Boardgammon Privacy Policy

1. What we collect

Apps covered by this policy

“The apps” in this policy means the Backgammon: Boardgammon mobile app (com.boardgammon.backgammon), the Checkers Crown mobile app (com.boardgammon.checkers), and the Chess Moment mobile app (com.boardgammon.chess), each on iOS and Android. It also covers the three browser games at boardgammon.com/play,boardgammon.com/checkers/play, and boardgammon.com/chess/play. The apps use the same Boardgammon account and service, so the account, social graph, purchase entitlements, and data-request tools described here apply across all of them. Device-local settings are checked by each app installation, and so are the Google advertising-consent choices in Backgammon: Boardgammon and Checkers Crown. Game-specific records apply only to the game you use: backgammon records can include dice and cube actions, checkers records include checker moves and captures, and chess records include chess moves.

Account and identity

• Email address when you sign in by email code or through Apple, Google, or Google Play Games.
• Display name and the Boardgammon user ID we mint for your account.
• Provider subject identifiers for Apple, Google, Google Play Games, and email sign-in.
• An optional avatar photo, only when you choose and upload one from the profile editor.

Gameplay

• Match state, moves, dice commit-reveal proofs, and the replay hash chain that makes online games auditable.
• Ratings, games-played counters, puzzle progress, streaks, and daily puzzle activity.

Chess Moment game clips

If you have a saved Chess Moment account (not a guest profile), you can make a short video of a finished game. We render it on our own servers from the game's moves; nothing is recorded from your screen or camera. In an online game the video and its link show both players' Chess Moment display names, the names you already see on the result screen (an opponent without one appears as “Opponent”, and you as “Me” if you have none); against the AI you appear by name and the other side as “AI” with its level; in a pass-and-play game both sides appear as a colour. The video never shows ratings or clocks. Anyone who has the link can watch it, and apps you paste the link into may show a preview with a still image and the video. You can delete a clip at any time in the app, and its link stops working; deleting your chess data or your account deletes all of your clips and their links too. We cannot recall copies that have already been downloaded or shared elsewhere. To save space we may remove a stored video file; the link keeps working and the clip is made again from the game's moves.

Social and safety

• Table reactions and canned-message catalog IDs. Boardgammon does not support free-form chat in v1.
• Friend relationships, blocks, mutes, and abuse reports.

Notifications, purchases, and diagnostics

• Push tokens and the app version / locale received with them.
• Purchase entitlement state for Pro, coin packs, and themes. Apple, Google, or Stripe handle payment details directly; Boardgammon does not receive or store full card numbers.
• Crash and performance telemetry through Sentry.
• Product-usage analytics through Google Analytics for Firebase in the mobile apps. On Android it can also be used for Google ad measurement, as described below.
• Anonymous counts of the steps of the Pro offer, on our own server, as described below.
• Which of the games you open on which day, on our own server, as described below.
• Which ad campaign or link brought you to one of the games, as described below.

How we know which ad or link brought you

We advertise the games, and to spend that budget sensibly we need to know which campaigns actually bring players. So, the first time an app or browser game is opened, it reports how it was installed or reached, once, to our own server:

• On iOS, the app asks Apple for an Apple Search Ads attribution token. Our server sends that token to Apple's attribution service, which answers whether the install came from an Apple Search Ads campaign. If it did, we store the campaign, ad group, keyword, and ad identifiers and the country or region Apple returns — numeric identifiers, not names. We delete the token once Apple has answered, or once it has become too old to use. RevenueCat, which handles purchases for us, also receives the token so it can report purchases by campaign, and Google Analytics for Firebase in the iOS apps may record the same Apple Search Ads campaign. This attribution does not use the advertising identifier and does not depend on App Tracking Transparency. Backgammon: Boardgammon on iOS does separately ask for App Tracking Transparency permission, so that the ads shown in offline games can be more relevant; your answer there only affects ads and Google ad signals in that app. Checkers Crown and Chess Moment do not ask for it.
• On Android, the app reads the Google Play install referrer: the campaign tags attached to the Google Play link you installed from (such asutm_source or utm_campaign) and Google's ad click identifier when there is one, together with when that link was clicked and when the install began.
• On the web — /play, /checkers/play, and/chess/play — if the address you arrived on carries an ad click identifier (from Google, Microsoft, Meta, TikTok, or X) or campaign tags, the game sends those values once to our own API. They are kept in memory only while the page loads and are not stored in your browser.

The report is tied to the install identifier the app already keeps, and when an account is created or signed in from that device we link the result to the account and record the kind of campaign on it (for example “Apple Search Ads” or “Google Ads”). We use this only to measure and budget our own advertising. Nothing is uploaded back to any ad network, and we do not use it to choose which ads you see.

