Geek Chess privacy information — first adult online test

Version privacy-v4, effective 14 October 2026. A German translation is published next to this English version; if the two differ, the English version applies.

Who is responsible

Appdevelz UG (haftungsbeschränkt), Waldstraße 7a, 82319 Starnberg, Germany, is responsible for the game's processing. Contact us during testing at helpdesk@srogersdevelopment.com. Samuel is the selected reviewer and monitors the testing helpdesk daily. It is not an emergency service.

This address is also our single point of contact under Articles 11 and 12 of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), for players and for authorities. You can write to us in German or English; a person replies, not an automated system.

Who this test is for

During testing, adults aged 18 or older whose ordinary residence is Germany can create an online account themselves. Before registration, the game asks for your age group (under 16, 16–17, 18 or older) and your country of ordinary residence (Germany or another country). If you choose under 18 or another country there, no account is created and nothing is sent to us. After you verify your email address and accept the online terms, you confirm in the game that you live in Germany and are 18 or older; only then does our server unlock online access. If you sign in with a Google account that is new to Geek Chess, Firebase creates the account before the game can ask: the account gets no online access without this confirmation, and if you answer under 18 or another country, the game offers to delete it. Such an account has no password yet; to delete it in the game, you first set one with FORGOT PASSWORD?, or you ask us by email to delete it (see “Deletion and your rights”). We do not store an answer that does not qualify.

At the start of testing, registration is limited to invitations, and you also need a valid invite code. For each code we store only a hash of the code, a random reference number, its expiry, its creation time, a label without names and one entry per remaining use, which is deleted when it is used; we do not record which account used which code.

For an admitted account we store, linked to a pseudonymous identifier of the account: the country (Germany), the age group (18 or older), the online permissions granted, the versions of our admission rules, of the confirmation text and of the terms you had accepted, the time of the confirmation, its expiry and a request identifier so that a repeated request is not counted twice. We do not ask for a date of birth, an address or an ID copy, we store neither your email address nor your IP address with the confirmation, and we do not check your answers against documents. There is no manual review and no separate private note about your age or residence.

A confirmation is valid for 30 days and never beyond the end of testing on 31 January 2027. You can renew it in the game in its last 7 days or after it expires; each renewal is a new confirmation with its own period. If we learn that an account does not meet these requirements, we close its online access and may delete the account; an account that appears to belong to someone under 18 is deleted.

Online participation, a chosen public name and sending messages are separate permissions. Online admission for ages 16–17 is not part of this test.

Offline and device information

Local play does not require an online account. The game stores preferences, lesson progress, local games and resume information, and uses device/graphics information to choose graphics settings. A performance report can be viewed and copied by you for a bug report. Android may include app data in your own backup, depending on settings.

No advertising, marketing analytics or sale of player data is selected for this test. The game app contains no advertising, tracking or analytics services and uses no advertising ID. If you are not signed in, it does not connect to our servers or to Google while you play offline. If you stay signed in, it renews your sign-in with Firebase when the game starts and may check your online account with our game server, even if you then play only offline. Otherwise it connects only when you use online features: to our game server (Google Cloud Run, Frankfurt), to Firebase Authentication (Google) for registration and sign-in, to Google for Google sign-in (on Android through Google Play services, on Windows in your browser), and to playgeekchess.com (Cloudflare) when you open one of our pages from the game. The Android app requests network access to connect to the services above and to see whether a connection is available. It also declares the permissions that Google Play's download component uses to finish downloading the game's data pack: continuing the download while the game is in the background, keeping the device awake during the download and resuming it after the device restarts. One more permission is defined by Geek Chess itself; it makes sure that other apps cannot send messages to the app's internal parts. None of these permissions gives the app access to personal data on your device: not to your location, contacts or files, nor to the camera or microphone. As identifiers we use your Firebase account ID and pseudonymous identifiers derived from it. The performance report is never sent automatically.

Staying signed in on your device

So that you do not have to sign in at every start, the game stores a sign-in key on your device after you sign in: a Firebase refresh token, your account ID, your email address and whether Google is linked. It is stored encrypted: on Windows bound to your Windows user account (Windows DPAPI), on Android with a key held in the Android Keystore. It is removed when you sign out and when you delete your account in the game; on Android, uninstalling the app also removes it. It is excluded from Android backup. Storing it on your device is necessary for the online service you use (Section 25(2) No. 2 TDDDG); its further use is based on Article 6(1)(b) GDPR.

