Privacy

Last updated 28 October 2026

Backgammon Room shows no ads and contains no tracking. It sends us anonymous usage statistics, which you can turn off in Settings (see Anonymous usage statistics). Your games against the bots and against a friend on your iPhone stay on your iPhone. The app keeps a small account on our server, under a random identifier, for your streak, your daily puzzles, your lessons, the record of your coached reviews and Premium. You can play as a guest. A free account, which you log in to with Apple, Google or your email and a password, carries all of that to your other iPhones; we never ask for your name. If you play online, our server keeps those matches, your username, your ratings and your friends (see Online play).

Who we are

Backgammon Room is made by Paul Duval, an independent developer based in France, who is responsible for the data described here. Contact: [email protected].

What stays on your iPhone

• Your settings, the game in progress, your finished games with their analysis and the coach’s explanations, and the statistics drawn from them. Your online matches are on your iPhone too, for their review, and also on our server (Online play).
• Your lessons: where you are in each one, and the summary of your coached mistakes that Pip reads to suggest a course on the Learn tab (never sent). Your lesson progress is also kept with your account (below).
• Finished games are included in your iPhone’s backup (iCloud or computer) if you have backups turned on. The game in progress and the app’s security keys are not.
• Deleting the app deletes all of it, except your account’s key (below). We have no copy of your games against the bots or against a friend on this iPhone.

Your account

The first time the app reaches our server, the server creates an account for it: a random identifier, with nothing about you in it. Until you log in, you play as a guest with this account. The app keeps the account’s key in your iPhone’s keychain, on this iPhone only (not in backups); it usually survives deleting and reinstalling the app.

What needs a free account: online play, the game review, Progress (your error rate, wins and record against each bot), matches to 5, the strongest bot and buying Premium. Everything else works as a guest: games against the other bots, the daily puzzle and your streak, Learn and Settings. Restoring a purchase never needs an account.

Logging in

A free account is the same account with a login added. You can log in three ways, and use more than one:

• Sign in with Apple: we receive only the identifier Apple gives us for your Apple Account, which is different for every developer, and a token from Apple we use only to cancel the link when you delete your account. We don’t ask Apple for your name or email.
• Continue with Google: we receive Google’s identifier for you in our app and your email address, when Google confirms it is yours. We ask Google only for these (“openid email”): not your name, not your picture. The app keeps none of Google’s tokens; our server receives Google’s signed, single-use confirmation, checks it, and keeps only the identifier and the address.
• Email and password: we keep your email address and your password, the password only as a one-way scrypt hash: we can check a password you type, but we can’t read it, and it never appears in our logs.

Codes by email: to confirm your address when you sign up, and to choose a new password, we email you a 6-digit code. The server keeps each code for at most 24 hours, and only as a value computed from it with a secret key: it can check a code you type in the app, but can’t read it back. A password reset code works only on the iPhone that asked for it. The emails are plain text, with no links to tap and no tracking.

Signing up with an address that already has an account doesn’t create a second one: we email that address to say how to get in instead. Logging in on another iPhone brings your account there, and adds what you did on that iPhone as a guest (its puzzles, its lessons, its coached reviews and its purchases).

What the server keeps with your account

• Your daily puzzles: for each puzzle you answer, the day, your answer, how it was graded, the hints you used, how long you took and your 👍 or 👎. The server works out your streak from them. “41% found it” is counted from everyone’s answers without showing anyone’s.
• Your lessons: for each lesson you’ve finished, its marks (Done, No hints, Remembered), the day you first finished it, when its next refresh is due and how many refreshes you’ve passed, when that schedule last changed, and your best quick-round score; and for each day a lesson, a refresh or a course check counted for your streak, which lesson and when you finished it. The server works out your streak from these and your puzzles.
• Your coached reviews: which games (by their random number) were reviewed with the coach, and on which day, so the day’s free coached review can be counted and a game you already reviewed stays coached.
• Premium: if you subscribe, what Apple reports about the subscription: the product, Apple’s transaction number, the dates it started, renews or ends, whether it is in its free trial, whether it will renew, and refunds. Apple handles the payment; we never see your payment details or your Apple Account.
• Your logins, if you have any: the Apple and Google identifiers, your email address and your password’s hash (above), with when each was added.
• The day of the account’s last use.