We do this on the basis of our legitimate interest in measuring our own advertising, in every country, including the EEA, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. You have the right to object: email[email protected] from the address tied to your account (or tell us your Boardgammon user ID) and we will delete the attribution data linked to your account. Ad click identifiers and the raw install referrer are deleted 90 days after they are received; the campaign-level identifiers stay with the account until the account is deleted.

Google ad measurement signals on Android

On Android, the apps tell Google Analytics for Firebase which advertising uses of app data are allowed, through Google's consent mode. What they allow depends on where you are and what you have chosen:

• Outside the EEA, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, the Android apps let Google Analytics for Firebase use your device's advertising identifier and your app activity to measure how our ads perform. Ad personalisation stays off unless you turn onPersonalised ads in Backgammon: Boardgammon or Checkers Crown; Chess Moment never turns it on.
• In the EEA, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, Backgammon: Boardgammon and Checkers Crown follow the choices you made in Google's consent form (described in section 6). Chess Moment has no such form and keeps these signals off.
• In Backgammon: Boardgammon and Checkers Crown, turning off usage analytics in Settings → Privacy & data turns all of these signals off too. If an app cannot tell which region you are in or what you chose, it keeps them off.
• Chess Moment has no usage-analytics switch yet. Outside the EEA, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, its ad-measurement signals stay on until you delete your chess profile or your account in Chess Moment's Settings → Privacy(which turns them off on that device) or uninstall the app. You can also delete or reset your advertising ID in your Android device settings, and you can object by email as described above.
• None of this applies to the iOS apps or to the browser games.

Counting the Pro offer

To see whether the Pro offer works, all three games count its steps on our own server, on iOS, on Android, and in the browser games: the offer was shown, a plan was switched, a purchase was started, and whether it completed (and whether as a free trial), was cancelled, failed, or was restored. Each step records only the game and platform, which screen showed the offer and what was tapped to reach it, the price layout and plan shown, whether a free trial was offered, the kind of error for a failed purchase, and when it happened.

• It is anonymous: no account, device, install, or advertising identifier, no IP address, and nothing you typed is kept with it. Each step carries a random number of its own, used only so that a step sent twice is counted once. Steps sent while the app is signed in to one of our own test accounts are marked as test traffic, without keeping which account.
• It goes only to our own servers, is not shared with an analytics company, and is deleted after 400 days.
• In Backgammon: Boardgammon and Checkers Crown, turning off usage analytics in Settings → Privacy & data turns it off too. Chess Moment has no such switch yet; deleting your chess profile or your account in itsSettings → Privacy turns it off on that device.

Which game you open, and when

When one of the games starts and checks your session with our server, or when you sign in, our server notes which game it was and the date (the day only, in UTC), linked to your account or guest profile: at most one entry per game per day, and nothing about what you do in the game. We use it only to measure whether players come back to each game — for example, how many of the people who first played in a given week opened the game again a week later.

• It stays on our own servers, is not shared with an analytics company, and is deleted after 400 days. It is included when you download your data, and it is deleted with your account.
• We do this on the basis of our legitimate interest in knowing whether each game keeps the players who try it (section 6). You can objectat any time: email[email protected] from the address tied to your account (or tell us your Boardgammon user ID), and we will delete these records and stop keeping them for your account.

Website statistics

Pages on boardgammon.com — everything except the two browser games at/play and /checkers/play — are counted byUmami, which we run ourselves on our own server in Germany. It records the page you opened, the site that linked you and any campaign tag on the link, your browser, operating system, screen size, browser language, the language the page was served in, and an approximate location. It also counts two deliberate actions: clicking an App Store or Google Play badge, and clicking a link into a browser game.

The chess browser game at /chess/play is counted the same way, into a separate Umami site of its own, and it is the only game surface Umami sees. It records the same page-level facts listed above, including each screen you open inside the game, because the address bar changes as you move around it. It records nothing about your play: no moves, no opponents, no results. We count it because the browser edition is currently the only place our chess game exists, and we need to know whether it is worth continuing. It sets no cookie, stores nothing on your device, and honours a browser “Do Not Track” signal, exactly like the counter on the rest of the site.

• It sets no cookie and stores nothing on your device.
• Your IP address is used at the moment of the request to work out the approximate location and to derive a one-way visitor hash, and is then discarded. We never store it, and the hash is re-salted every month, so visits cannot be linked back to you or joined up across months.
• The data never leaves our own infrastructure, is not shared with an analytics company, and cannot follow you to another website.