Online information and purposes

When you request an available online feature, we process:

Providing account and minimum adult-qualification information is a condition of the restricted online service. Without it, we cannot admit that account. Friends/chat are chosen features; local play needs no account. Accepting game terms is an agreement action, not blanket consent to every use of personal data. For an online account you need an email address or a Google account, your age and country confirmation and a username. The online features are not directed at people under 18.

Registration and sign-in

For an online account you provide an email address and a password, or you sign in with Google. Registration and sign-in are handled by Firebase Authentication, a Google service. Your password is stored only there, as a cryptographic hash and not in plain text; our game server never receives it. Firebase also stores your account ID, your email address, whether it is verified, the linked sign-in methods and the times of account creation and last sign-in.

If you choose to sign in with Google, you sign in with Google itself: on Android through your device's account chooser (Google Play services), on Windows in your browser. Google then confirms your identity. From Google we receive your Google account's email address, whether Google has verified it, and a pseudonymous Google identifier. We request no access to the content of your Google account; on Windows the game asks only for the “openid” and “email” permissions. We do not receive your Google password, your contacts or other content of your Google account. On Android, Google may also send your display name and a link to your profile picture; we remove them from your account's profile right after sign-in and do not use them. Firebase keeps them in the record of your linked Google sign-in until you unlink Google or delete your account. You can link Google to your account, or unlink it, in the game's account settings. Google is responsible for your Google account itself, and Google's privacy policy applies to it: https://policies.google.com/privacy.

We process this information to create your account, sign you in and protect your account (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR). Where we use sign-in data to prevent abuse and unauthorized access, the legal basis is our legitimate interest in a secure service (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Email verification and account emails

After registration, the game asks Firebase to send a verification email to the address you gave. The address counts as verified only once you open the link in it. Until then, online matches, choosing a username and messages stay locked. This makes sure that you actually use the address and prevents accounts on other people's addresses. At your request, Firebase also sends an email to reset your password. Firebase sends these emails on our behalf, and their links open a Firebase page. We send no advertising and no newsletters. An account whose email address is never verified, or whose admission is never confirmed, remains until you delete it or ask us to delete it. Legal basis: Article 6(1)(b) GDPR for running your account, and Article 6(1)(f) GDPR for protection against accounts on other people's email addresses.

Username, leaderboard and player profile

You choose a username of 3–20 characters (letters, digits and underscore, starting with a letter). Other players can see it. Please do not use a real name, contact details or other personal information in your username.

Once you have completed at least one ranked game, you appear on the leaderboard. All signed-in, admitted players can see there your username, rating, rank, number of rated games, whether your rating is still provisional (fewer than 15 rated games) and your wins, losses and draws in ranked games. There is an overall list, a list of each player's friends and a view around the player's own place. Accounts that are being deleted, are restricted, must change their username, or are not or no longer admitted are not shown. Players you have blocked, or who have blocked you, do not see you on the leaderboard, and you do not see them.

Signed-in, admitted players can open your profile by your username, even when you are not on the leaderboard. It shows your username, rating, whether it is provisional, your number of rated games, and your wins, losses and draws across all modes and in ranked games. Whether a viewer is your friend or has a pending request with you is shown only to that viewer. Only your friends see your online status. Players you have blocked, or who have blocked you, cannot open your profile.

The leaderboard and profiles are part of the competitive offer you agree to in the terms (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR). There is no setting to hide yourself during testing: if you do not want to appear on the leaderboard, play only casual (unranked) games; your profile with the results of all your games remains visible to other admitted players. Your rating and game statistics are kept until your account is deleted, unless they are reset during testing, as the terms allow; the leaderboard entry disappears as soon as you may no longer be shown or your account is deleted.

Emotes

In online matches you can send your opponent emotes: short, predefined lines from a fixed set of eight, for example “A cunning gambit!”. You cannot send your own text to players who are not your friends. We process which emote you sent, when, in which match and to whom. Your opponent sees it during the match and up to 5 minutes after the match ends, including on the result screen. Emotes are limited to one every 3 seconds, 10 a minute and 60 per player in a match. Like match-chat messages, we keep emotes for 7 days from sending so that we can handle reports, for example about emote spam; they are then deleted. Legal basis: Article 6(1)(b) GDPR for delivery to your opponent, and Article 6(1)(f) GDPR for spam protection and reports.