You can delete the account at any time in the app: Settings › Account › Delete account. That deletes everything above from our server at once, every login included (the Apple and Google identifiers, your email address, your password’s hash and any pending code), and cancels the link with Apple; your streak, puzzles and lesson progress are cleared on this iPhone too. The subscription itself is managed by Apple: deleting the account doesn’t cancel it. To also remove the app from your Google Account: myaccount.google.com › Security › Your connections to third-party apps & services, then Backgammon Room. Two exceptions hold nothing that leads back to you: the purchase records Apple sent (Apple’s transaction number, the product, the dates and whether it was refunded) stay, without the account, until 60 days after the subscription ends, and a refunded purchase’s record is kept, so a refund can’t be undone by sending the same purchase again from a new account; and the count of coached reviews used today on this iPhone (below) stays its 7 days.

Logging out leaves the account on the server for when you log in again (it takes this iPhone’s notification token off it first: Online play), and this iPhone carries on as a guest with a new account: your streak, puzzles and lessons stay with the account, not on this iPhone, and come back when you log in again. An account with no login (a guest’s) that isn’t used for 18 months is deleted; an account with a login is kept until you delete it.

Online play

Online play needs a free account. Our online service (play.backgammonroom.com, on the same servers as the rest) referees each match: it rolls the dice, checks every move and keeps the clocks. So that ratings, records and disputes can be settled, it keeps what follows.

• Your profile: the username and face you chose, the day you chose them, and whether you have used your one username change.
• Your ratings: your Live and Daily ratings, and their history: your rating after each rated match.
• Your online matches: who played whom, the length, whether it was rated, every event of the match (each roll and its dice, each move, the cube, resignations and the clocks; not the quick phrases, except in a Daily match the last one each player sent, so that it is there when the other opens the match), the dice’s secret numbers (the server’s and both apps’), the result and how each rating changed. We keep them as long as the service runs, because your ratings and your opponents’ records rest on them.
• Challenge links you make: the code, the match it offers, and when it expires. A link is deleted 7 days after it expires.
• Daily matches you start (a match to 1, 3 or 5 with a day or three for each move) while they wait for an opponent, and Daily challenges you send or receive (who, the match offered, until when and how it ended). Each is deleted 7 days after it ends.
• Your friends: who your friends are and since when, the friend requests you sent and received (a request is deleted 30 days after it was sent, whether it was declined or not answered), and the friend links you make (the code, how many of its 10 uses are left and when it expires, 7 days after it was made; deleted 7 days after it expires). Your list of friends is visible only to you. A friend’s challenge (who, the match offered, until when and how it ended) is deleted 7 days after it ends.
• When you were last here: the time your app was last connected to the online service, so that your friends see “Online now”, “In a match” or “Last seen 2 h ago”. Only your friends see it, and only while you both show it: turn off Settings › Notifications › Show when I’m online and your friends see nothing, and you don’t see theirs.
• Notifications, if you allow them: your iPhone’s notification token (an address Apple gives the app on this iPhone, not linked to your name or your Apple Account), whether it belongs to a test version of the app or the App Store one, and the notifications you want (your turn in a Daily match, with a reminder 2 hours before your time runs out, and a Daily match starting or ending; a friend challenges you, or an opponent asks for a rematch; friend requests and answers to yours). We keep the token only to send you those notifications (about your matches and your friends, never ads). It is taken off your account when you log out, and when you turn the app’s notifications off in iOS Settings (the next time the app opens); it is deleted with your account, deleted when Apple tells us it no longer works, and deleted after a year without the app sending it again (it does at each launch).
• The players you block, so you aren’t paired again and their links don’t reach you.
• Reports: when you report a player, the reason you chose, the match it is about if any, and both usernames. A report is emailed to us at once (through Resend, below) so we can act on it within 24 hours; we keep it until it is handled.

What other players see: your username and face, the day you started playing online, your Live and Daily ratings, how many finished matches you won and lost against them, and, during a match, your moves, your clock, the quick phrases you send and whether your app is connected (in a Daily match, when you made your last move). Players can find you by your username to send you a friend request. Your friends also see whether you’re online, in a match or when you were last here (unless you turned it off, above) and can challenge you; nobody sees who your friends are. The number of players online doesn’t show who anyone is.