2. Optional in-match voice chat

Voice chat is optional, available only to the two seated opponents in a live realtime match, and requires both players to opt in. Either player can mute the other at any time. Boardgammon uses WebRTC with relay-only TURN transport.

• Boardgammon does not record or store audio content.
• We store only voice metadata: who called whom, when the call started and ended, duration, end reason, and relay-usage estimates.
• We also store a self-attested date of birth and a voice opt-in flag so voice can fail closed when age or consent is missing.
• Cloudflare Realtime TURN relays encrypted media and necessarily sees connection metadata and IP addresses as a service provider.
• The safety claim is limited to hiding each player's IP from the other player. It does not hide IPs from Cloudflare or Boardgammon ops.

3. What we do not collect

Boardgammon does not collect precise location, contacts from your device address book, calendar, videos, health data, free-form chat transcripts, or recorded audio. We do not sell personal data. The only photo the apps collect is an optional avatar that you explicitly choose and upload from the profile editor.

4. Retention

• Account rows, social data, push tokens, and entitlement state are retained until deletion is requested.
• Replay and fair-play audit records are retained so completed online games remain verifiable. When an account is deleted, player identity in past game history is anonymized instead of removing the audit chain.
• Chess fair play (Chess Moment only): for rated games between two people, the server derives engine-agreement, think-time and own-clock-disconnect signals from data it already holds — the analysis you can see, the server clock and the connection. There is no device-side monitoring of any kind. Signal rows are deleted 90 days after the game unless a reviewer has opened a case, in which case they live with the case (24 months after it closes); a sanction record and its appeal stay for the life of the account. Nothing is computed for AI, practice, friend or local games. The fair-play statement says what is claimed and who decides.
• Install attribution (section 1): ad click identifiers and the raw Google Play install referrer are deleted 90 days after they are received, and an Apple Search Ads token is deleted once Apple has answered or the token has expired. The campaign-level identifiers and the kind of campaign stay with the account until the account is deleted.
• Which game you opened on which day (section 1): deleted after 400 days.
• Diagnostics retain the provider defaults, typically 30 to 90 days.
• Short-lived auth codes are deleted on use or expiry.

5. Account deletion and data requests

Data controls are available in the apps. Scope matters: deleting a Chess Moment profile preserves the shared sign-in and sibling games; deleting the shared account affects all connected games. Some cleanup and processor checks continue in the background. For Chess-specific instructions and browser access without installing the app, visitChess Moment — Privacy & data.

Export a copy of your data

1. In the app, open Settings → Privacy & data → Download my data.
2. Use the signed-in account whose data you need. Chess Moment prepares a private download and shows its status; ready downloads expire after 24 hours. Older shared exports display a bounded set of records. Contact us for a full personal-data request or for records not included in an export.
3. The archive is a single JSON document covering your profile, consent settings, match history for backgammon and checkers, coin wallet balance and ledger, social graph, referrals, notification settings, the days you opened each game, and feedback you have submitted.

Delete your account

1. In the app, open Settings → Account → Delete account.
2. Confirm the deletion request from the signed-in account.
3. Email [email protected] from the address tied to the account only if you cannot reach the in-app flow — for example if you have lost access to the sign-in address.

Deleted data includes the account row, linked provider subjects, push tokens, social rows, blocks, mutes, reports filed by the user, and voice metadata rows tied to the account. The install-attribution record is unlinked from the account, and its click identifier, raw referrer, and any remaining token are erased.

Completed match audit logs are kept in anonymized form so previously played online games remain provably fair and replayable. Voice audio is never stored, so there is no audio archive to delete.

Authenticated API surfaces also exist for export and deletion:GET https://api.boardgammon.com/privacy/export (the shared record export),GET https://api.boardgammon.com/privacy/training-export (AI training contributions only), andDELETE https://api.boardgammon.com/privacy/users/{userId}.

6. European privacy rights (UK/EU GDPR)

This section applies if you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland. It is the information we owe you under Articles 13 and 14 of the General Data Protection Regulation, and it sits alongside the rest of this policy rather than replacing it.

Who is responsible for your data

• Controller: Peyman Ghaderkourehpaz, trading as Boardgammon. An EU establishment is being set up and will become the controller of record for players in the EEA; this page will name it, and the date it takes over, before that happens.
• Registered address: to be published — please use the email below in the meantime.
• Contact for privacy questions and data-subject requests:[email protected]. A human reads this address; you do not need to use a special form or subject line.
• We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer. Boardgammon is a small operation that does not carry out large-scale monitoring or process special categories of data, so Article 37 does not require one. If that changes we will name one here.

