Privacy

How Ballsy handles data. In short: accounts are optional, without one your progress stays on your device, and analytics are cookieless and anonymous.

Who we are

Ballsy is run by Ballsy ("we", "us"), the controller of the personal data described on this page. You can contact us at hello@ballsy.gg.

Accounts are optional

You don't need an account to play. If you create one, your progress is saved to it so you can carry on from another device. Accounts are for people aged 13 and over. Playing without an account doesn't require you to give your age.

An account stores:

The "Your picks" figures on your profile are worked out from the saved daily rounds; nothing extra is stored for them. Saved progress is kept until you delete your account. We don't delete accounts that are no longer used.

While you're signed in, the game keeps sending your progress to our server as you play, and the copy in your browser stays as well. Signing out stops this; the progress already in your browser stays there.

Signing in sets one cookie, which keeps you signed in. It is needed for the account to work and isn't used for anything else, such as tracking or ads. Signing in with Google also sets a second cookie for up to 5 minutes, used only to complete that sign-in. Each sign-in also creates a session record on our server with your IP address and browser type. Signing out deletes it; otherwise the session stops working after 7 days without a visit, and the record is deleted within 30 days after that. Short-lived records used to complete a sign-in or an emailed link are deleted once they expire. Both are removed by a daily clean-up.

You can delete your account at any time from your profile page. This removes your account, your sign-in details, your sessions and all progress saved to it, including your leaderboard scores, from our database straight away. Progress saved in your browser stays until you clear it.

Leaderboards

Only signed-in players are on the leaderboards. When you finish a daily round while signed in, our server works out your score from the picks it counted and saves it, with the number of hints you used, to your account.

The leaderboards are public. They show your display name, your score and the hints you used (the board's data also includes when you finished). You only appear once you have set a display name, and you can turn "Show me on leaderboards" off on your profile page at any time (it is on by default). Display names are checked against a list of blocked words.

Season leaderboards

When you play a daily season or Champions League run while signed in, our server saves the result of each game (not the player you named) and whether you took the hint, so it can work out your final result itself. These game results are deleted after 3 days. Your final result (position, points and, for a run, the stage reached) is kept until you delete your account, and appears on the public season leaderboards under your display name, on the same terms as above.

If a game's answer is looked up outside a daily season (for example in free play) on a match that is in that day's daily seasons, we note the match against a one-way code made from your IP address and the date (not the address itself), so a later signed-in pick of it from the same address counts as hinted. In the same way, if a daily draft is played signed out, we note that day's draft against this code, and a signed-in daily draft played from the same address that day (which keeps the code with it) doesn't go on the leaderboards. These notes and drafts are deleted after 3 days.

Private leagues

You can create or join private leagues. A league stores its name, its invite code, who owns it and who its members are. Members of a league see each other's display names and verified scores in that league, whether or not "Show me on leaderboards" is on: joining a league means agreeing to that. Anyone with a league's invite link can see its name and how many members it has. Emails are never shown to other members. You can leave a league at any time. If you delete your account, you leave every league, and leagues you own are deleted.

What's saved on your device

The game keeps your progress in your browser's local storage so you can pick up where you left off. Unless you sign in, it stays in your browser and isn't sent to us. These are the keys it uses:

You can delete all of it at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser settings.

When you play

To check an answer, your browser sends the game and the player you picked to our server. To suggest names, it sends what you type in the player search. Search text is used only to answer the request and isn't saved to our database (the host's request logs, below, may include it). If you're signed in, your answers are saved to your account as described above.

For What everyone picked, each pick and final score in a daily game, today's Finals night or today's Big Games is added to a count that holds no personal data. To count each person once, we keep a record of each pick and hint against a pseudonymous ID (a one-way hash of your account ID if you're signed in, otherwise of your IP address, which changes every day), plus a one-way hash of your IP address. These records are deleted after 3 days.

Analytics

We use Vercel Web Analytics and Plausible Analytics to count page views and a few game events: a round started or finished (with its score), a hint used, a result shared, a season started or finished (with the level and final position or stage) and a Finals night score. It doesn't use cookies. A page view records the page address (without the query on the sign-in page), the referring page, and the browser, operating system, device type and country worked out from the request. The events contain game facts only, never your name, contact details or answers. Plausible is an EU-based, privacy-focused service: it doesn't use cookies or store IP addresses, and it counts unique visitors with a daily-rotating hash that can't be used to follow you across days or sites.

You can turn analytics off for this browser. While it is off, no page views or game events are sent from it, and the list of events already sent is deleted.

Analytics are on.

Cookies

The site sets cookies only when you sign in, as described above. They are strictly necessary for the account to work, so we don't ask for consent to them. Analytics use no cookies, and the game's local storage is needed for the game itself.

Hosting, storage and server logs

The site is hosted by Vercel. Like any web host, it processes technical request data such as your IP address, browser type and the page requested in order to serve the site and keep it secure, and may keep this in server logs for a limited time. The database is hosted by Neon. Both run on servers in the United States. Plausible's script and its counting run on Plausible's servers in the EU.

Our legal bases

Under UK data protection law we rely on:

We don't rely on consent.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, or ask us to correct it, delete it, or restrict or stop using it, by emailing hello@ballsy.gg. You can change your display name and leaderboard setting, and delete your account, on your profile page.

If you're unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We'd appreciate the chance to deal with your concern first, so please contact us before going to the ICO.

What we don't do

We don't sell or rent data about you, and we don't show ads.

Contact

Questions about privacy: hello@ballsy.gg. If this page changes, the new version will be posted here.