Text chat between friends

Where text chat is switched on, you can exchange free text only with players you are friends with, meaning that one of you accepted the other's friend request: as friend messages (up to 1,000 characters), in a friends lobby (up to 200 characters) and in match chat while you play each other (up to 200 characters). We process the text, the sender, the recipient, the match or conversation, the time and a technical message identifier so that each message arrives exactly once. If you end a friendship, new text is refused; lines already exchanged in a running match stay readable until that match's chat closes.

Both players can read the match chat during the match and until 5 minutes after it ends; after that it is no longer available to you. We keep a copy for 7 days from sending so that a report can still be reviewed; it is then deleted. Friend messages (30 days) and lobby messages (7 days) follow the periods below.

We do not routinely read messages and do not filter them automatically by content. Messages are encrypted in transit and stored encrypted at Google, but they are not end-to-end encrypted. We can technically access stored messages; Samuel does so only when a report, a legal obligation or fixing a fault requires it. If Samuel removes a message after a report, we delete its text; an identifier without text remains until the sender's account is deleted, so that an old retry cannot restore the message.

Legal basis: Article 6(1)(b) GDPR for delivery to the recipients you choose, and Article 6(1)(f) GDPR for reports, keeping evidence and spam protection.

Reports and moderation

A report about a match can also include up to 20 of the most recent match-chat lines and emotes the reported player sent in that match.

Anyone, including people without an account, can report content they consider illegal by email to helpdesk@srogersdevelopment.com. For such a notice we process the name and email address of the person reporting, their explanation, the details of the reported content and our decision. We confirm receipt and tell them the outcome. Like other requests to us, we keep these notices until 30 days after the case is closed.

Possible measures are removing content, requiring a username change, temporarily restricting online access and, for serious or repeated violations, ending the agreement and deleting the account. If we remove content or restrict or end an account, we tell the affected person the reasons (a statement of reasons under Article 17 DSA), usually by email to the account's address; the game shows a current restriction under Account status. We share the reporter's identity only where strictly necessary.

You can ask for a review of a decision within 6 months of it by writing to helpdesk@srogersdevelopment.com. For this we keep, in our private case log, a short decision note without message text (a case reference, the category, the measure, the dates and when we sent the statement of reasons) for 6 months after the decision. The report and its evidence still end 30 days after the report was created, so a later review relies on this note and on what you tell us.

If there are signs of a criminal offence that threatens a person's life or safety, we must inform the competent law-enforcement authorities (Article 18 DSA) and send them the information they need. In that case, or when an authority lawfully requests records, we keep only the evidence concerned beyond the normal period, until the matter is settled and for at most 90 days after the report was created.

Legal bases: Article 6(1)(c) GDPR together with Articles 16 to 18 DSA for notices, statements of reasons and information to authorities; Article 6(1)(f) GDPR for enforcing our community rules and for the decision note.

Automated decisions

Your online admission follows automatically from your own answers about age and country; the server makes no other assessment of you. If you believe a decision about your online access is wrong, write to us and a person will review it. Otherwise, only technical rules run automatically: rating calculation, format checks for names and messages (such as length and invisible control characters), the restriction of free text to friends, and limits against spam, such as messages or emotes per minute. A person (Samuel) decides on reports, content removal and account restrictions. We make no other decisions based solely on automated processing that produce legal effects for you or similarly significantly affect you (Article 22 GDPR).

Legal grounds

In short:

Where we rely on legitimate interests, you can object for reasons arising from your particular situation (Article 21 GDPR); see “Deletion and your rights”.

We rely on Article 6(1)(b) for the minimum processing needed to provide each online feature you request under the applicable service agreement: authenticate your account and chosen profile; carry out matches and the selected rating feature; provide the selected 30-day recent-game/opponent review and rematch feature; and deliver requested friends, messages and online/offline presence to their intended participants. The current terms tuple and time enforce the version you deliberately request; they are not blanket privacy consent or a permanent acceptance archive. Necessary handling of an ordinary service-support request is limited to resolving that requested service. On the same ground we provide the leaderboard and player profiles described above, which are part of the competitive offer in the terms, and deliver your emotes to your opponent.