Why we process your data, and on what legal basis

Some of this processing is essential: it is what the game is made of, and it cannot be switched off while you still have an account. The rest is genuinely optional and you control it.

Essential — necessary to provide the game you asked for (Article 6(1)(b))

• Creating and running your account, signing you in, and keeping you signed in across devices.
• Running matches: the server generates every roll and validates every move, because the client is not trusted in online play. Your moves, the dice commit-reveal proofs, and the replay hash chain are the game record — without them there is no provably fair match to play.
• Ratings, matchmaking, tournament standings, coin balances, puzzle and lesson progress, and your purchase entitlements.
• Showing your display name and rating to the opponent you are seated with, and in match history and leaderboards, as described in the Terms.

Because this processing is what the service is, there is no way to object to it individually. The way to stop it is to delete your account (section 5) — and there is a self-serve button for exactly that.

Our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f))

• Fair play and anti-cheat. We review play patterns for engine assistance, collusion, and rating manipulation. Our interest is keeping a competitive game honest; the interest of every other player points the same way, and the data used is your own play, which we already hold to run the game. You can object — see below.
• Safety and abuse handling. Blocks, mutes, and reports, so players can protect themselves and we can act on harassment.
• Security and abuse prevention. Rate limiting, sign-in-code throttling, and short-lived web-server access logs.
• Crash and performance diagnostics through Sentry, so we can fix what breaks. Sentry runs in its EU region for us, and the data is technical rather than behavioural.
• Measuring our own advertising (install attribution). Which Apple Search Ads campaign, Google Play campaign link, or tagged web link brought you, linked to your account, as described in section 1. Our interest is knowing which campaigns bring players so we do not waste the advertising budget; against that sits data limited to campaign identifiers, click identifiers that are deleted after 90 days, and nothing sent back to any ad network. This applies in every region. You can object at any time by emailing[email protected], and we will delete the attribution data linked to your account.
• Whether players come back. Which of the games you opened on which day, linked to your account or guest profile, as described in section 1. Our interest is knowing whether each game keeps the players who try it, which is how we decide what to fix and what to build next; against that sits one date per game per day, kept on our own servers, reaching no analytics company, and deleted after 400 days. This applies in every region. You can object at any time by emailing[email protected], and we will delete these records and stop keeping them for your account.
• Aggregate website statistics for boardgammon.com, so we can tell which pages and which languages are worth writing more of — and, for the chess browser game, whether a browser edition is worth continuing at all. Our interest is knowing whether what we publish works; against that sits a measurement that sets no cookie, keeps no IP address, produces only counts, and cannot follow you anywhere else — which is also why it is here rather than under consent, and why this site has no cookie banner. You can object under Article 21, and a browser "Do Not Track" signal already switches it off. This covers the marketing site and the chess browser game at/chess/play, and nothing else. Product-usage analytics inside the games through Firebase — a different thing, tied to your account rather than to a page — is a separate, consent-based matter, immediately below.

Your consent (Article 6(1)(a)) — optional, and withdrawable at any time

• Optional in-match voice chat. Both seated players must opt in, and either can mute or end it. Audio is never recorded.
• Product-usage analytics inside the game, through Firebase Analytics. In the mobile apps it is active and you can turn it off underSettings → Privacy & data; on Android, turning it off also turns off the Google ad measurement signals described in section 1. In the browser version at/play the Firebase SDK is also switched on and loads when the game starts — so Google's servers see your IP address and browser details at that moment — but the Google Analytics tag it then tries to load is blocked by the game's own content-security policy, so no usage events currently reach Google Analytics from the browser. We would rather describe that precisely than claim the browser game carries no analytics at all, which is what this page used to say and was wrong. If we change that, we will change this paragraph in the same release.
• Counting the Pro offer (section 1). It is anonymous, first-party, and reaches no analytics company; it follows the same switch in every app that has one.
• Personalised advertising in the mobile apps, which is off by default. In the EEA, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland it can be enabled only after the relevant consent has been given through the Google consent process described below. Refusing that consent does not block either game; where advertising can still be served, it is limited or non-personalised rather than personalised.
• Re-engagement notifications and marketing email. Game notifications you asked for — your opponent moved, your turn in a correspondence match — are part of the service. Anything that is us trying to win you back is marketing, and needs your opt-in.
• Finding friends from your contacts. This is not enabled in the current store builds; the apps do not read or send your address-book contacts.

