Privacy policy

What Bygone keeps

• Your sign-in email. You need an account to play. You sign in with an email and password, or with Google.
• What Google sends, if you sign in with Google. Google passes along your Google name and a link to your Google picture. Bygone never shows or uses either one.
• Your player name, and any names you had before. Past names are kept so nobody else can take them. Other players cannot see them.
• Your play. Your matches and every move in them, with the stake, the clock and the result. Your ratings. Your coins, and every coin that came in or went out. The items you own, when you got them, and what you have on.
• Your friends and friend requests, including ones that were turned down, and the players you block.
• Chat with friends. Messages are kept for one year, along with whether each one was seen.
• Reports. Reports you send about other players, and reports other players send about you. A reported message is copied into its report and kept with it.
• Notices and challenges. Notices sent to you, and challenges you post or that are sent to you.
• Warnings, bans and coin awards from a game master.
• When you were last in the app and which game you have open, so friends can see who is around. Also when you agreed to the terms and the chat rules.
• That you are still connected. During a match, the server also notes that each player is still connected.
• Reactions you send during a match, and the list of who is watching a match, are cleared within minutes.
• Counts. Bygone adds up its own records to see things like how many people are playing and which games get played most. No outside tracking service is involved.
• On your phone: your sign-in, your sound settings, which walkthroughs you have seen, the match to return to, the app's log (see Bug reports), a bug report waiting to be sent, and whether the app closed unexpectedly last time.

Bug reports

The app keeps a small running log on your phone: screens opened and closed, what happened in your matches, errors, items bought and put on, signing in and out, the app version, your phone model and your Android version. The log never holds chat text, passwords, sign-in keys or email addresses. It has a size limit, and the oldest lines drop off first.

The log stays on your phone. It is sent only inside a bug report you choose to send. A report carries the words you type, the log, one picture if you add one, the app version, your phone model and Android version, and the screens you were on just before. If you are signed in, it is tied to your account. If you send one while signed out, it also carries the email address you type in so you can be answered. A report that cannot be sent right away waits on your phone and is sent when you are back online.

Only you and Bygone's maker can read a report. He reads and answers reports through his own admin tools, and may use an AI assistant (Claude, made by Anthropic) to help read them. When a report arrives, or you answer a question about one, a short alert with your player name is sent to his phone. If you sent the report signed out, the alert carries the email address you gave instead. You can read yours, and the reply, in the app under Settings, My bug reports.

A report marked fixed is deleted 30 days later, with its log and picture. Deleting your account deletes the reports you sent while signed in.

What other players can see

Your player name, your rating in each game and across all games, your rank names, your record, your coin balance, the items you have on and how many you own, whether you are online, and which match you are in. They also see the challenges you post, the matches you are watching, and the reactions you send during a match. Your matches can be watched, and finished matches and their moves can be looked at afterward. Other players never see your email, your past names, or how often you have changed your name.

Who can read your chat

You and the friend you are talking to. A game master sees a message when someone reports it, and can read the messages around it only by opening that report.

Each time a game master opens a reported conversation, that is recorded.

Where it is kept

On Bygone's server, which is hosted by Supabase, a company that stores data on Bygone's behalf. Everything travels between your phone and the server encrypted.

Like any server, it keeps short-lived logs of the requests it gets, and those include IP addresses.

Bug reports also pass through the maker's admin tools, which run on Netlify and Cloudflare, and the alert to his phone goes through Google's notification service.

Buying coins

Payments, including monthly subscriptions, are handled by Google Play. Bygone never sees your card. It keeps a record of what you bought so the coins reach your account.

Deleting your account

Delete it in the app from Settings, or by email. The steps are on the delete your account page. It happens at once, and a match in progress ends as a loss.

Some things stay behind: finished matches and their moves, with your seat shown as "Deleted player"; your retired player name, so nobody else can take it; warnings and bans the account received; reports other players sent about it; and a bare record that the account existed, when it was made and deleted, and how many times its name was changed. If the account was banned when it was deleted, a one-way fingerprint of its email is also kept so a banned player cannot come straight back. The fingerprint cannot be turned back into the address.

Seeing or fixing your data

Write to support@bygone.games from your account's email address to ask what Bygone holds about you, or to have something corrected.

Children

Bygone is made for everyone and is not aimed at young children. It does not knowingly keep personal information from children under 13. If you are a parent and believe your child under 13 has an account, write to support@bygone.games and it will be removed.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it.