The connection: while an online screen is open or a Live match runs, the app keeps a connection to the online service (a Daily move is sent on its own as you make it, whether or not that connection is open). It carries your account’s key, the app’s check (App Attest, below), your moves, your dice seed and your friends’ challenges. The service knows whether your app is connected (that is how your opponent sees that your connection dropped, and your friends that you’re online) and keeps only when it was last connected (above).

Fair play: to keep matches fair, we may have the game engine analyse rated online matches, for example after a report of cheating. A person (the developer) looks at the result and decides; nothing is decided automatically. What can follow is in the community rules: a username changed to “Player” and four digits, or online play closed for the account.

Deleting your account deletes your profile, your ratings and their history, the players you blocked and who blocked you, your challenge links, your Daily requests and challenges, your friends, your friend requests and friend links, your notification token and choices, and the reports you made. Your past online matches stay, because they are your opponents’ history too: your seat in them is emptied and shows as “Deleted player”, and your username is removed from them and from the reports about you. A Daily match you were playing goes on without you: your opponent wins it when your time runs out, or it is cancelled if it hadn’t started.

What the app sends to our server

The game review and the coach run on our server, and so do the bots when it can be reached, so the app sends it what follows. When our server can’t be reached or is slow to answer, the bots play on your iPhone instead; a game played that way is still sent to the server once you’re back online, for its review.

• Game data: the position on the board, the dice, the moves played, the cube, the bot’s level and a random number identifying the game. The server works out the bot’s move or the analysis and sends it back. It doesn’t store these games; it only keeps recent positions in memory, without any identifier, to answer faster, and loses them when it restarts. (Online matches are another matter: Online play.)
• A check that it’s the real app: the app uses Apple’s App Attest. Your iPhone creates an anonymous key for the app, and the server receives that key’s identifier and Apple’s confirmation that the app is genuine. The identifier isn’t linked to your Apple Account, your name or your device’s serial number, and deleting the app discards it.
• Your account’s key, with the requests that need the account (above).
• When you log in: Apple’s or Google’s signed confirmation of who you are, or your email address and password (always over an encrypted connection; the server checks the password against its hash and keeps only the hash), and the codes you type.
• The app’s version number, so the server can tell an outdated version apart.
• For the coach’s explanations: when you open a coached review, the app sends back the server’s own signed summary of each mistake it explains. The server turns the position into facts (which checkers can be hit, points made, winning chances) and sends only those facts to Anthropic, which writes the one- or two-sentence explanation. No account, name, device identifier or IP address goes to Anthropic. The server keeps explanations without any identifier, in memory and in its database, so the same mistake is explained again without asking Anthropic. To limit costs, it counts in memory how many new explanations each account and each app key ask for in a day.
• The free coached reviews: to count the day’s free coached review, the server stores which games you had coached (by their random number and a code computed from the game’s moves, so a game can’t be swapped for another under the same number) and, for 7 days, how many coached reviews each app key used per day, as a code computed from the key with a secret key, so that making a new account doesn’t reset the day’s count.

Like any internet service, the server sees your IP address. It uses it, in memory only, to limit how many requests one address can send, and doesn’t write it to its logs. To stop password guessing and repeated emails, it also counts, in memory only, the log-in attempts, codes and emails for each email address, under a value computed from the address with a secret key.

Anonymous usage statistics

To see which parts of the app are used and where players get stuck, the app sends our server anonymous statistics. They are on unless you turn them off, at any time, in Settings › Privacy › Share anonymous usage statistics.