Withdrawing consent is as easy as giving it: the same switch turns it back off. For the Google advertising choices described below, useSettings → Privacy & data → Manage ad privacy choices to reopen the consent form. Withdrawal does not affect processing that already happened. Withdrawing consent for an optional feature never costs you access to either game, your rating, your coins, or your entitlements.

Google AdMob and European advertising consent

The mobile apps use Google AdMob where an ad placement is available. For users in the EEA, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, we use Google's certified consent management platform (CMP), delivered inside each app through Google's User Messaging Platform (UMP) SDK. One dedicated, published European-regulations message covers all four mobile app entries: Backgammon: Boardgammon on iOS and Android, and Checkers Crown on iOS and Android. Each app still requests the current consent status for its own installation and displays the form when Google says it is required; a message configured in the AdMob console is not, by itself, treated as consent.

The form identifies the advertising purposes and vendors and lets youconsent, do not consent, ormanage options purpose by purpose and vendor by vendor. The apps wait until UMP reports whether ads may be requested before making an AdMob request. Giving consent can make an ad request eligible for personalisation; refusing or withdrawing it keeps personalisation off and may result in non-personalised or limited ads. You can revisit the form at any time through the Manage ad privacy choices entry in either app.

On Android, the same choices also decide what Google Analytics for Firebase may do with app data for advertising: storing and reading information on your device, measuring ad performance, and — only if you have also turned on Personalised ads in the app — ad personalisation. If you have not consented to the relevant purposes, those signals stay off. Chess Moment does not show this form; in the EEA, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland it keeps those signals off.

Legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c))

• Keeping purchase, tax, and refund records for the period the applicable law requires, and responding to lawful requests and illegal-content notices under the Digital Services Act.

Whether you have to provide it

• Required to have an account: an email address or a linked Apple / Google / Google Play Games identity, and a display name. Without one of these we cannot create an account, though you can still play offline as a guest.
• Required to play online: the gameplay records described above. Not providing them means not playing online.
• Everything else is optional — voice chat, avatar photos, analytics, marketing, personalised ads. Declining costs you only the feature itself.
• Install attribution and the record of which game you open on which day are not a condition of anything and have no switch; you can object to either by email, as described in section 1.
• Date of birth is self-attested and used only to gate age-restricted features. If it is missing, those features fail closed rather than opening up.

Who receives your data

The full list of processors is in section 9. Beyond those, two things are worth naming explicitly because your browser contacts them directly when you play at boardgammon.com/play:

• Apple and Google — the sign-in libraries for “Sign in with Apple” and “Sign in with Google” are loaded from Apple's and Google's servers, which means those servers see your IP address and browser details when the game loads, before you choose a sign-in method.
• Google Fonts — the game may fetch a fallback font fromfonts.gstatic.com for characters our bundled fonts do not cover, which also discloses your IP address to Google. We are moving these fonts on-device so this request stops happening.

The rest of boardgammon.com — every page other than the game itself — loads entirely from our own servers: no advertising or social-media scripts, no third-party fonts, and no cookies at all. Those pages are counted by our own self-hosted Umami, described in section 1: the counter is served from this domain and reports toapi.boardgammon.com — our own server in Germany, not an analytics company's. Nothing about your visit to those pages is disclosed to a third party. The chess browser game at /chess/play carries that same counter, and it is the only game surface that does.

Sending data outside the EEA

Our servers and database are in Germany (Hetzner), and Sentry processes diagnostics for us in its EU region. Some processors are established in the United States: Apple, Google (including Firebase and AdMob), RevenueCat, Stripe, and Cloudflare. Where a recipient is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework we rely on the European Commission's adequacy decision for that framework; otherwise we rely on the Commission'sStandard Contractual Clauses. You can ask us which applies to a specific processor, and we will tell you.

How long we keep it

Section 4 sets out the periods. In GDPR terms the criteria are: account and profile data for as long as you have an account, then deleted on request; purchase records for the statutory tax-retention period; diagnostics for the provider default of roughly 30–90 days; sign-in codes until used or expired, whichever is first.

One category is deliberately different, and we would rather be plain about it than bury it. Completed online match records are kept indefinitely, because the hash-chained replay is what makes a finished game auditable — removing one player's moves would break the chain that proves the game was fair for the other player. When you delete your account we strip your identity from those records rather than deleting them, so what remains is a game, not a person.

