Legal

Privacy Policy

Effective 14 September 2026

Boardem stores the data it needs to show your shelf and run your game nights, and nothing else. There are no advertising or analytics trackers on this site, we do not sell or share your data for marketing, and you can ask for everything to be deleted at any time.

Contents

1. What we collect
2. Why we use it
3. What other people can see
4. Services we rely on
5. Data kept on your device
6. How long we keep it
7. Your rights and choices
8. Security
9. Children
10. Changes to this policy

1. What we collect

Most of what Boardem holds is data you put in on purpose so the app can do its job. Here it is, grouped by where it comes from.

Your account

You can use the demo shelf without an account. To sync your own collection or use the group features you sign in with Google, Discord, an emailed sign-in link, or an email address and password. When you do, we receive and store:

• Your email address and a unique account ID.
• The display name and profile picture your sign-in provider shares, if any. You can change the name and avatar inside Boardem.
• With Discord sign-in, your Discord user ID, which we store so we can recognise the same Discord account next time. Your Discord email is checked once, at first link, to see whether you already have a Boardem account under it.

Passwords are handled by Google Firebase Authentication. Boardem never sees or stores your password.

If you open a shared voting or planning link without an account, Boardem creates an anonymous guest identity so your vote can be counted. It holds no email or name unless you type one in.

Your profile

A Boardem username, display name, short bio, avatar emoji and style, your BoardGameGeek username, and your chosen profile visibility (public, friends only, or private).

Your collection and shelf

• The list of games in your BoardGameGeek collection, with their published box dimensions, categories, player counts, your ratings and your play counts, fetched from BGG using the BGG username you give us.
• Games you add by hand, dimensions you correct, and CSV files you import.
• Your shelf units and how games are placed in them, saved layouts, cubby labels and colours, notes, condition notes, custom tags, tier lists, wishlist, buy list, sell or trade listings, and games you have marked as on the way or on loan.
• Loans, including the name you type for the person you lent a game to or borrowed it from.
• Play logs, including the date, the game, and the names of the people you played with.

Friends and group features

Friend requests and your friends list, groups you belong to, Game Nights, Game Days, Weekends and shortlists you host or join, votes and rankings, availability you mark, date poll responses, invitations, notifications, event recaps, and campaign logs. Where a feature involves other people, their names and choices are stored alongside yours so everyone in the session sees the same thing.

Email notifications

Only if you turn them on. We then keep your email address and your notification preferences on our server so we can send you the emails you asked for. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and you can turn each type off inside the app.

Automatic BGG sync

If you enable it, your BGG username and the list of game IDs in your collection are stored on our server so a daily check can tell you when something new appears in your BGG collection.

Share images

When you create a share card for your shelf, the rendered image is uploaded to our server so the link you share has a preview. It carries a title you set and nothing about your account.

Error reports

If something breaks in your browser, Boardem records a short technical report so we can fix it: the error message and stack trace, the page path (never the part of a link that carries your shelf data), the app build number, a trimmed browser user-agent string, and your account ID if you are signed in. It never includes your email address, your collection, or anything you typed.

Technical logs

Like every website, our hosting providers (Cloudflare and Google) see your IP address, browser type and the pages you request while serving them, and keep short-lived logs for security and reliability. Boardem does not build profiles from these logs and runs no analytics or advertising trackers of its own.

2. Why we use it

• To run the app. Packing your shelf, syncing your collection, showing your profile, counting votes, sending the invites and notifications you and your friends trigger.
• To keep your data across devices. Signed-in data is stored in the cloud so the same shelf appears on your laptop and your phone.
• To send emails you asked for. Sign-in links, and notification emails only if you opted in.
• To keep the site working and safe. Error reports, abuse prevention, rate limits and security logs.

Where data protection law such as the UK or EU GDPR applies, our legal bases are performance of our agreement with you to provide Boardem, your consent for optional things like email notifications and public profiles, and our legitimate interest in keeping the service reliable and secure. We do not make automated decisions about you, and we do not use your data to train AI models.

