Privacy
Porchlight is a place to play games with other people. It is built to know as little about you as it can. This page says exactly what it does know, who can see it, how long it's kept, and how to get a copy or delete it. There are no ads and no trackers, and the only counting the site does is the daily visitor totals described below; the only things your browser talks to are this site and, if you choose to sign in with them, Google or Discord.
What's collected
| What | Why | Who can see it |
|---|---|---|
| A username, an avatar you build from parts, the card back and frame you pick, and an optional short bio | So other players know who they're playing with | Everyone on the site |
| Your game history and ratings | Results, replays and leaderboards | Everyone, except games at password-protected tables, which only their players (and moderators) can see |
| Your solo games: each one's time, number of moves, and whether you solved it | Daily boards and your personal record | Daily boards show everyone the name, avatar, time and moves of each person who solved that day's deal; your full record (and every replay of a solo game) is yours alone |
| An email address, if you give one | Signing in and password resets, and a warning before an unused account is deleted | You, and site admins. Never moderators, other players or anyone else. It's only used once you've confirmed it from the link we send. |
| Whether you've asked for news by email | Sending you an email when there's a new game or a game night. It's off unless you turn it on in your account, it only goes to a confirmed address, and every one of those emails has a link that turns it off again, with no sign-in. Turning it off doesn't affect emails about your account itself. | You, and site admins. |
| Your password | Signing in | Nobody: it's stored as a one-way hash |
| Direct messages and table invitations | Delivering them | The two people in the conversation |
| Lobby and table chat | Delivering it | Whoever is in the lobby or at the table; it isn't stored (the lobby keeps the last 100 lines in memory while the server runs) |
| Lines you write in the story game | They are the game | The table, and anyone who opens the game's replay afterwards (private tables: only the players) |
| Reports you send about other players, and reports about you | Moderation | Moderators and admins |
| Moderation actions (mutes, suspensions) | Moderation | Moderators and admins; you, in your data download |
| Google or Discord account id and verified email, if you sign in that way | Recognising you next time | You and admins. We don't keep the provider's access tokens. |
| Whether your account has Premium, and until when | The star by your name, and the Premium table surfaces, card backs, frames and tile sets | Everyone sees the star; the date, you and admins |
| Your Stripe customer id and whether a subscription is running, if you've bought Premium | Matching payments to your account; receipts; cancelling | You and admins. Stripe handles the payment itself: it sees your card details, email and billing address, and we never see your card number. |
| A session cookie | Keeping you signed in; it's strictly necessary, so there's no cookie banner | Your browser and this site |
| Your table preferences (game options you last chose, the solo variant you last played) | Convenience | Stored in your own browser only; never sent to the site |
Visitor counts: when you open the site, it notes where you came from (only the name of the site that linked you here, like Bluesky or Reddit, or a tag on the link itself) and, that day, whether you went on to open a game, play one, finish one, play a second, or make an account. Only daily totals are stored ("12 people came from Bluesky and 3 of them played"). Who did what is kept in the server's memory for the day, so that nobody counts twice, and is never saved. To count people who come back on a later day, your browser keeps a note on your own device of the day you first opened the site and what brought you then (the same site name or link tag). The site reads that note when you visit and uses it only to add one to that day's total of people who returned. It is not stored with your account or anywhere on the server, and clearing this site's data in your browser removes it.
Your IP address is used while you're connected, to limit abuse (how many accounts or sign-in attempts one address can make in an hour), and is not stored by the site. The site keeps no access logs, and its error logs record which page failed, not who asked for it.
Guests
Opening the site signs you in as a guest with a random name. A guest account holds no personal information. Guests who never finish a game are deleted after a day away; the rest after 30 days away.
How long things are kept
- Your account: until you delete it, or until it has gone unused for three years. If you have a confirmed email address, you'll get a warning a month before that, and signing in once keeps it.
- Messages, friends, blocks, reports, ratings, solo games and Premium status: as long as your account.
- Games: finished games are kept for the other players. When your account goes, your name, avatar and id are removed from them and replaced with "Deleted player".
- Sign-in sessions: 30 days, or until you sign out, change your password or delete the account.
- Email confirmation and password-reset links: 24 hours and 1 hour respectively, and once used.
- Backups: the database is backed up every night, and backups are kept for 14 days, encrypted wherever they're copied off the server. A deleted account can linger in a backup for up to that long, but it is never brought back: if a backup is ever restored, every account deleted since it was taken is deleted again.
Your rights, and the buttons that exercise them
You don't need to write to anyone for most of this; it's in the account drawer (click your name at the top of the page):
- See and download everything: "Download my data" gives you a file with your account details, messages, games (solo games included), ratings, reports and any moderation history.
- Change things: email, avatar, bio, password and the profanity filter are all editable there.
- Delete your account: "Delete my account" cancels any Premium subscription, then removes the account immediately and completely, as described above. Admin accounts are removed by the site operator instead.
- If your account is suspended, you can't sign in to use these two buttons. Write to contact@porchlight.gg and we'll send your copy or delete the account for you, within a month.
If you live in the EU, UK or another place with data-protection law, you also have the right to object to or restrict processing, to complain to your local supervisory authority, and to ask us anything about this page. Write to contact@porchlight.gg; we answer within a month.
Who else handles your data
The site runs on servers rented from DigitalOcean, in the United States (San Francisco), and sends its confirmation and reset emails through Resend. Both are American companies. Sending your data to them is covered by the standard contractual clauses in DigitalOcean's data processing agreement, and by Resend's certification under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework (with its UK extension). Nobody else receives your data, and it is never sold or used for advertising.
If you buy Premium, the payment is taken by Stripe, also an American company, on its own pages: your card details go to Stripe, never to us, and Stripe's own privacy policy covers what it keeps. We receive your Stripe customer id, the state of your subscription, and what each payment covered, which is how Premium gets switched on. Transfers to Stripe are covered by the standard contractual clauses in its data processing agreement. Deleting your account cancels any subscription first.
If you sign in with Google or Discord, those companies know you did; what they do with that is covered by their own privacy policies. We receive only your account id, your name as a suggestion for a username, and your verified email address.
Age
You must be 13 or older to create an account. If we learn that an account belongs to someone younger, we delete it. The site is not directed at children.
Legal basis (for the lawyers)
We process account data, Premium status included, to provide the service you asked for (contract). We use email addresses for confirmation, resets and the deletion warning, and IP addresses for abuse limits, because the site can't run safely without them (legitimate interest). Moderation records exist to keep the site safe for everyone (legitimate interest). Nothing here relies on consent, which is why there is nothing to consent to.
Changes
If this page changes in a way that matters, the date at the top changes and the lobby will say so for a while.