Terms of Entry

This photo contest is run by Patrick Österlund in collaboration with Shockholm Halloween Parade (SHP). In these terms, “the organizer” means Patrick Österlund, who is also responsible for your personal data (see the privacy policy).

For photo requirements, judging, voting, and prizes, see the rules and judging criteria.

Who can enter

The contest is open to all attendees of Shockholm Halloween Parade 2026 Photo Contest. Participants must be present at the event, the photos must be taken on the day of the event, and participants must register with a valid email address.

Rights and data use

By entering the contest, you grant the organizer permission to use your photos in connection with Shockholm Halloween Parade 2026 Photo Contest (promotion, social media, recap materials). You retain copyright of your photos. When your photos are used in connection with the contest, your display name is given as the photographer. If you would rather have your real name used, you are welcome to contact us.

GDPR & your data

We collect your email address, display name, and optional phone number when you register. Your phone number is used only to contact winners and is never shown publicly.

We process this information on the basis of performing the contest you've entered — fulfilling these terms — not general marketing consent.

You have the right to access, correct, or receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you. To exercise this right, contact the organizer via the contact page — requests are handled directly by the organizer, there is no automated self-service portal.

We don't keep your contact details indefinitely. Once the organizer marks the contest concluded, your email, phone number, and login are automatically anonymized 3 months later. Your photo, display name, and vote counts remain visible in the public entries and results, since that's part of what you agreed to by entering.

If your photo shows other people who are identifiable — for example, someone in the crowd at Shockholm Halloween Parade 2026 Photo Contest — you are responsible for making sure you have the right to publish their image.

Right to erasure

You may also request full erasure of your account, photo submissions, and personal data at any time, rather than waiting for automatic anonymization, by contacting the organizer via the contact page. This removes your photo(s) from the contest entirely — different from automatic anonymization above, which only scrubs contact details and keeps your entry in the public entries.

You can also ask for only your personal details to be removed, with “Ask to be deleted” on My page: your name, email address and phone number are removed and your photos stay in the contest without your name. Even after a full erasure, the organizer may keep photos that have already been used to promote Shockholm Halloween Parade 2026 Photo Contest (promotion, social media, recap materials, see “Rights and data use” above), since material that is already published cannot always be withdrawn.

Cookies & browser storage

This site stores only what is strictly necessary to make it work, or what you've explicitly chosen yourself (like your language). The one optional exception is Google Analytics, which stays off unless you accept it in the cookie notice. We use no advertising cookies.

• Session cookie (connect.sid) — keeps you signed in and protects forms against forgery. Expires after 1 hour of inactivity.
• Language cookie (locale) — remembers whether you're viewing the site in English or Swedish. Kept for 1 year.
• Voting ballot cookie (ballot) — set only if you open the voting page without being signed in, when the organizer has opened voting to everyone. It holds a random ID with no name or email attached, so the site can count your votes against the per-person limit and let you change them. Kept for 90 days.
• Google Analytics cookies (_ga and _ga_LD8VTR4S78) — only set if you accept analytics in the cookie notice. They give Google Analytics a random ID so we can count visits and see which pages are used. Kept for up to 2 years, or until you withdraw under “Cookie settings”. Never used for signed-in administrators or judges.
• Theme preference (stored in your browser, not a cookie) — remembers your light/dark mode choice. Kept until you clear your browser data.
• Cookie choice (stored in your browser, not a cookie) — remembers whether you accepted or declined analytics, so the notice doesn't keep reappearing. Kept until you clear your browser data.
• Voting reminder (stored in your browser, not a cookie) — remembers that you've already seen the "voting is open" pop-up. Cleared when you close this browser tab.

The necessary items and your own preferences don't need separate consent under EU and Swedish law (the ePrivacy rules, implemented via Lagen om elektronisk kommunikation). Analytics cookies do, so they are only set after you click “Accept analytics”. You can withdraw that at any time under “Cookie settings” in the footer.

What we do with this information

• We use the necessary items only to run the site: keep you signed in, show the site in your language and theme, and count each person's votes once. None of it is used for advertising or profiling, and none of it is sold or passed on to advertisers or other third parties.
• Your session cookie ties your browser to a login session held in the site's own database. The ballot ID is only linked to the votes cast with it, never to a name or email address.
• If you accept analytics, Google Analytics receives information about your visit — pages viewed, approximate location, device and browser type — tied to a random ID, so the organizer can see usage statistics. We don't use it for advertising: ads personalization and Google signals are switched off, and Google keeps the data for 2 months. Google acts as our processor and the data may be processed outside the EU. If you decline or withdraw, no further analytics data is sent and the analytics cookies are removed from your browser.
• When a vote is cast, we also store scrambled one-way (salted hash) versions of the voter's IP address and browser type with it, so ballot stuffing can be investigated afterwards. The original IP address is not stored with the vote. The hashes are deleted automatically 3 months after the contest is concluded; the votes themselves remain part of the results.
• The site is delivered through Cloudflare, which handles visitors' IP addresses in transit in order to serve and protect it. We set no other cookies. Cloudflare sets none on normal visits; only if it needs to check that a visitor is not a bot can it set a security cookie (cf_clearance), which is needed for that check alone.

Changes to these terms

The organizer may update these terms at any time. Continued participation after an update constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.