3. What other people can see

• Public profile. If your profile visibility is Public, anyone with your boardem.games/u/<username> link can see your name, avatar, bio, shelf and favourites, and search engines may index it. Friends only limits that to friends; Private shows strangers and friends only your name and avatar. You choose this in profile settings and can change it at any time.
• Friends. Friends can see your profile according to your visibility setting, invite you to sessions, and see activity you take part in.
• Sessions and groups. Everyone in a Game Night, Game Day, Weekend, shortlist, poll or group sees the same board: who is in, what was voted for, who is free when, and who logged what.
• Share links. Links to sessions, polls, gift lists, tier lists and recaps are unlisted and are kept out of search engines, but anyone who has the link can open it. Share them with people you trust.

4. Services we rely on

Boardem is a small project and runs on a few established providers. Each acts on our instructions and only receives what it needs.

These providers run data centres in several countries, so your data may be stored or processed outside the country you live in, including in the United States. Each is bound by contract terms and standard safeguards for international transfers.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it with anyone else except when the law requires it or to protect the service and its users from abuse.

5. Data kept on your device

Boardem keeps a working copy of your shelf, your theme and display preferences, and a cache of box-cover images in your browser's local storage so the app loads instantly and works offline. Boardem itself sets no cookies. Details, including the exact keys, are in the Cookie Policy. Clearing your browser's site data for boardem.games removes all of it; signed-in data is restored from the cloud the next time you sign in.

6. How long we keep it

• Account, profile, collection and group data: for as long as your account exists, or until you ask us to delete it.
• Share images: 60 days from when they were created.
• Error reports: 30 days.
• Bug reports and ideas you send us: arrive as an email to hello@boardem.games with the technical summary shown in the form, and are kept in that inbox for as long as it takes to deal with them. A per-IP counter used to limit spam is deleted within two hours.
• Email notification queue: individual pending emails are dropped shortly after they are sent or cancelled; your preferences stay until you turn notifications off or delete your account.
• Anonymous guest identities: kept with the session they voted in.
• Hosting logs: kept briefly by Cloudflare and Google under their own retention rules.

7. Your rights and choices

You can do a lot yourself inside the app: edit or clear your profile, change who can see it, remove games and notes, leave groups, turn email notifications off, and use Start fresh to wipe your library. Signing out removes your session from that device.

Deleting your account is self-service too: open your profile and go to Privacy on a computer, or Delete account at the bottom of the Profile screen on a phone. It removes your profile, username, public page, library, shelves, plays, tier lists, wishlist, friends list, notifications, email settings and uploaded cover photos straight away, takes you out of every group (a group you own passes to another member, or is deleted if you are its only member), and clears Boardem from that device. You can download a backup first. Votes, RSVPs and plays you added to other people's game nights stay with those events under the name you used, because other people's results depend on them; email us if you want those removed as well.

For anything else, email hello@boardem.games from the address on your account and we will:

• Delete your account for you if you can't sign in to do it yourself, normally within 30 days, or remove what the delete button leaves behind (see above).
• Send you a copy of the data we hold about you in a readable format.
• Correct anything that is wrong, or restrict or object to a particular use.

If you are in the UK or EU you also have the right to complain to your data protection authority, such as the UK Information Commissioner's Office. We would appreciate the chance to sort it out first.

8. Security

All traffic to boardem.games is encrypted with HTTPS. Sign-in is handled by Firebase Authentication, and access to the database is enforced by server-side rules so you can only read and write what you are allowed to. Server-side records on Cloudflare are keyed by opaque IDs. No system is perfectly secure, but we keep the amount of data small on purpose and hold nothing we do not need.

9. Children

Boardem is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has created an account, email us and we will remove it.

10. Changes to this policy

If we change how Boardem handles your data we will update this page and the date at the top, and note it in the app's patch notes. Significant changes will be flagged inside the app before they take effect.