Privacy policy
The short version
- You play with a name and a Couch Buddy. No email, phone number or password.
- We store what the games need: your profile, your groups, and what you play (drawings, answers, scores).
- Only the people in your groups see your games.
- We count how the app is used, in our own database, to make the games better.
- No ads, no tracking, no third-party analytics, and we never sell your data.
- You can delete your account in the app at any time.
Who we are
Couch Buddies is made by Chochobachi, a small game studio (“we”, “us”). This policy covers the Couch Buddies iPhone app and this website. If you have any question about it, email [email protected].
What we collect
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your profile: the name you choose and your Couch Buddy (its colour, face and accessory). | So the people you play with know it’s you. |
| A sign-in token: a random code created when you first open the app and kept on your device. | To recognise your device without an email or password. |
| Your groups: the groups you create or join, their invite codes and who’s in them. | So you can play with the right people. |
| Your games: what you play and create: drawings, guesses, words, answers (including the answers about yourself in Mind Reader), moves, scores and game history. | To run the games, show results and keep your group’s scores and history. |
| Notifications: the push notification token Apple gives the app, and your notification preferences. | To tell you when it’s your turn or someone wants to play, only if you allow notifications. |
| Usage stats: when you open the app and which games you open, plus the groups and games created and the rounds played with their scores, linked to your player profile. | To understand which games people enjoy and make Couch Buddies better. Kept in our own database only. |
| Reports: if you report someone, who you reported, which group and the reason you picked. | So we can look into it and keep groups safe. The person you report isn’t told who reported them. |
| Basic server logs: technical records such as your IP address, the time of a request and any errors. | To keep the service running, secure and fix bugs. Kept for a short time only. |
We don’t collect your email address, phone number, contacts, photos, location, or your device’s advertising identifier. We don’t track you across other apps or websites, and the app contains no advertising or third-party analytics code.
Who can see it
The people in a group can see the names, buddies, game content (such as drawings and answers) and scores of everyone in that group. Your games aren’t public, and people outside your groups can’t see them. Anyone with a group’s invite code can join it, so share codes only with people you know.
Who we share it with
We never sell your data and we don’t share it with advertisers or data brokers. We use a few service providers to run Couch Buddies, and they process data only on our behalf:
- Google Cloud runs our servers, in Google’s Australia region.
- Neon hosts our database.
- Apple Push Notification service delivers notifications to your iPhone.
- Cloudflare hosts this website and handles email sent to our addresses.
We may disclose information if the law requires it, for example in response to a valid legal request.
How long we keep it
We keep your profile, groups and games for as long as you have an account, so your history and scores are there when you come back. When the last member leaves a group, the group and its games are deleted. Usage stats are kept for 180 days; after that only daily totals remain, which don’t identify anyone. Server logs are kept for a short period (no more than 30 days). Database backups that let us recover from mistakes roll over automatically and are kept no longer than 30 days.
Deleting your account
You can delete your account at any time in the app: open Settings and choose Delete account. This deletes your profile (name and buddy), your group memberships and your sign-in token straight away, and stops notifications to your device.
It also erases what you created in games: your drawings, answers and moves are deleted, and shared records such as a match you played in are kept for the others with your name replaced by “Former player”. Your group’s team scores stay. Your usage stats are no longer linked to you. Deleted data may remain in our rolling backups until they expire, as described above.
Your choices
- Change your name or buddy at any time in Settings.
- Turn notifications off in the app’s Settings or in your iPhone’s Settings.
- Leave any group from that group’s screen.
- Ask us for a copy of your data, or for us to correct or delete it, by emailing [email protected]. Depending on where you live, you may have further rights under local privacy law; we’ll honour them.
Children
Couch Buddies is rated 16+ on the App Store, because Wiki Race lets players browse Wikipedia, which can include mature topics. It has no ads, no tracking, no in-app chat with strangers, and no email or phone number is ever needed. Groups are private and joined only by invite code, so everyone plays only with people they’ve invited.
Couch Buddies isn’t directed at children, and we don’t knowingly collect personal information from children beyond the name, buddy and game content described above. If you’re a parent or guardian and want your child’s information deleted, email [email protected] and we’ll delete it.
Security
Everything between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit (HTTPS), data is stored with providers that encrypt it at rest, and access to it is limited to the people who run Couch Buddies. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to keep your data safe and collect as little as we can.
This website
This website uses no cookies, no analytics and no third-party scripts. Cloudflare, which hosts it, processes basic request data (such as IP addresses) to deliver and protect the site.
Changes
If we change this policy we’ll update it here and change the effective date above. If a change is significant, we’ll also let you know in the app.
Contact
Questions, requests or worries: [email protected].