Privacy Policy

Who we are

Puzzle Platform is operated by [Operator legal name, address and contact email, to be completed before publication], which decides how your personal data is used (the "controller").

For data that organizations and schools manage on the platform, such as their members' work and their students' progress, the organization decides and we process the data for it, under the Data Processing Agreement.

What we collect

Depending on how you use the platform:

• Account: email, password (stored only as a secure hash), username, display name, avatar, birth date (to check the minimum age), language and privacy preferences. If you sign in with Google, we receive the email and name of your Google account.
• Play: progress, completions, times, and the hints and reveals you used.
• Community: comments, ratings, reports and appeals.
• Creators and organizations: puzzles and their versions, publications, organization membership and roles, devices, webhooks and API keys (stored only as hashes).
• Billing: subscription status and invoices. Card details are handled by Stripe and never reach us.
• Support: tickets, messages and attachments.
• Security: sessions and signed-in devices, and the IP address and browser details in security logs.
• Usage analytics: events such as views, starts and completions. Without your consent they are counted anonymously, with no identifier.

If you play without an account, your progress stays on your device and we receive only anonymous counts.

What we don't do

• We show no advertising.
• We use no third-party trackers or third-party analytics services.
• We don't sell personal data or share it for advertising.
• We don't use browser fingerprinting.

Why we use it

• To provide the service you asked for (our contract with you): accounts, progress sync, publishing, billing and support.
• For our legitimate interests: security, preventing abuse, moderation, anonymous usage counts and improving the service.
• With your consent: the optional analytics identifier that lets us count unique players. You can withdraw consent at any time.
• To meet legal obligations, such as tax and accounting records.

Who we share it with

We use service providers that process data for us under contract:

• Google Cloud: hosting, database and file storage.
• Cloudflare: content delivery, DNS and protection against attacks.
• Stripe: payments, invoices and tax.
• Google sign-in: only if you choose to sign in with Google.
• An email delivery provider for account and notification emails [to be named before publication].

Creators and organizations see statistics about their own puzzles. They also see what players make public, such as comments and ranking entries, and teachers see the progress of the students in their classes.

Some providers process data outside your country, including outside the European Union. Where the law requires it, these transfers are protected by standard contractual clauses or an equivalent safeguard.

How long we keep it

These are our default retention periods:

• Progress of players without an account: on their device only, until they clear it.
• Progress saved on our servers for abandoned or inactive games: 12 months after the last activity.
• Completions: while the account exists; anonymized afterwards.
• Raw analytics events: 90 days.
• Daily analytics totals: 12 months for Creator plans and 36 months for organizations. Anonymous platform-wide totals are kept indefinitely.
• Deleted accounts: personal data erased 30 days after deletion.
• Deleted organizations: unpublished content erased after 90 days; published puzzles kept while they are published.
• Hidden or deleted comments: 90 days (for moderation), then erased.
• Moderation actions, bans and appeals: 2 years after they are resolved or expire.
• Support tickets: 2 years after closing; attachments 1 year.
• Audit logs: 2 years.
• Webhook delivery records: 30 days.
• Expired sessions and tokens: 30 days after they expire.
• Data exports: 7 days.
• Consent records: 3 years after consent is withdrawn or the account is deleted.

Backups are overwritten in their normal cycle.

Your choices

• Turn saving your progress on our servers on or off.
• Turn analytics on or off.
• Hide yourself from public rankings.
• See and sign out your sessions and devices.

Your rights: export and deletion

You can download a copy of your data in your settings. We prepare a JSON archive (your profile, content, play sessions, completions, comments and tickets, as applicable) and give you a link that works for 7 days.

You can delete your account in your settings. You are signed out everywhere at once and can no longer sign in; your comments are shown as written by a "deleted user"; your personal data is erased after 30 days; your completions are kept only in anonymized form, for statistics.

Organization owners can export and delete their organization's data. Published puzzles then follow the organization rules in the Terms of Service.

Depending on where you live (for example, under the GDPR in the European Union or state privacy laws in the United States), you also have the right to access, correct, restrict or object to the use of your data, and to complain to a data protection authority. Contact: [privacy contact email, to be completed before publication].

Children and schools

You must be 13 or older to create an account. If we learn that an account belongs to a child under 13, we delete it.

Schools can let students play without accounts. A student is identified only by a nickname chosen or assigned by the teacher, within a class they join with a class code. We collect no email, name, birth date or other personal data from students, and students can't comment, rate puzzles or appear in public rankings.

The school accepts the Data Processing Agreement and gives consent on the parents' behalf for educational use. Parents can ask the school to review or delete their child's data; the school can do so on the platform or with our help.

Security

We protect data with encryption in transit, hashed passwords and API keys, access controls, audit logs of staff actions and regular backups. Support staff can look into an account only for a stated reason and for a limited time, and every such access is recorded.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. Every version has an identifier, shown at the top of this page, and we record which version you consented to. We tell you about important changes in advance.