Privacy

Who we are

Goud Games Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under number 17463983. Our registered office is at the foot of every page. We decide what happens to the data on this page, which makes us its controller under UK data protection law.

Write to privacy@goud.games about anything here.

Which games

These pages cover every game Goud Games publishes, and the Goud account those games share. Today that is:

• Hokm: Card Game of Kings, on Android.

A new game joins this list the day it comes out. If it keeps anything these pages do not already describe, they change first.

Playing without an account

Our games can be played alone, or with people in the same room, without giving us anything. To play online a game makes a guest account for you: a number, and a secret that stays on your phone. We keep only a fingerprint of that secret, never the secret itself.

What we keep when you sign in

• Your email address, the same for all our games. You sign in with it and a six digit code we send you; there is no password. Other players never see it.
• The name you choose, the portrait you pick, and what you have earned in each game, such as your rank, badges and record. Other players see these.
• Your coins in each game and every movement of them, and what you own and wear in each game.
• In games that have them, your friends, the requests and blocks between you and others, your circles, and the messages you write.
• The games you play online: who sat where and every card that was played. We keep them so that any game can be checked afterwards and cheating can be found.
• The devices you sign in on, and a notification token if you allow notifications.
• Your settings, such as whether you want notifications or tournament news by email.
• If a friend brought you in, whose invite it was.

Messages

In games that have them, messages between friends and in circles are text only. We keep them for 90 days and then delete them, unless someone has reported the conversation; then we keep it until the report is dealt with. Words on our list are turned into stars before anyone sees them. Our staff read messages only when they have been reported. If you are not in the game when a message comes, your phone gets a notification that says only "A new message", under the friend's name for a message between two people or the circle's name for a message in a circle; the message itself is never in it.

Asking for help

When you write to us from a game, we receive what you write, your name, the language you play in and your phone's model and system. If you choose to, you can also send a picture of the last game you played and the game's last lines of log, with email addresses and secrets taken out. The picture and the log are deleted when your question is closed, and what you wrote goes with your account if you delete it. If Sorush, our helper, answers you, it does so on our own computers; we do not send your question to an outside AI company.

On your phone

Each game keeps your name, its secret, the address you last signed in with and the server's address in its own storage, which is left out of Android backups. A game with invites, such as Hokm, reads the clipboard once on its first start, looking only for an invite code that goud.games put there, and it asks Google Play once where it was installed from, for the same reason. Nothing else it finds is kept or sent.

Our games do not use your location, contacts, photos, camera or microphone. They have no advertising and no analytics or tracking kit.

Why we use it

• To run your account and the games you ask to play. This is the agreement between us.
• To keep play fair, find cheating and abuse, deal with reports and keep the service safe. This is our legitimate interest, and yours as a player.
• To send you notifications and tournament news, only if you said yes. You can turn either off in the game at any time.
• To keep the records the law asks of us.

We do not sell your data, and we do not use it for advertising.

Who else handles it

• IONOS rents us our servers and sends our emails, such as sign-in codes.
• Google Firebase Cloud Messaging delivers notifications to Android phones. It receives the notification token, a name (the friend's, or the circle's) and a short line such as "A new message".
• Google Play installs our games and, if you came from an invite, tells us which one.
• Google Analytics counts visits to goud.games, and only there, never in our games. It runs with its cookies switched off, so it stores nothing on your device.

Each of them works for us under a contract and may use the data only for that job. Google may handle it outside the United Kingdom; where it does, it is covered by the safeguards UK law requires. We will also hand data to the police or a court when the law obliges us to, and to nobody else.

How long it stays

• Sign-in codes: 48 hours.
• Messages: 90 days, as above.
• Friend requests nobody answers: 30 days.
• Everything else tied to your account: until you delete the account.
• Backups: 30 days.
• Our servers' logs, which hold the internet address of each visit, are written over as they fill.

Deleting your account

In Hokm, open the gear, then privacy, then "delete my account", and type the six digit code we send to your address. If you no longer have the game, ask at goud.games/delete-account with the same address and code, or write to privacy@goud.games from that address.

From that moment nobody sees you any more, in any list or at any table, and you are signed out on every device. For 30 days you can change your mind simply by signing in again, and everything is where you left it. A guest account, with no address, is forgotten at once.

After 30 days we remove your address, name, portrait, settings, devices, friends, the messages you wrote, your circles, your badges and what you owned. Coins left in the account are not paid back; they stay in it, and it no longer leads to anyone.

What stays, under a number that no longer leads to you, is the record that coins moved, who brought whom into the game, and the games that were played, with "Player" where your name was, because other players' coins and results depend on them. We also keep a one-way mark of your address, from which the address cannot be read back, so that the same address is not given the starting coins twice and a suspension comes back with it. Backups that still hold you are gone 30 days later.

Your rights

You can ask to see what we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to receive it in a form you can take elsewhere, and to object to how we use it. Write to privacy@goud.games and we will answer within a month.

If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. If you live in the European Union, you can also complain to the data protection authority where you live.

Age

Our games are for adults: Hokm is for people aged 18 and over, and each game's store page gives its own age. We do not knowingly keep anything about anyone younger than that. If you think a child has an account, tell us and we will delete it.

Keeping it safe

Everything between our games or the site and our servers is encrypted on the way. Sign-in codes and each game's secret are stored only as fingerprints. Only we can reach the servers, and every action our staff take in our admin panel is written to a log that cannot be changed. No system is perfectly safe; if something happens that puts you at risk, we will tell you.

When this page changes

If we change this page in a way that matters, we will say so in our games before the change takes effect. The date at the top says when it last changed.