Your rights

• Access (Art 15) — a copy of your data, plus this information. Self-serve: Settings → Privacy & data → Download my data.
• Portability (Art 20) — the same archive, as structured, machine-readable JSON.
• Erasure (Art 17) — self-serve: Settings → Account → Delete account, subject to the match-record limit above.
• Rectification (Art 16) — edit your profile in the app, or email us for anything you cannot reach.
• Restriction (Art 18) — ask us to pause processing while a dispute about accuracy or lawfulness is resolved.
• Objection (Art 21) — object to anything we do on the legitimate-interest basis above, including anti-cheat review. Objection to direct marketing is absolute: say no and we stop, with no balancing on our side.
• Withdraw consent (Art 7(3)) — any time, from the switch that granted it.
• Not to be subject to a purely automated decision (Art 22) — see below.

Export and deletion can be requested using the in-app controls. They act on the signed-in account, which is also how we verify it is really you. For anything else, email us. We answer within one month, and if a request is genuinely complex we may extend once by up to two further months, telling you why before we do. We do not charge for any of this.

Complaining about us

If you think we have handled your data unlawfully, please tell us first — it is usually the fastest fix. But you do not have to go through us: you have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority, in particular in the EEA country where you live, where you work, or where you think the problem happened. The Commission publishes the list of national authorities, and each one accepts complaints directly. Once our EU establishment is registered we will name its lead supervisory authority here. You also retain the right to go to court.

Cookies and on-device storage

Boardgammon uses no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies anywhere on boardgammon.com, and no analytics cookie either — the website statistics in section 1 are deliberately cookieless, which is why you have never seen a cookie banner here and why there is nothing to ask you about. What the game does store on your device is what it needs to work:

• Your sign-in token, so you are not asked for a code on every visit.
• Your settings, board theme, locale, learn-lesson progress, and an install identifier used to de-duplicate your own events.
• An offline database of your games, and a service-worker cache of the app itself, so the game keeps working on a bad connection.
• If you open an invite or referral link, the code from it, so the invite still works after you sign in.
• At checkout only, Stripe sets its own cookie for payment fraud prevention.

The items in that list are what we treat as strictly necessary for a service you actively asked for, which is the exemption in Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive. Clearing your browser storage signs you out and resets local progress; it does not delete your account.

Install attribution is described separately and is not part of that list: requesting the Apple Search Ads attribution token on iOS, reading the Google Play install referrer on Android, reading the campaign tags in the address you arrived on, reusing the install identifier to tie the report to an account, and a note on your device that the report has already been sent. We do these on the basis of our legitimate interest in measuring our own advertising, and you can object as described in section 1.

Children

Boardgammon is not directed at young children. You must be old enough to use online game services where you live — 13 in many countries, and 16 in some EEA member states, in which case that higher age applies to you. Voice chat additionally requires an 18+ self-attestation and both players' opt-in. We do not knowingly process the data of anyone below the applicable age; if you believe a child has an account, email us and we will delete it.

Automated decisions and profiling

We do not make decisions with legal or similarly significant effects about you by automated means alone, and we do not build advertising or demographic profiles ourselves: the campaign we attribute an install to is used only to measure our own advertising. On Android, Google may use app data for ad measurement, and for ad personalisation only if you turn Personalised ads on, as described in section 1. Anti-cheat systems and rating calculations do process your play automatically, but where the outcome affects your account — annulling a game, adjusting a rating, restricting or closing an account — a person makes that call, you get a statement of reasons saying whether automated means were involved, and you can appeal it free of charge under section 8.

7. California privacy rights (CCPA/CPRA)

This section applies to consumers resident in California and is provided under the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the CPRA. It describes our practices for the preceding 12 months.

Categories of personal information collected

• Identifiers — email address, display name, the Boardgammon user ID, provider subject identifiers for Apple, Google, Google Play Games, and email sign-in, push tokens, the install identifier, IP addresses observed by our infrastructure and voice relay, ad click identifiers from the link you arrived on, and — on Android, where permitted — the device advertising identifier used by Google Analytics for Firebase for ad measurement.
• Commercial information — purchase and entitlement state for Pro, coin packs, and themes, and the coin wallet ledger. We never receive full card numbers.
• Internet or other electronic network activity — gameplay and match records, dice commit-reveal proofs and replay hash chains, ratings and progress counters, app version and locale, crash and performance telemetry, product-usage analytics, which of the games you opened on which day, and the ad campaign, campaign tags, or Google Play install referrer that brought you.
• Audio-adjacent metadata — for optional in-match voice chat, who called whom, start and end times, duration, end reason, and relay-usage estimates. Voice audio content is never recorded or stored.
• Age-band information — a self-attested date of birth used to gate age-restricted features such as voice chat and contact discovery.
• Inferences — skill ratings and matchmaking suitability derived from your own play. We do not build advertising or demographic profiles ourselves.

