis

UK law says we must have a lawful basis for each use. These are ours.

To book your call with the association director, remind you of it and follow up. Lawful basis: taking steps you asked for before a contract.
To set up and run your membership, your billing details and your instructors’ access to the members’ area. Lawful basis: our contract with you. For your instructors’ details, our legitimate interest in giving access to the people you name.
To process a cancellation request and confirm your end date. Lawful basis: our contract with you.
To learn from the feedback you give when you leave. Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in improving the association.
To answer your questions and pass your message to the right person. Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in replying to people who write to us.
To send you news by text or by email. Lawful basis: your consent. We only do this if you ticked the box, and you can withdraw your consent at any time (section 11).
To keep the site working and protect our forms from spam and abuse. Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in running a secure website.
To keep billing and other records, and to deal with legal claims and requests. Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in meeting our legal duties in the United States and defending our rights, and a legal obligation where UK law places one on us.

Where we rely on a legitimate interest, you can object (section 9).

We do not use your information to make decisions about you by automated means alone, and we do not build profiles of you.

We use a small number of service providers to run this site and handle your requests. They may use your information only to provide their service to us, and not for their own purposes.

Website hosting. The company that hosts this site and receives your form submissions.
Customer records and messaging. The platform that stores your form submissions and sends our emails and text messages.
Call scheduling. The booking calendar you use to pick a time for your call with the association director.
Members’ area. The platform that holds the free courses and, for members, the monthly lessons.

We may also share information with our professional advisers, and with a court, regulator or law enforcement body when the law requires it.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with other organisations for their own marketing.

6. Where your information is held

We are in the United States, and so are our service providers. Your information is sent to the United States and held there.

The UK has not made adequacy regulations for the United States as a whole. It has made them for US organisations that are certified to the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (the “UK-US data bridge”). Where a service provider is not certified, we must use a safeguard that UK law accepts, such as the International Data Transfer Agreement.

The safeguard we use with each service provider: [transfer safeguards to be confirmed]

You can ask us for more detail, or for a copy of a safeguard, using the contact details in section 1.

7. How long we keep it

Call bookings and enquiries that do not lead to membership: 2 years from your last contact with us.
Records for active members: for as long as you are a member, and until you ask us to delete them.
Billing records for members: 7 years.
Marketing consent records: for as long as we keep your phone number or email address, so we can show what you agreed to.

After that, we delete the information or remove anything that identifies you.

8. How we protect it

We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your information from loss, misuse and access by people who should not see it. No system is perfectly secure, so we cannot promise that your information will never be exposed. If a breach is likely to put you at high risk, we will tell you without undue delay, and we will report it to the UK regulator where the law requires it.

9. Your rights

You have the right to:

Be told how we use your information. That is what this notice is for.
See the personal information we hold about you, and get a copy.
Have it corrected if it is wrong or incomplete.
Have it deleted. We may keep what we need for legal reasons.
Restrict how we use it while a question about it is sorted out.
Receive it in a common file format, or have it sent to another organisation, where we hold it because of a contract or your consent.
Object to any use that rests on our legitimate interests. We will stop unless we have a strong reason to continue.
Object to marketing. If you object to marketing, we always stop.
Withdraw consent at any time. This does not affect what we did before you withdrew it.

To use any of these rights, email [privacy email to be confirmed] or call +1 (972) 989-8846. It is free. We will answer within one month. If a request is complex we may need up to two more months, and we will tell you why. We may ask you to confirm who you are before we act, so that nobody else can see or change your information.

10. How to complain

If you are unhappy with how we have used your information, please tell us first. Email [privacy email to be confirmed], or write to the address in section 1. We will let you know within 30 days that we have your complaint, look into it, and tell you the outcome without undue delay.

You can also complain at any time to the Information Commission, the UK’s data protection regulator, which is known as the ICO: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

11. Messages and marketing

Messages about what you asked for. If you give us a phone number or an email address, we may call, text or email you about the thing you came to us for: your call with the association director, setting up your membership, your cancellation request, or a reply to your question. These are not marketing, so we do not ask you to tick a box for them.

Marketing. We send news about the curriculum, events and the association by text or by email only if you ticked the box for that channel. The boxes are separate, they start unticked, and you never have to tick one to send a form or to become a member.

Stopping marketing. You can stop at any time, free of charge:

reply STOP to any marketing text;
use the unsubscribe link in any marketing email; or
email [privacy email to be confirmed] or call us, and we will stop both.

Who the messages come from. Every message says it is from Machado Method.

Your phone number. We do not give or sell your phone number or email address to anyone else for marketing.

This section is part of our Privacy Policy.

12. Cookies

This site does not set cookies of its own. It does not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels or an analytics tool. If we add one, we will name it here and ask for your consent first where the law requires it.

Two things on this site come from other companies:

Video. A video on this site is hosted by Vimeo. Nothing loads from Vimeo until you press play. When you do, Vimeo sets cookies on your device. The play button says so before you press it.
Call booking. The booking calendar opens on a separate page run by our scheduling provider, which may set cookies it needs to take your booking.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings.

13. Children

This site is for academy owners and instructors. It is not aimed at children, and our forms are for people aged 18 or over. If you believe a child has sent us personal information, email [privacy email to be confirmed] and we will delete it.

14. Changes to this notice

When we change this notice, we update the date at the top of this page. If a change affects how we use information we already hold, we will say so at the top of this page before the change takes effect. To see an earlier version, email [privacy email to be confirmed].

Our Terms of Service explain the rules for using this site.