Privacy Policy

playjong has no user accounts, shows no ads, does not use advertising or cross-site tracking, and never sells or rents data. We use Replit-hosted analytics to count page visits and a small set of product events, such as starting or completing a game. The custom event properties we add do not include names, room or game identifiers, tile contents, photos, or free-form text. On our servers we otherwise store only what is needed to run the tables and the public record — display names, moves, results, one session cookie, and brief technical logs. Rack photos are read once and never kept. Offline practice game state stays in your browser; when analytics is available, starting, completing, or retiring practice can send a coarse usage event. Analytics is best-effort, and offline events are not queued for later transmission.

This policy describes how the operator of playjong.com (“we”, “us”) handles information when you use the playjong game and site (the “service”). Because the parlor has no accounts, most of what we handle is game data you choose to put on the table. Using the service is subject to this policy and the Terms and Conditions. For information handled by other sites you reach through links, see those sites’ own policies.

• Game records. The display names entered at a table, the chairs they sit in, every move of the hand (draws, discards, passes, claims, exposures), scores and settlements in points, the card pack and table settings chosen, join codes for shared tables, and timestamps. On “own card” tables this includes the point value you declare, whether you marked the hand jokerless, and each player’s confirmation or dispute — never the contents of your card, which the service does not ask for. Completed games are part of the parlor’s public record: they appear in the ledger, feed the honours board(self-declared hands are marked and kept off the board), and can be replayed by anyone with the link.
• Session identifiers. One signed session cookie (described in Section 9) and derived, non-reversible identifiers that tie your active tables and chairs to your browser session so you can return to them and so fair-use limits work.
• Table talk. On a shared table, text chat messages and quick reactions are stored with the table under the display name and chair that sent them (each table keeps only its newest 200 lines). Voice chat is opt-in and peer to peer: your microphone audio travels directly between the players’ browsers, or through a relay server the parlor operator configures, and it is never recorded, stored, or transcribed by us. Our servers only carry the short-lived connection set-up messages browsers exchange to find each other (which chair is on the call, and the technical offers, answers, and network candidates WebRTC needs) plus which chairs the host has silenced; those set-up messages expire within minutes.
• Usage analytics. Replit’s hosted analytics counts page views and selected successful actions: creating, joining, starting, completing, or retiring a game; starting offline practice; successfully reading a rack photo; and sharing a table invite or completed hand. Event properties are limited to coarse settings and outcomes such as online or offline mode, table speed, opponent difficulty, share method, and whether a scan needs review. We do not send display names, room codes, game identifiers, tile or hand contents, photos, invite links, or free-form text as custom event properties. Page analytics separately records the pages visited; game and invitation routes can contain identifiers in their paths. Completion events count what participating browsers observe, not a guaranteed total of unique games.
• Technical logs. Standard short-lived server logs — request path, status, and timings — kept briefly for security and debugging. Our application logs deliberately omit IP addresses and browser details. Network addresses are still processed transiently to deliver traffic, operate the fair-use limits that keep the parlor available, and protect the service — including by the hosting infrastructure described in Section 12.
• Rack photos (transient). A photo you submit to the tile reader is processed in memory to propose tiles and is not stored — see Section 6.

We do not ask for or collect email addresses, phone numbers, real names (unless you choose to play under one), postal addresses, payment details, precise location, contacts, or advertising identifiers. We never record voice chat or keep any audio. There is no account to create, no profile to fill in, and no newsletter. If a feature ever needs more than this policy describes, we will update the policy first.

These kinds of data live in your browser’s storage (local and session):

• your language, color theme, and tile-set preferences;
• table settings you last used (speed, opponent difficulty, card pack);
• your voice chat preferences (push-to-talk or open microphone, and the microphone you picked); the browser itself remembers whether you allowed microphone access;
• the display name you last played under, so the check-in form can suggest it next time;
• pinned target hands, tile arrangements, hint preferences, dismissed one-time notices, and similar in-game conveniences; and
• offline practice tables — the entire game state of practice hands, including hands dealt from the tile reader.

Some stored values also leave your browser when you use server features. For example, your confirmed display name and chosen table settings are sent when you start an online game and become part of its record (Sections 3 and 10). When analytics is available, coarse setting values such as table speed and opponent difficulty may also be sent with usage events, including offline practice events (Section 3). Offline practice game state stays on your device; we do not keep a server backup of those hands.

The app shell and tile artwork may also be cached on your device so practice works without a connection. You can remove browser-stored data and cached files by clearing the site’s data in your browser; we cannot restore cleared offline hands. Clearing browser data does not delete existing server game records or analytics.

When you scan a physical rack:

• the photo is downscaled and re-encoded in your browser first, which strips camera metadata such as location (EXIF) before anything leaves your device;
• it is sent once, over an encrypted connection, to our server, which passes it to an AI vision provider (OpenAI models via a managed gateway) for one purpose: identifying the tiles in the frame;
• the proposed tiles come back to you to confirm or correct — the reading is advisory and creates no game state by itself;
• the photo is handled in memory only: we do not write it to disk, log it, publish it, or use it for anything besides that one reading; and
• camera access is used only in the scan page, only while you use it.

If you prefer, the manual tile picker does the same job with no photo at all — it also works offline.

• to run games: dealing, enforcing rules, timing claims, scoring, and settling;
• to keep the public record: the ledger, honours board, replays, and share previews;
• to let you return to your chair at tables you host or sit at;
• to keep the parlor fair and available: rate limits, abuse prevention, and security;
• to fix problems, using brief technical logs; and
• to comply with legal obligations.