Sources: you, your device, Apple (the Apple Search Ads campaign behind an iOS install), Google Play (the install referrer), and our service providers listed in section 9. Business purposes: operating and securing the game, matchmaking, fair-play auditing, purchases, support, product improvement, and measuring our own advertising.

Categories disclosed for a business purpose

In the preceding 12 months we disclosed identifiers, commercial information, and electronic network activity to the service providers and processors listed in section 9 — app stores and payment processors for purchases, the voice relay for connection metadata, diagnostics and analytics providers, the ad network where ads are shown, and our hosting provider. RevenueCat and Apple also receive the Apple Search Ads attribution token on iOS, and on Android Google Analytics for Firebase receives the advertising identifier and app activity for ad measurement where permitted, as described below and in section 1.

Sale and sharing

Boardgammon does not sell personal information, has not sold it in the preceding 12 months, and does not knowingly sell the personal information of consumers under 16 years of age. Personalized advertising is off by default: when it is off, ad requests are sent with the non-personalized flag set and, on Android, Google Analytics for Firebase is told not to use app data for ad personalization. It is turned on only by your own Personalised adsswitch in Backgammon: Boardgammon or Checkers Crown; Chess Moment has no such switch and never turns it on.

What the Android apps do send to Google, where permitted, is the device advertising identifier and app activity, so that Google Analytics for Firebase can measure how our ads perform (section 1). We do not use that to choose the ads you see. To stop it in Backgammon: Boardgammon or Checkers Crown, turn off usage analytics inSettings → Privacy & data; that switch turns off every Google ad signal from the app. Chess Moment has no such switch yet: there the signals stop when you delete your chess profile or account in its Settings → Privacy or uninstall the app, and on any Android device you can delete or reset the advertising ID in the device settings. We do not offer a separate "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" link: those controls are the ones we have, and you can also email us to exercise any right in this section.

Your rights

• Right to know — what we collect, use, and disclose about you, including a portable copy.
• Right to delete — deletion of the personal information we hold, subject to the limits below.
• Right to correct — correction of inaccurate personal information.
• Right to opt out — of sale, sharing, and of profiling for automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects. We do not sell personal information or profile you for such decisions. Personalized ads stay off unless you turn them on. In Backgammon: Boardgammon and Checkers Crown, turning off usage analytics stops the Android ad-measurement data described above; Chess Moment has no such switch yet, so use the other controls described above or email us.
• Right to limit use of sensitive personal information — we do not collect sensitive personal information as defined by the CPRA for purposes that trigger this right.
• Right to non-discrimination — exercising any of these rights will never change your price, your entitlements, your rating, or the features available to you. We do not offer financial incentives in exchange for personal information.

How to exercise your rights

The fastest route is self-serve and needs no verification email: useSettings → Privacy & data → Download my data to exercise the right to know, and Settings → Account → Delete account to exercise the right to delete. Both act on the signed-in account, which is how we verify the request. For correction, or if you cannot sign in, email[email protected] from the address tied to the account; we may ask for information matching what we already hold before we act. We respond within 45 days and may extend once by a further 45 days where permitted, telling you before we do.

Authorized agents. You may use an authorized agent to submit a request on your behalf. Send the request to the address above together with written permission signed by you, or a valid power of attorney. Unless a power of attorney is provided, we will also verify your identity directly and ask you to confirm that the agent is acting for you. Agent requests received without that proof are placed on hold rather than denied, and we tell the agent what is missing.

Limits: completed match audit logs are retained in anonymized form so previously played online games remain provably fair and replayable, and records required for tax, purchase, security, and fraud-prevention purposes are retained as permitted by law.

8. EU Digital Services Act — trader identity and illegal-content notices

Trader identity

Boardgammon acts as a trader toward consumers in the European Union within the meaning of the Digital Services Act and the Consumer Rights Directive. The trader behind the Boardgammon apps and boardgammon.com is:

• Trader name: Peyman Ghaderkourehpaz, trading as Boardgammon.
• Registered address:to be published — contact the email address below in the meantime.
• Contact email:[email protected]. This is also the single point of contact for recipients of the service, for Member State authorities, for the Commission, and for the Digital Services Coordinator. It accepts English.
• Trade register and registration number:to be published.
• VAT identification number:to be published.

Payments for in-app purchases are taken by Apple, Google, or Stripe as the merchant or payment processor for the relevant storefront; their own trader details apply to the payment itself.

Notice and action: reporting illegal content

Anyone can notify us of content or behaviour in Boardgammon they consider illegal. The primary route is the report flow already built into the app, so the report arrives with the match and account context attached:

1. Open the opponent's profile, or the in-match menu during or after a game, and chooseReport.
2. Pick the reason that fits and add any detail you want us to see.
3. Submit. The report is tied to your signed-in account and the reported account.