• What is sent: what happens in the app, as short codes: the app opened, a game started or finished (against which bot, practice or real, a single game or a match, won, lost or left unfinished), a review, a puzzle, Puzzle Rush or a lesson opened or finished, an online match started or finished, the Premium screen shown and from where, a trial or a subscription started, an account created (with Apple, Google or email), and which screens you looked at and for how long. Each comes with its time, the app’s version and whether the app came from the App Store or TestFlight.
• A random install number: the app makes it the first time it sends statistics and keeps it on your iPhone; it is replaced by a new one every 13 months, and each visit gets a random number of its own. It isn’t your account, an Apple identifier, the advertising identifier or the App Attest key, and nothing on our server links it to your account, your games, your online profile or your purchases. Deleting the app deletes it.
• Nothing else: no name, email address, username, password, text you typed, location or IP address. The server keeps only the details it expects for each kind of event and drops anything else. Like every request, the statistics come with the check that it’s the real app (above), but the server keeps nothing of it with them, and for these requests it doesn’t log the key’s identifier or an account code.
• Where they go: to our server and its database at Railway, in the Netherlands. No analytics company or other third party receives them.
• How long: 13 months, then they are deleted automatically.
• Turning them off: nothing more is sent, the statistics not sent yet are deleted from your iPhone, and the install number is forgotten, so what was already sent can no longer be tied to your iPhone. If you turn them on again, the app makes a new number.

Server logs

For each request the server logs the time, the address requested, the result, how long it took, the first characters of the app’s anonymous key identifier (not for the usage statistics) and, for account requests, a short code derived from the account (not the account’s identifier itself). The online service also logs connections and matches with the match’s number and that short code, and a dice check that failed in an app, with the match’s number. For a review with many close decisions it also logs the game’s random number. Log-ins, codes and emails are logged with a short code derived from the email address with a secret key, never the address itself, a code, a password or a login token. We use these logs to keep the service working and to stop abuse. Our host deletes them automatically after at most 30 days.

For the coach, the server keeps the facts and the text of an explanation it rejected, or that you reported with “This seems wrong”, so we can improve the explanations. A report is stored with codes computed from your account and from the app’s key with a secret key, so that two reports from one account or one iPhone count once; nobody can turn the codes back into your account or key without that secret, and deleting your account deletes your reports.

Who handles the data

• Railway (Railway Corporation, United States) runs our server, the online service and their database, in its data centre in the Netherlands, and keeps the logs above.
• Apple provides App Attest, Sign in with Apple and in-app purchases. Those exchanges happen between your iPhone and Apple under Apple’s privacy policy; Apple sends our server the subscription details listed above. Apple also delivers our notifications (the Apple Push Notification service): it receives your iPhone’s notification token and each notification’s words, such as a friend’s username and the length of the match they offer.
• Google provides “Continue with Google”. You sign in on Google’s page, between your iPhone and Google, under Google’s privacy policy; Google sends our server only its identifier for you and your confirmed email address.
• Resend (Plus Five Five, Inc., United States) sends our emails: the codes and the account messages above, and the reports of online players to us. It sends them from Ireland (its EU sending region); it receives each email (your address, the subject and the text) and keeps a record of it with its delivery status in the United States, where its account data is stored whatever the sending region. We have turned its open and click tracking off.
• Cloudflare manages our domain name and serves this website.
• Anthropic (Anthropic PBC, United States) writes the coach’s explanations from the board facts above, through its API. Under its commercial terms it doesn’t use this data to train its models.

We don’t sell data or share it with anyone else. Where a provider is based outside the European Union, the transfer relies on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses in that provider’s data processing terms (for Resend, its data processing agreement of 31 December 2025: the clauses’ controller-to-processor module, alongside its EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework certification).

Legal basis

Under the GDPR, we process this data to provide what you ask for (Article 6(1)(b)): the games and reviews, your account and its logins, the codes we email you, your streak, your lessons, Premium, and online play (your profile, your matches, your ratings, what other players see, your challenge links and blocks, your friends, when you were last here and your notifications). For the logs, the abuse limits (including the counts of log-in attempts, codes and emails), the coach’s reports, the reports of online players and the fair-play checks we rely on our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure, fair and running, and in improving the explanations (Article 6(1)(f)). The anonymous usage statistics rely on our legitimate interest in understanding how the app is used so we can improve it (Article 6(1)(f)); following the CNIL’s guidance on audience measurement, they serve only our own statistics, are never shared, last 13 months and can be turned off at any time. No decision about you is made automatically.

Your rights

You can ask to access, correct or delete data about you, to restrict or object to its use, or to receive a copy. Deleting your account takes one tap in the app (above); for anything else, write to [email protected] and we’ll help. You can also complain to your data protection authority (in France, the CNIL).

This website

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Changes

When we change what we handle, we update this page before the change ships, and the date at the top changes.