We do not use your information for advertising, profiling, or automated decisions with legal effect, and we do not use rack photos or game records to train AI models.

Where a legal basis is required, we rely on:

• Performance of a contract — running the games and features you ask for, under the Terms;
• Legitimate interests — keeping the service secure, fair, and working (rate limits, logs, abuse prevention), and maintaining the public record that makes the ledger and honours board meaningful;
• Consent — camera access for the tile reader, which your browser asks for and you can revoke at any time; and
• Legal obligation — where we must retain or disclose information by law.

playjong sets one cookie: a signed session cookie. It contains a random identifier — not your name or anything about you — and exists so the parlor can recognize the browser that hosts or sits at a table and enforce fair-use limits. It is not used to track you across other sites, and we set no advertising or third-party tracking cookies of any kind. Replit-hosted analytics may use similar browser technology to distinguish visits and count the usage events described in Section 3, but it is not used for advertising or cross-site tracking. Blocking the game cookie leaves browsing intact but breaks sitting at server tables (the parlor could not hold your chair). Local storage, described in Section 5, holds browser copies of preferences and offline games; that section explains which values may also be transmitted.

Completed games are public by design — that is what makes the ledger, the honours board, and replay links work. Public records include the display names at the table, the final hands, scores, and the course of play, and may be summarized in link previews (for example when a game is shared in a chat app). Active games are not public: only the session that owns a game can play it, and shared tables are reachable only through their join code. Choose display names you are comfortable seeing published; if a published record concerns you, Section 16 explains how to ask for removal.

We disclose information only:

• Publicly, as the game works — completed-game records, as described in Section 10;
• To service providers — the processors in Section 12, only for the purposes described there;
• For legal reasons — when required by law, or when reasonably necessary to protect the service, its players, or the public; and
• In a transfer of the service — if the parlor changes operator, under this policy’s protections.

We never sell or rent information, and we do not share it with data brokers.

• Hosting — Replit. The parlor runs on infrastructure hosted by Replit, which processes traffic and stores the game database on our behalf. When analytics is enabled, Replit also processes page views and the limited product events described in Section 3.
• Voice relay (TURN). When two browsers cannot reach each other directly, voice chat packets pass through a relay server the parlor operator configures, along with a public STUN server (Google) that only helps browsers discover their own network address. The relay forwards encrypted audio packets in real time and does not store them; if no relay is configured, voice chat reads as unavailable rather than falling back to a third party we have not named here.
• Tile reading — AI vision. Rack photos are processed by an AI vision provider (OpenAI models via a managed gateway) solely to return the proposed tiles, as described in Section 6.
• Typefaces — Google Fonts. The parlor’s fonts load from Google Fonts, so your browser requests those font files directly from Google’s servers. Like any web request, that exposes your IP address and browser details to Google — but nothing about your games.

These providers process data only as needed to deliver the service described in this policy and under their own security commitments.

The service is operated from, and its servers may be located in, the United States. If you play from elsewhere, your information is transferred to and processed in countries whose data-protection laws may differ from your own. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards for such transfers.

• Game records — kept while they are part of the public record (the ledger and honours board depend on them); we may prune or archive old records over time;
• Session cookie & identifiers — the cookie lives in your browser until it expires or you clear it; server-side fair-use counters are short-lived and expire on their own;
• Table talk — chat lines are kept with their table (newest 200 per table) and go when the table’s records go; voice connection set-up messages are deleted within minutes and a chair’s place on a call expires half a minute after its browser stops checking in; no audio is ever retained;
• Technical logs — kept briefly and rotated automatically;
• Rack photos — never stored; they exist only for the moment of the scan; and
• Local data — browser copies remain until you clear them. This does not delete values already sent to server features or analytics as described in Section 5.

Traffic to the parlor is encrypted in transit (HTTPS). Session cookies are signed so they cannot be forged, games are guarded server-side so only the owning session can act in them, and rate limits blunt abuse. Above all, we practice data minimalism: the most effective protection for data is not collecting it. No online service can promise perfect security, but the little the parlor holds is guarded carefully.

Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR, UK GDPR, or California’s CCPA/CPRA), you may have rights to access, correct, delete, port, or object to the processing of your personal information, and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising them. Because the parlor has no accounts, exercising these rights works like this:

• Local data — clear the site’s data in your browser to remove local copies, including offline hands. Server records and analytics are separate from those browser copies;
• The session cookie — delete it in your browser at any time;
• Camera access — revoke it in your browser’s site settings;
• Published game records — send a removal or redaction request through the contact channels in Section 20, including the game link and the display name concerned. Because records are tied to anonymous sessions rather than identities, we may ask for enough context (for example, that the request comes from the session that played the game) to avoid removing someone else’s record.

We respond to requests within the time the applicable law allows. You may also have the right to complain to your local data-protection authority. We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of under the CCPA/CPRA’s “sale or sharing” provisions.

playjong is a general-audience game. It has no accounts, requires no personal details, and collects no more information from any player than this page describes — which is why it collects nothing knowingly from children that it does not collect from anyone else. If you believe a child’s name or information appears in a published record and should come down, contact us (Section 20) and we will prioritize the request.

The parlor does not track visitors across sites, so there is nothing for a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal to switch off — the behavior those signals request is already the default here.

If our practices change, we will update this page and the date at the top of it before the change takes effect, and for material changes we will make the update reasonably visible on the site. Earlier versions are superseded by the posted version.

Privacy questions, access requests, and removal requests can be sent to the site’s operator through the contact channels published on playjong.com. Please include the game link and display name when writing about a published record.