If you are not a player, or cannot reach the in-app flow, send the notice by email to[email protected] with "Illegal content notice" in the subject line.

A valid notice must contain all of the following:

• A sufficiently substantiated explanation of why you consider the content illegal.
• A clear indication of where it is — the Boardgammon display name or user ID, and the match, table, or profile where it appeared, with an approximate date and time.
• Your name and email address, except for notices about child sexual abuse material or certain other offences against children, which may be submitted anonymously.
• A statement confirming your good-faith belief that the information in the notice is accurate and complete.

What to expect. We send an acknowledgement to the email address in the notice without undue delay after we receive it. We then assess the notice in a timely, diligent, non-arbitrary and objective way, and notify you of our decision along with the reasons for it and the redress options below. Where we act against an account or its content — removing a display name, restricting features, suspending, or terminating — we also give the affected user a statement of reasons explaining the ground, the facts relied on, whether automated means were used, and how to appeal. Boardgammon does not support free-form chat, so most reports concern display names, reactions, and conduct rather than user-published text.

Complaints and redress

If you disagree with a decision — whether you filed the notice or were acted against — you can complain free of charge for six months from the decision by emailing[email protected] with "Complaint" in the subject line and the original decision. Complaints are reviewed by a person, not by automated means alone, and we reverse the decision without delay where the complaint shows it was wrong. Using this internal route does not affect your other options: you may pursue out-of-court dispute settlement before a body certified in your Member State under Article 21 DSA, and you retain the right to go to court. You may also lodge a complaint with the Digital Services Coordinator of your Member State.

9. Service providers and processors

• Apple App Store and Google Play for app distribution and in-app purchases.
• RevenueCat for product presentation, subscription lifecycle, entitlement validation, and purchase-state handling. On iOS it also receives the Apple Search Ads attribution token so it can report purchases by campaign.
• Apple's attribution service, which our server asks which Apple Search Ads campaign, if any, led to an iOS install (section 1).
• Stripe for secure payment processing of purchases made on boardgammon.com.
• Cloudflare for edge delivery and TLS across boardgammon.com, and Cloudflare Realtime TURN for encrypted relay-only voice media and connection metadata.
• Sentry for crash and performance telemetry, processed in Sentry's EU region.
• Google Analytics for Firebase for product-usage analytics in the mobile apps. On iOS it may record the Apple Search Ads campaign that brought you. On Android, where permitted (section 1), Google may also use the device advertising identifier and app activity to measure ad performance, and for ad personalisation only if you turn Personalised ads on. Its SDK also loads in the browser version of the game, which discloses your IP address and browser details to Google when the game starts, although the Google Analytics tag itself is currently blocked there by the game's content-security policy. Section 6 sets this out in full.
• Google AdMob for mobile ad delivery where applicable, and Google's certified CMP and UMP SDK for the advertising choices described in section 6. Depending on your region and choices, Google may process an IP address, app or device identifiers, coarse location, and ad impressions or interactions for ad delivery, fraud prevention, frequency capping, measurement, and — only where permitted — personalisation. There is no advertising on the web.
• Resend for outbound email that is not a sign-in code — sent from the separate subdomain news.boardgammon.com and processed in the EU. Sign-in codes are sent by our own mail server, deliberately kept apart from anything promotional.
• Apple and Google for the sign-in libraries the browser game loads, and Google Fonts for fallback characters our bundled fonts do not cover. Both see your IP address when the game loads; see section 6.
• Hetzner for production hosting in Germany.

Each of these processes the data under contract to provide its service to us. Where Google uses Android app data for ad measurement, or for ad personalisation when you have turned it on, section 1 describes when that happens and how to stop it. Nothing about which campaign brought you is uploaded back to any ad network. If you want to know which transfer safeguard covers a particular provider, ask — see section 6.

Website statistics are deliberately not on that list. We runUmami ourselves, on the same Hetzner server in Germany that runs the game, into our own database. There is no analytics vendor in the path, nothing is transferred outside the EEA for it, and no third party ever sees your visit to these pages or to the chess browser game.

10. Security and transport

Boardgammon uses HTTPS only. The production stack terminates TLS at Cloudflare and again at the origin. Voice media uses standard WebRTC DTLS-SRTP through relay-only TURN.

11. Changes to this policy

Material changes are announced in the app release notes and on this page. Minor wording and link corrections may be made without separate notice.

12. Contact

Boardgammon
Peyman Ghaderkourehpaz
[email protected]