Friends/chat and recent-history purposes are assessed separately from core account/match processing. An unnecessary use does not become necessary merely because a term describes it. No unrelated analytics, advertising or marketing purpose is selected. Local play remains available without an online account.

We rely on Article 6(1)(f) for accurate admission to this restricted adult/German-residence cohort, a fair response to concrete abuse, honoring blocks, preventing spam/disruption, and keeping message retries and account recovery safe. The minimums are your self-declared confirmation record and linked decision; bounded shared-channel report evidence; user block associations and source-bounded technical counters; text-free removed-message keys; and minimum subject/original-operation recovery state. We use no separate qualification note and no general conversation monitoring.

These uses can expose private eligibility or conversations, exclude someone wrongly, or retain linkable keys after visible content is gone. Our safeguards are Samuel-only restricted review, no identity documents/DOB/address, independent permissions, shared-context limits, human correction/review, original retention clocks, minimum guard content and individual objection handling. The separate guard criteria are described below. A general safety interest or unsolicited report does not supply an Article 9 condition or Article 10 authority. Game cheating is not automatically a criminal offence. We do not use sensitive information, or information about criminal offences, that a report, message or email happens to contain for any other purpose: we restrict it to that case and delete it on the normal schedule. The only longer retention is the evidence described under “Reports and moderation” that we pass to law enforcement or that an authority requests, for at most 90 days.

For a concrete statutory data-rights request, we rely on Article 6(1)(c) for the minimum subject linkage, scope assessment, fulfilment or justified decision, secure communication and handling evidence necessary to facilitate and respond under GDPR Article 12 and the applicable right in Articles 15–22. This does not turn ordinary support, every safety record or provider copy into legally required storage. The response timing and secure-handling limits below still apply.

Recipients, providers and international processing

Intended opponents see your username, rating, completed-game count and relevant game information; their clients receive an internal account identifier. Friends see online/offline presence. Message recipients see their conversation. Samuel's restricted review can include reported messages; the reporter is not promised absolute anonymity. Subject replies must protect other people's information. We do not sell or rent player data or select sharing with advertisers or data brokers. Required legal disclosures are assessed for the particular request.

All signed-in, admitted players can see your leaderboard entry and open your player profile, as described above. Admitted players who search for a username also see matching usernames with rating and number of games, including players who are not shown on the leaderboard, and their game receives the internal account identifier, for example to report or block a player; players you have blocked, or who have blocked you, do not find you this way. Your opponent sees the emotes you send, and a friend you play sees your match chat. Where the law requires it, we pass information to authorities, for example to law-enforcement authorities under Article 18 DSA.

Google supplies Firebase Authentication, Firestore and Cloud Run. Google processes game customer data under the applicable service contract, and separately processes Service Data under its Cloud Privacy Notice. The observed database is in Frankfurt, Germany. Authentication is processed in the United States. Other provider processing is not made EU-only by the database's location. See https://firebase.google.com/support/privacy and https://cloud.google.com/terms/cloud-privacy-notice.

Google also provides Cloud Logging for our server logs, and Firebase Authentication sends the account emails described above. Our game server also runs in Frankfurt (Google Cloud region europe-west3). Our contracting party for Google Cloud and Firebase is Google Cloud EMEA Limited, 70 Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2, Ireland. Google processes game data on our behalf under the Cloud Data Processing Addendum. Transfers to the United States, in particular by Firebase Authentication, rely on the European Commission's adequacy decision for the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, under which Google LLC is certified; where that framework does not apply, the Standard Contractual Clauses in the Cloud Data Processing Addendum apply. You can ask us at helpdesk@srogersdevelopment.com for a copy of these safeguards.

Cloudflare, Inc. (USA) hosts our website playgeekchess.com, where we publish the terms, this privacy information, our legal notice and how to delete an account. When you open a page, Cloudflare processes technical connection data, including your IP address, the requested address, the request time and the headers your browser sends, to deliver the page and protect the site from abuse (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR). The website has no advertising and no visitor analytics; Cloudflare may use cookies that its security functions need. Cloudflare processes this data on our behalf under its data-processing terms, and processes some network and service information under its own responsibility. We keep hosting information only for the delivery and security purposes described here. Cloudflare's processing on our behalf lasts as needed to perform the service obligations; its terms provide for deletion or return when that need or the agreement ends, subject to legal requirements. Cloudflare's separate processing follows its own purpose-based retention criteria. There is no single fixed duration for every provider record. Its global network can process data outside the European Economic Area, including in the USA; its data-processing terms provide Standard Contractual Clauses and, where applicable, the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. See https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/.

