Privacy.

What we keep.

• Your account. Your email address, your handle, when you confirmed your email, when you last changed your handle, your credit balance and a record of every credit added or spent, and which of our games you have played.
• Purchases. For each top-up: the amount, the date, Stripe's reference for it, and the email you gave at checkout, kept for support. We never see or keep your card details; Stripe does.
• Signing in. To sign you in we email you a 6-digit code. We keep a scrambled copy of the code, with your email, for up to two days.
• Your play. In Fear Frontier: the fears you are shown and the ones you pick, how long you take over each hand, the holes you go down and how deep, your fear map, your discoveries, records and rank, and your 18+ choice. Before you have an account this is tied to a random id in a cookie; when you sign in, it moves to your account.
• Words you write in Create. Kept with your account and not shown to other players. The fears made from them are public.
• The newsletter. If you sign up on this site, your email address.
• Messages. Anything you send us.

We don't ask your name, age or address. We don't sell what we keep, and we don't use advertising trackers.

What is public.

Your handle, and the fears credited to it: the ones you discover and the ones made from your words in Create. Anyone can see them in the game and in pictures players share. Your email address is never shown to anyone but you.

IP addresses and logs.

• Our hosts receive your IP address with every request, as any website does.
• In our own records we keep it only as a keyed hash, a scrambled form that can't be turned back into the address, to limit how often things can be done from one place. These are deleted within about two days.
• When you ask for a sign-in code or open a checkout in a game, the game passes your IP address to our account service on this site, which uses it the same way.
• The newsletter form uses it only in memory, to stop floods of sign-ups, and doesn't store it.
• Some of our logs note the country and region a request came from, as worked out by our host. They don't record the address itself.

Counting visits.

Fear Frontier uses Vercel Web Analytics, which counts page views without cookies and without identifying you. Before a page view is counted we strip its address of everything but campaign tags. When someone arrives through a link a player shared, we count arrivals per day for each kind of link, and whether the browser was new to the game. Nothing about the visitor is kept. This site's own pages count nothing.

Cookies and storage.

We use only the cookies the site and games need to work, so we don't ask about them. None are for advertising or tracking.

On this site:

• ibf_session: keeps you signed in on this site's account page. One year.
• ibf_device: a random id that limits how many sign-in codes one browser can ask for. One year.
• ibf_challenge: remembers that a sign-in code is on its way. Ten minutes.
• ibf_move_try: used once while moving you from our old address. Two minutes.

In Fear Frontier:

• ff_anon: a random id that keeps your play together before you have an account. One year.
• ff_session: keeps you signed in. One year.
• ff_mature: your choice to show or hide 18+ pictures. One year.
• ff_journey: holds the hole you are in, only if our database can't. 180 days.
• ff_code: remembers that a sign-in code is on its way. Ten minutes.
• ff_move_nonce and ff_moved: used to carry your game over from our old address. Five minutes, and two years.
• In your browser's storage: ff:muted, whether sound is off, and ff_arrived, so an arrival from a shared link is counted once.

When you open checkout, Stripe's payment form may set its own cookies to prevent fraud, under Stripe's privacy policy.

Who else handles it.

These companies handle data for us, only to do the job listed:

• Vercel: hosts this site and the games, runs scheduled jobs, counts page views, and holds newsletter sign-ups when Resend can't take them.
• Neon: our databases.
• Cloudflare: stores and serves the game's pictures. Your browser loads them from Cloudflare, which sees your IP address as any host does.
• Resend: sends sign-in codes, and keeps the newsletter list.
• OpenAI: checks handles and the words you write in Create against our rules, and writes fears from those words.
• fal: paints the pictures. It receives only the description of a fear, never your words or anything about you.

Stripe, including Link, sells you credits and takes your payment. It receives your email address, payment details and IP address, and handles them as its own business under its own privacy policy.

Where it goes.

We and these companies keep and handle data in the United States. If you live elsewhere, your data is sent there, under the safeguards the law requires, such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

Why.

• To run your account, the games, and the credits you buy: because you asked us to.
• To keep things fair and safe, such as limits and checking words against our rules: because we need to.
• To send the newsletter: because you signed up for it.
• To keep records of payments: because the law requires it.

How long.

• Your account, play and Create words: for as long as your account, or your random id, exists.
• Ids made for browsers that never played: deleted after seven days.
• Purchase records: as long as tax law requires.
• Sign-in codes and limit counts: about two days.
• The newsletter list: until you unsubscribe.
• If your account is deleted, fears credited to you stay in the game, no longer credited to your handle.

Your rights.

You can ask to see what we keep about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to have a copy, or to stop us using it. Write to support@quantumshepherd.com from your account's email address, and we answer within a month. You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time. If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live.

Children.

Our games are not made for children under 13. If we learn we hold data about a child under 13, we delete it.

Changes.

When this page changes, the new version goes up here with a new date. If a change matters, we tell you in the game or by email.

Contact.

Infinite Bliss Forever. support@quantumshepherd.com.