Privacy policy

Draft, last updated [DATE]. This text is pending legal review.

Who we are

BoardGamesReviewed is operated by [OPERATOR LEGAL NAME], [OPERATOR ADDRESS]. Contact: [CONTACT EMAIL].

If you only browse

You don't need an account to browse. We set no tracking or advertising cookies. We keep a small, anonymous event log (see “Usage statistics” below) and, to limit abuse, short-lived counters tied to your IP address.

Game cover images may be loaded directly from third-party websites rather than from our own server. Those sites can see your IP address and browser details when your browser fetches an image; we ask your browser not to tell them which page you came from.

If you create an account

We store:

  • your email address, nickname and a hash of your password (never the password);
  • your sessions. Logging in sets one cookie, __Host-bgr_session, which keeps you signed in (up to 30 days) and is strictly necessary for that;
  • your ratings (including “best with N players” votes), favorites and notification preferences;
  • games you suggest, with the details, links and note you submit (visible to our editors, who check them by hand before anything is published);
  • info suggestions you send for a game, person or publisher (a correction or addition to a fact, description, bio or list of credits): the proposed value, the value shown at that moment, your source link and your note, plus the decision and the reason an editor gave. Our editors see all of this; it is never shown publicly unless an editor publishes it as site content. If you tick the box asking to be credited, or switch on public credit in your account settings, your nickname appears under “Info contributed by” on the pages where an editor used a suggestion of yours, and links to your profile only if your public profile is on. That credit is off by default and you can switch it off at any time, which also removes it from past suggestions.

Ratings are never shown individually; only game averages and your own rating are visible. Your nickname, join date and number of games rated appear publicly only if you switch on your public profile, which is off by default. A shared favorites list is visible to anyone with its link, shows your nickname only if you choose, and can be revoked at any time.

New accounts must confirm their email; unconfirmed accounts are deleted automatically after 7 days. Confirmation links expire after 48 hours.

If you change your email address from your account settings, we send a confirmation link to the new address, which expires after 24 hours. Your email only changes once you click it, and we then notify your previous address of the change.

Emails we send

Transactional emails (confirmation, password reset, email-change notices) are always sent when needed. Release reminders and the digest email are opt-in, off by default, and every one contains an unsubscribe link. We keep a send log (which reminder or digest period was sent to which account) so we never send the same one twice.

If you send info suggestions, we email you at most one summary per day once an editor has reviewed them: which page and field it was about, whether it was applied, applied with changes or not applied, and the reason when it was not applied. The email never repeats the text you sent. These emails are on by default for members who send suggestions; you can switch them off on your account page or with the unsubscribe link in the email.

How long we keep suggestions

Info suggestions that are still waiting for review are kept until an editor decides on them or you withdraw them. Rejected suggestions are deleted automatically 180 days after the decision. Applied suggestions are kept as a record of what was decided and when, without the proposed text, source link or note once you delete your account.

Bot protection and abuse prevention

Sign-up, password reset and some login attempts are protected by ALTCHA, a proof-of-work check that runs on our own server. It uses no cookies and sends nothing to any third party. Rate-limit counters keyed by IP address or a pseudonymous account id are kept for at most 24 hours.

Usage statistics

We run a simple, self-hosted event log on our server: it records that something happened (a sign-up, a rating, a favorite, a share, a digest sent, or a search) with a timestamp, optionally the game involved, and for searches a normalized, truncated search term. It stores no cookies, no IP addresses, no account ids and no browser details, and it is deleted after 180 days.

Error monitoring

If error monitoring is enabled we use Bugsink (Bugsink B.V., the Netherlands) to receive crash reports. We configure it to strip cookies, headers, request bodies, query strings and token URLs, and not to send IP addresses.

Service providers and where data is processed

We use the following providers to run the site:

  • Clever Cloud (France; Paris region): application hosting and the database, so all account and rating data is stored in France;
  • Scaleway (France): sending our transactional and opt-in emails;
  • Bugsink (the Netherlands): error reports, as described above;
  • Have I Been Pwned, an external service operated outside the EU: when you choose a password, only the first 5 characters of its hash are sent to check whether it appears in known breaches. This contains no personal data and cannot identify you or your password;
  • GitHub: hosts our source code only; it receives no visitor or member data.

[DATA PROCESSING AGREEMENTS, RETENTION AND TRANSFER BASIS TO BE CONFIRMED BY LEGAL REVIEW.]

Your rights

You can delete your account at any time from your account page (signed in, go to /account/delete). This permanently erases your email, nickname, password, sessions, favorites, shared list and notification history. Your ratings are kept but anonymized: they are no longer linked to your account or identity. Suggestions of yours that are still waiting for review are deleted. Suggestions that were already decided are kept only as a record of the game’s name and year; the note, details and links you submitted are removed (anything an editor approved and published stays on the game page as ordinary site content). Your ratings stay grouped together under a random identifier that is not stored anywhere else, so that our moderators can remove them all at once if they turn out to be abusive; it cannot be used to identify you. Depending on where you live you may also have rights to access, correct, export or object to processing of your data; contact us using the details above. [LEGAL BASES AND SUPERVISORY-AUTHORITY WORDING TO BE ADDED.]

Changes

We will update this page and its date when our practices change. The rules for using the site are in our terms of use.