Privacy policy

BusinessTycoons is run by the team behind BusinessTycoons ("we"). We keep as little about you as we can: an e-mail address to sign in with, and what you do in the game. We never ask for your real name, your age, where you live or your phone number. Please don't put them in your names, posts or mail either.

Questions about your data, or a request about it: contact@businesstycoons.co.uk.

What we keep, and why

• Your account: your e-mail address, your password (only as a secure hash, never readable), the player and secretary names you choose, and a two-factor app or passkey if you set one up. We need these to give you an account (the contract between us).
• Your game: your companies, mail, forum and blog posts, the changes you suggest to the wiki, your team, your logo, your settings, the players you block and the reports you send. That is the game itself.
• Security data: the IP address and the network it belongs to, the browser and a device ID when you sign up, sign in, change something important or act in the game. We use them to stop cheating, multiple accounts and abuse, which is in the interest of every player (our legitimate interest). Sign-in records and IP addresses go after 90 days, the log of game actions after 30 days. An address banned for abuse stays on the ban list until the ban ends, and the evidence in a cheating case we are still looking at stays until we decide it.
• Where you came from: when you sign up we note what sent you to the game, such as a search engine, an AI assistant or a forum (the site's address only, not the page you were on), the campaign words in the link you followed, and the first page you opened here. It stays with your account and tells us where players find the game (our legitimate interest). Until you sign up it is held only in your visit's session and goes when that ends; nothing is kept for visitors who don't sign up. If you delete your account, only the name of the source stays, in our sign-up counts.
• Payments: VIP membership is paid on Stripe's own page; your card details never reach us. We keep what you bought, when, the amount and Stripe's reference for it, for six years, because the law asks us to keep accounts.
• E-mail: we write to you about your account (confirming your address, a password reset or account deletion you asked for). We also tell you when a new round starts and how you finished one, unless you untick that when you sign up, and about new mail and your secretary's letters if you turn those on in Settings. Change each in Settings, or stop one with the link in every e-mail. We keep a record of what we sent for 90 days, and stop writing to an address that bounces or marks us as spam.
• Discord: only if you connect your Discord account in Settings, we keep its Discord ID and username, so our bot can give you your roles on our Discord server and show you there by your player name. Discord never tells us your e-mail address. Disconnect it in Settings whenever you like: the bot takes back what it gave you and we forget the account.

Who sees what

Other players see your player name, your companies and logo, your team, and what you post in the forums, blogs and team shout boxes. When the staff put a change you suggested on the wiki, it is thanked by your player name on that page, unless you ask not to be named. Anyone can see the round results on our public results page and front page: the leading and finishing companies' names, their players' names and their Company Value. Your e-mail address is hidden unless you choose to show it in Settings. Mail is seen only by you and the player you write to; the game staff read a message only when it is reported to them, and that reading is logged. The staff see the security data above when they look into cheating or abuse.

Who helps us run the game

The game runs on servers in the European Union (Railway, in Amsterdam). Cloudflare protects the site and stores approved logos; Stripe takes payments; an e-mail delivery service sends our e-mails; Discord runs our chat server. Each of them handles your data only to do that job for us. Where one of them is based outside the UK, the data is protected by the safeguards UK law requires. We never sell your data and show no adverts.

Cookies

Only the cookies the site needs: one keeps you signed in (until you sign up, its session also holds where you came from, see above), one protects the forms from forgery, and one remembers this browser if you tick "Remember me". Your browser also remembers the pages you visited last and how you like the map. There are no tracking, analytics or advertising cookies, so there is nothing to agree to.

Young players

You must be 13 or older to play. We don't ask anyone's age, so everyone gets the same private settings: your e-mail hidden, mail only between players who haven't blocked each other, and nothing about you shared outside the game.

How long we keep it

Your account stays until you delete it. Delete it on the Settings page: your company closes and you are signed out at once, and after 30 days your e-mail address, names, password, mail, blog posts, the words of your forum posts, wiki suggestions not taken, your name on wiki pages, your logo, blocks, sign-in records and security data are erased for good. Signing in before then keeps the account. What stays is the game's history with no way back to you: your companies' results and rankings, and your forum replies as "Removed", under "Deleted player". Payment records stay for the six years the law asks.

Your rights

You may ask for a copy of what we hold about you, have it corrected, deleted or moved, object to how we use it, or ask us to stop using it while we sort something out. Most of it you can change or delete yourself in Settings; for the rest, write to contact@businesstycoons.co.uk and we will answer within a month. If you are unhappy with how we handled your data, you may complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we say so in the game before it applies. See also the user agreement.