Emails to helpdesk@srogersdevelopment.com are stored and processed by our email hosting provider on our behalf. Samuel reads them. We keep requests until 30 days after the case is closed. Please do not send us passwords, sign-in codes or ID copies.

How long information is kept

The selected application periods are:

When a period ends, we stop using the information. On our game server, it is then no longer shown to anyone, in the game or in our moderation tools, and it is finally deleted by a cleanup run that takes place weekly and, for lobby and match-chat messages, emotes and reports, also by the database's automatic expiry function. We delete information outside our game server ourselves, for example emails to our helpdesk, notes in our private case log and evidence kept for the authorities. Final deletion follows within 10 days after a period ends. If a cleanup run fails, we repeat it; the period does not restart. Copies at our providers, such as logs, follow the provider periods below.

The project's displayed Google log-bucket settings on 8 October were 30 days for ordinary logs and 400 days for required audit logs. We did not inspect log content, inherited routing, manual exports or physical expiry. Firebase says logged authentication IPs remain for a few weeks and other authentication information is removed from live/backup systems within 180 days after the customer initiates user deletion. Google Service Data has separate purpose-dependent retention. Disabled scheduled database backups/PITR do not prove immediate removal of every provider copy. These provider periods are separate from application deadlines. Verification and password-reset emails are sent by Firebase; any provider records of them follow these provider periods. Cloudflare's retention for our website is described above, with the website hosting.

Deletion and your rights

You can contact helpdesk@srogersdevelopment.com about deletion or other privacy requests. An email address, display name or personal familiarity alone does not authenticate authority over an account. We must use proportionate account linkage before disclosing private data or executing account deletion, without asking for passwords/tokens or new ID copies.

We confirm receipt of your request. To make sure we are dealing with the account holder, we reply only to the email address stored for your account and ask you to confirm the request from there. If that is not possible, we compare several details about the account with what you tell us; a username or other information that other players can see is not enough on its own. We never ask for ID copies, passwords or dates of birth. We send copies of your data only to the account's email address, and we remove information about other players from them unless it is part of your own conversations. Please do not send us sensitive information, such as information about your health, unless your request needs it; if a request or report contains it, we use it only for that case, do not pass it on, and delete what the case does not need.

You can delete your account in the game under Account → Delete account. An account that signs in only with Google first needs a password, which you can set with FORGOT PASSWORD? on that screen. If you cannot use that route, write to us, if possible from your account's email address, with the subject “Delete account” and your username if you chose one; we confirm the request through that address or, if you can no longer use it, with the check described above, complete the deletion within one month and confirm completion to you. The page https://playgeekchess.com/delete-account explains both routes.

Account deletion removes the Firebase account, profile, friends, blocks, presence, direct conversations in both directions, your lobby messages and own match history. It also removes match-chat messages and emotes you sent or received, your admission confirmations and your leaderboard entry. An active match is resigned once. Opponent-only results must not retain an identifiable projection of you; a “Deleted player” label alone is not proof of anonymity. Limited report evidence and protection/recovery records keep the separate purposes and limits above. A pending request is not completed deletion. Uninstalling the game does not delete an online account.

If we cannot review reports for more than 3 days, we pause new text messages and, if needed, emotes. Matches, offline play, reports, blocking and deletion requests remain available.

Depending on the applicable conditions, you may request access, correction, erasure, restriction, objection and portability. For legitimate-interest processing, explain your particular situation when objecting; continued processing requires the applicable specific justification. New game-terms acceptance is not required to contact us or exercise rights. We respond without undue delay, normally within one month; a permitted extension of up to two additional months requires notice and reasons within the first month. A pending game operation does not suspend those obligations. You may complain to the authority where you live, including Bavaria's BayLDA: https://www.lda.bayern.de/de/aufgaben.html.

We will date material changes to this notice. If we change it materially, we tell you beforehand by email to your account's email address or in the game. The current version is always at https://playgeekchess.com/privacy.