Privacy Policy

Information We Use

• Account information such as username, email address, authentication provider, and email verification status.
• Game and puzzle progress such as results, rankings, puzzle attempts, points, and public leaderboard statistics.
• Progress details such as rating points, rank, daily streaks, badges and tournament points, and your chosen site theme and board colors.
• Optional profile details such as avatar selections or uploaded profile images.
• Contact messages you submit, including optional attached images stored privately for admin review.
• Technical information from analytics, advertising, hosting, and security tools used to operate and improve the site.

How We Use It

We use this information to let players sign in, save progress, show rankings, prevent duplicate usernames, support interactive games and puzzles, understand site performance, and respond to user feedback.

No Sale Of Personal Information

We do not sell user information collected through Sartaba Mind Games to third parties, and we do not plan to sell it in the future. Information is used to operate, protect, support, and improve the site and its games.

Services We Use

The site uses Firebase (a Google service) for sign-in and for storing account, game, and puzzle data. It uses Google Analytics to understand how the site is used, and Google AdSense to show advertising. We also keep simple aggregate counters, such as how many times a page was opened or a game was played, which are not tied to an individual visitor. Email is sent through our hosting provider's mail service. These services process data according to their own policies.

Cookies And Local Storage

Cookies and similar technologies are small pieces of data stored on your device. Sartaba Mind Games stores preferences and sign-in state in your browser's local storage, such as your chosen theme and a cached display name so the page loads faster. Google Analytics and Google AdSense set their own cookies, described below. For visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, analytics and advertising cookies are not set until consent has been given. You can clear or block cookies and local storage in your browser settings, though some features such as staying signed in may stop working.

Advertising

Sartaba Mind Games uses Google AdSense and may use other third-party advertising services. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve advertisements based on a user's previous visits to this website or other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables Google and its partners to serve ads based on visits to Sartaba Mind Games and other sites on the internet. Where required, advertising cookies and personalized advertising are used only after you have given the necessary consent.

You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings. You can also visit aboutads.info to opt out of personalized advertising from other third-party vendors that take part in that program. To learn how Google uses information from sites that use its services, see How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services.

Visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland are shown a consent message when they first visit, and can choose whether to allow cookies used for ads and measurement. You can change or withdraw that choice at any time. Manage cookie consent.

Children

Sartaba Mind Games is intended for a general audience and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will remove it.

Keeping And Deleting Your Data

We keep your account and game data for as long as your account exists. Aggregate site statistics are kept for as long as they are useful to run and improve the site, and analytics and advertising data held by Google is kept under Google's own retention settings. You can delete your account yourself at any time from your Profile page while signed in. This removes your sign-in, username, public profile, and puzzle history. A few things are handled differently. Daily leaderboard totals may keep a number with no name attached, and past contact messages are kept for support history unless you ask us to remove them.

You can also ask us to delete your account, or to provide or correct the data we hold about you, by using the Contact page or the email button below.

Email

The site does not send you email unless you asked for it. You can ask for news and announcements when you create your account, and you can change that at any time on your Profile page or with the link in any such email. If you register for a tournament you choose separately whether to get emails about it, and you can stop them with the link in each email. A few tournament emails are always sent to players who entered, such as a notice of disqualification or of a prize, because the tournament rules say so and missing them could cost a player an appeal or a prize.

We only send email to an address you have verified. We keep a record of what you chose, when, and where you chose it, so we can show that we followed your choice. Accounts created before this choice existed have no news emails. We do not sell email addresses.

Points, Badges, And Themes

When you are signed in, we keep your rating points, rank, game and puzzle streaks, badges and tournament points on your account so they follow you from device to device. Your rank and points are shown in the site header and on your profile, and your points and badges can appear on public leaderboards together with your username. We also save your chosen theme and board colors on your account, and the AI level and side you last used in each game, so Quick Start can play the way you like. Without an account this is kept only in your browser for the time the tab stays open, so to keep it you need to register. You can see all of this on your Profile page. Points and badges can be corrected or removed when we find an error or a rule break.

Tournaments

To register you for a tournament and to run it, we use your account details, such as your username and email address, and what you play in it. If you choose to get emails about a tournament when you register, we use your email address to send you notices about that tournament, such as when it starts and when the results are out. We do this only with your consent, which you give by ticking the box when you register, and you can stop the emails at any time with the link in each one.

When you register for a tournament we record more information than in normal play. This is the IP address and browser details of your registration, when each puzzle or game starts and ends, your moves, and signs of how the page is used while you play. We use it to keep tournaments fair, to review suspected rule breaking, and to handle appeals, because we have a legitimate interest in fair tournaments. For a tournament with a cash prize we also look up the country of your IP address, to block entry from the countries listed in the Tournament Terms and Rules, which we do to follow the law and the payment rules. When an attempt is blocked we record the country, the IP address and the time, and we flag the account, so that a later attempt from another place can be noticed. We may ask you for proof of where you live, and we keep that proof only as long as we need it to decide. Those records are kept like the other flag records described below. Only Sartaba administrators can see it, and it is not used for advertising. We delete the IP address, the browser details and the signs of how the page is used about 30 days after the results are published. The exception is a player whose entry our review flagged or who was disqualified. For that player we keep what we recorded about the flag for two years, counted from the flag, or longer while an appeal or a legal matter is open. Your scores, your results and your appeals stay. You can ask for a copy, a correction or deletion through the Contact page, and we may refuse deletion while we need the information for a fairness check or because the law requires it. Tournament games are not used to teach the computer players. The rules of each tournament are on the Tournament Terms and Rules page.

Your Choices

Account registration is optional for regular play, but some features such as leaderboards, saved profile data, and puzzle-of-the-day participation require sign in. Besides the ad choices above, you can block cookies in your browser, and you can opt out of Google Analytics with the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

Games, Features, And AI Agents

As new games and features are added, the types of information collected may vary so those features can work correctly. The site's AI Agent opponents are built for Sartaba Mind Games and do not use external AI agents to decide gameplay.

Changes To This Policy

We may update this policy as the site changes. Material changes will be reflected on this page with an updated "Last updated" date. See also our Terms of Use.