Privacy

Last changed September 29, 2026

This is a short page because there is very little to say. There are no accounts here, no tracking, no analytics, no advertising and no chat. What follows is all of it, in order of how much it matters.

What you tell us

A name of up to eight capital letters, which you make up when you sit down. That is the only thing the game asks you for. No email address, no password, no account, no phone number, no date of birth. Your name is shown to the other people at your table, because otherwise nobody would know whose turn it is.

Names are not unique and are not checked against anything. If you type GRANDMA, you are GRANDMA.

What your browser keeps

The game stores a few things in the tab you are playing in: a token that lets you back into your seat if you reload, your sound and music settings, and how you have set the table up to look. These are kept in per-tab storage, so they vanish when you close the tab, and they are never sent anywhere except back to your own table.

Four things are not per-tab. The first is a backer key, if you have one. It is kept for the whole browser rather than the one tab, so that backing does not have to be set up again every time you open the game, and it is sent to the server when you connect. It is your payment’s reference number at the seller, and a signature proving we issued it. The key on its own says nothing about who you are, but the seller’s records connect that reference to your purchase, including your name and email address. That is how we can send you the same link again if you lose it.

The second is the card back you last chose, if you are a backer, so that a new tab starts out wearing it. It is a color and up to three letters, and like your other settings it only ever goes to the table you are sitting at.

The third is the name you last sat down as, so the name box can offer it next time. It stays in your browser and is only sent when you sit down, exactly as if you had typed it.

The fourth is a trial code, if you opened the game from a link carrying one. It is the code itself and nothing about you, it is sent to the server when you connect so the server can check it is still running, and it is forgotten once the trial has ended.

Cookies

The game sets no cookies of its own today. There is exactly one cookie on this site and it is not ours: __cf_bm, set by Cloudflare, which sits in front of the server and tells automated traffic apart from people. It lasts about half an hour and is there to keep the game up rather than to follow you.

That is true for backers too. The backer key is kept in your browser’s storage, described above, not in a cookie.

Nothing here is used for advertising, and nothing tracks you from one site to another.

What we see without you telling us

Your IP address. Every website sees this; it is how your computer is reached. We use it to stop one person opening a thousand tables or guessing at table codes, and for nothing else. It is held in memory while you are here and it is not written to a database. If you are on IPv6 we deliberately group addresses by network rather than treating each one separately, which tells us less about you and does the job just as well.

Our hosting provider and Cloudflare keep their own short-term records of requests, as every host does. The game also prints what happens at a table to the server’s own log: table codes, names and moves, so that when something goes wrong there is something to read. Nobody analyzes these; they scroll away.

What is saved when the server restarts

This is the one part that is newer than the rest, and it is worth being exact about. So that a restart does not throw everybody out of their seats, the server keeps a small snapshot of the tables that are open right now. For each seat it holds:

• the name you chose
• your running score
• whether you are sitting out
• the color of the token beside your name
• a scrambled version of your seat token, which cannot be turned back into anything

And for the table: its code, the stakes, which game is being played and under what house rules, the color of its fringe and its felt, its seasonal theme, who is host and dealer, and how far the session has gone. The hand in progress is not saved — nobody’s cards are ever written down.

The snapshot is rewritten every couple of seconds and holds only the tables that exist at that moment. A table disappears about ten minutes after the last person leaves it, and it is gone from the snapshot on the very next write. It is stored in a private bucket at Cloudflare and nobody but the server can read it.

What is kept about a backer link

The server keeps one record for each backer link: the payment reference in the link, whether the link has been used, the initials and colors you put on the plaque if you chose to, and the date. The reference says nothing about who you are on its own; the seller’s records connect it to your purchase. Your initials are shown to everyone on the plaque; nothing else in the record is ever shown.

It is kept in the same private bucket at Cloudflare as the snapshot, separately from it, for as long as the game runs. If you are refunded, or your bank reverses the payment, your initials come off the plaque and the record is marked refunded, so the link stops working.

Who else is involved

Three companies, and not one of them is in advertising:

• DigitalOcean runs the server, which is in New York.
• Cloudflare sits in front of it and stores the snapshot described above.
• Stripe. They handle the sale from end to end and issue your receipt; at checkout it appears as sold through Link, Stripe’s merchant of record. We never see your card details. We do see the name and email address you bought with, and we use them for one thing only: answering you when you write to us for help, such as a refund or a lost link. Nothing about a purchase is recorded alongside anything you do at a table.

Nothing is sold, rented or shared beyond that. There is no analytics service, no advertising network, no social media button, no font loaded from somewhere else and no third-party script of any kind on any page of this site.

If you are in Europe or the UK

Stephen W. Palm is the data controller, reachable at the address at the bottom of this page. In the language the law uses: we handle your name and the state of your table because you asked us to run a game for you, and we handle your IP address on the grounds of legitimate interest — specifically, keeping the game available to everybody else. If you back the game, we handle the name and email address you bought with in order to answer you when you ask for help with your purchase.

The server is in the United States, so if you are in Europe your table lives on an American machine. Our providers cover those transfers under their standard terms.

You have the right to ask what we hold about you, to have it corrected, and to have it deleted. In practice, deletion is something you can do yourself in ten minutes: leave the table, and once it empties, everything about you is gone. If you would rather ask, write to the address below. You can also complain to your data protection authority, though we would rather you told us first.

If you backed the game, write to us from the address you bought with and we will do whichever of these you ask for, within 30 days:

• Take your initials off the plaque. The rows below yours move up a place, and your backer features keep working.
• Delete your backer record. Your link stops working for good, on every device, and your initials come off the plaque. We will offer you a refund with it. To keep the link dead, we keep a scrambled version of the payment reference. It cannot be turned back into the reference; it can only be checked against one.

Some things stay, and they are out of our hands:

• The seller’s records of the sale. Stripe keeps them, as the law requires of anyone who sells something. Stripe’s own privacy policy covers them, and you can ask Stripe directly.
• Your emails to us. They are our only record that you asked and that we did what you asked. Our email is backed up and archived in a way that cannot remove a single message, so we cannot delete them. We use them for nothing else.
• Copies other people made. The plaque is public, so anyone could have taken a picture of it while your initials were up.
• Your own browser. The key stays in your browser’s storage until you clear it. After a deletion it opens nothing.

Children

This game is meant for families and children are expected to play it. That is precisely why there are no accounts and nothing is collected: there is no profile to build, no email to send, no message anyone can type, and nothing to sell to anybody. A child playing here leaves nothing behind. Backing the game is an adult’s transaction and needs an adult’s card.

If this page changes

The date at the top is when it last did. If something changes that actually matters, such as our ever starting to collect something new, it will be said on the landing page and not buried here.

Getting in touch

One address, read by one person: [email protected].