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Privacy Policy

Effective date: 10 November 2026

Grandpa's Checkers (the website at grandpascheckers.com, its desktop app, and the iPhone and iPad app) is run by William Termini (ABN 47 283 458 067), Australia ("we", "us"), reachable at privacy@termini.me. There are no accounts, no cookies for players, and no tracking, analytics or third-party scripts. The iPhone and iPad app also has a policy of its own.

1. On your device

• Your settings, such as sound, move hints and your language (in the desktop app, the text size), and which country, if any, you have chosen to show your opponents.
• Your record of games won, lost and drawn.
• Whether you have agreed to our Terms of Service and acknowledged this policy on the website: the version of each, and when.
• Whether you are old enough for online play where you are (14, or the higher age some countries set), worked out on the website from the year of birth you give (and the month, when the year alone does not tell), and the age it was measured against. The year itself is not kept, and none of it is sent to us. If you are not old enough, the website asks again after a year, or when you visit from where the age is different.
• A resume token: a random code our server gives you, kept on your device and sent each time you connect, so you can get back into a game after a reload or dropped connection. It identifies a session, not you, and does not last: once you have been disconnected for a short while the session expires, and the server issues a new token the next time you connect.
• If you ask to be told when someone is waiting (Options ▸ Tell Me When Someone's Waiting, on the website): the ID our server gave your browser for it. It is sent when you connect, so that you are not told while you are already here.

These stay on your device until you clear the site's data or remove the app. Of these, only the token, your chat setting, your choice of country and that ID are sent to our server. On the website, games against the computer and Pass and Play are played in your browser and not sent to us, unless your browser cannot run them; then, and in the desktop app, they are played on our server instead, which is told the level you chose, and the game is handled there like any other (see below).

2. On our server

The website connects to our game server once you have agreed to our Terms of Service, acknowledged this policy and given your year of birth (it asks the first time you visit, and again when either changes), and only if you are old enough: 14, or the higher age (up to 18) the law sets where you are connecting from. For younger players it never connects, and they play the computer. The desktop app connects when it opens, and the iPhone and iPad app once you have acknowledged its policy, so they can show whether anyone is around and offer you an online game. While you play the computer on your own device they tell the server only that you are open to an online game. In a game played on our server (an online game, a game with a friend, or a game against the computer played there) your moves are sent to it, and in an online game your moves and the set phrases you choose are passed to your opponent. Nothing sent carries a name, an account or a device identifier. Your IP address could sometimes identify you, so we treat it as personal information and keep it only as described below.

While you are connected, the server holds in memory only:

• the game in progress and your session: your resume token, a random label, your chat setting, your choice of country and when you were last active;
• your IP address, while you are connected, to stop any one network overloading the Service (our proxy also counts recent requests per address, and forgets an address ten minutes after its last request); and
• the country your connection comes from. It is looked up from your IP address in a database on our own server, with no request to anyone else, and is never more precise than the country (IP Geolocation by DB-IP). Where your country's law sets an age for online play above 14, it sets that age: the website is told only the age, never the country. It is shown to your opponent only if you choose to show it. You can choose a country yourself instead, or show none, which is how it starts.

Games between two people are not saved: their moves are held only in memory for the game and never written to disk, and the same goes for a game against the computer played on our server. What the server does write to disk is:

• game results: when a game was played, which side won, how it ended and how many moves it took, with nothing about who played (no name, address, IP address, country, device, session or label), and we don't try to link them to anyone. Game results are kept for as long as the Service runs. Because they hold nothing about who played, we can't find or delete any one person's results.
• logs with IP addresses: access logs (the IP address, what was requested, when, and the response), and the security logs and block lists of addresses refused or blocked for failed logins to the server, or for misusing the game: flooding it with connections, requests, moves or messages, guessing the codes of friends' games, or looking for and leaving games over and over. An address blocked for misuse cannot reach the Service for an hour, and for longer each time it is blocked again, up to a week; an IPv6 address is blocked with the rest of its /64, which is normally one household's. Grandpa's Checkers' own server decides this from what it sees, and tells no one else. They are used only to run and protect the Service, and every log is deleted within 14 days.
• if you ask to be told when someone is waiting: the address your browser's push service gave for it, with the keys to encrypt what is sent to it, the ID given to your browser, the age your check for online play was passed against, the country your connection came from when you asked, your device's offset from UTC (for its quiet hours), your language, when you asked and when we last told you. We use it only to tell you that someone is waiting, at most once a day and never between 9 pm and 9 am by your device's clock; the message is encrypted, so the push service delivers it without being able to read it. It is deleted when you turn it off, when you choose "Don't send these again", or when the push service tells us the address no longer works.

What the server writes to disk, except the logs, is backed up every hour, encrypted on our server before it leaves, to storage that cannot read it. Backups are kept for up to a year, so something deleted from the server is gone from the backups within a year.

3. Why, and who else handles it

We use your IP address and what is linked to it, and your email if you write to us, under our legitimate interest in running the game, keeping it secure and answering you (GDPR Article 6(1)(f)). We tell you that someone is waiting only because you asked (your consent, GDPR Article 6(1)(a)), which you can withdraw at any time by turning it off. Only the company that hosts our server, our email provider and the company that stores our encrypted backups (which cannot read them) handle it; and, if you ask to be told when someone is waiting, your browser's push service (Google's for Chrome, Mozilla's for Firefox, Apple's for Safari, Microsoft's for Edge) delivers that notification. We disclose it only if the law requires. They may store or process it outside your country, including outside Australia, Canada and the European Union. We take reasonable steps to make sure they protect it. The site is served only over HTTPS.

4. Children

Grandpa's Checkers is made for a general audience and is not directed to children under 13, or the higher age at which your local law lets you consent for yourself (14 in Quebec). Online play on the website is for players 14 and over, or the higher age your local law sets: younger players play the computer, and the website never connects to our game server for them. There are no accounts, and we collect no personal information from anyone beyond the connection details described above and, for those who ask for it, what is needed to tell them someone is waiting, which is offered only to players old enough for online play where they are. We use them only to run and protect the game and to send that notification, never to contact anyone otherwise or build a profile. If we learn that a child under that age has sent us personal information, for example by email, we will delete it. Parents can contact privacy@termini.me.

5. Your rights

Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR, the Australian Privacy Act, Canada's PIPEDA, Quebec's private-sector privacy law or the CCPA), you may have the right to access, correct or delete information about you, to receive a copy of it, to restrict or object to its use, and to complain to your local data protection authority. We hold almost nothing that identifies you, but you are welcome to ask and we will answer within 30 days. We don't sell or share personal information, as US state privacy laws use those terms.

6. Changes and contact

We may update this policy; material changes are shown here before they take effect, and the date above shows the latest version. The person in charge of protecting personal information is William Termini. Questions, requests or complaints: privacy@termini.me. We will reply within 30 days. If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au) or your local authority, such as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca) or, in Quebec, the Commission d'accès à l'information (cai.gouv.qc.ca).

Do Not Track: we don't track anyone across websites or apps, and no third party can do so through Grandpa's Checkers, so we treat every visitor as if a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal were on.

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