Privacy Policy

This policy explains what Moonshots Bingo collects about you, why, who helps us process it, how long we keep it and how to delete it. Moonshots Bingo is run by David Corteville, an individual. In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" mean David Corteville. We collect as little as the game needs, and we don't sell it.

The short version

• We collect your email address, your username and House, and what you do in the game.
• Your username, cards and scores are public. Each round you get a card automatically. When the episode is published and cards lock, your card gets a public page. We ask search engines not to list card pages, but episode pages, which show the top players' usernames, can appear in search results.
• Pod messages are private to the pod's members. Site administrators can open a pod to review it, for example after a report.
• We set three first-party cookies, all to sign you in safely. No advertising or analytics cookies, and no third-party cookies.
• Three services help us run the site: Vercel (hosting), Neon (database) and Resend (email).
• We do not sell or share personal information, and we don't show ads.
• You can delete your account yourself, at any time, from your profile.
• If you don't use your account for 24 months, we delete it, after emailing you a warning.

Who we are

David Corteville is the controller of your personal information, which means he decides how and why it's used. You can reach us about anything in this policy at legal@moonshotbingo.com.

What we collect

You need to give us an email address to sign in, and choose a username to play. Everything else comes from using the game.

Account information. Your email address, whether it has been verified, your username, your House (the host you back) and your past House choices, your email preferences, the date you joined, when you accepted the Terms of Use and which version, who you credited for inviting you, if you chose to credit the player whose link brought you here, and when we sent you an account deletion warning, if we have.

Gameplay. Your cards, every pick and change you make to them with the time of each change, your scores and ranks, and any episode ratings you give.

Social features. Pods you create or join, your role in them, and the messages you post. Tile requests you send, with any note, and the decision on them. If one of your requests becomes a tile and you were the first to ask for it, the game credits you as its requester.

Sign-in and security records. Each one-time sign-in link we send, stored with the email address it went to; the link's secret part is stored only in hashed form. To stop abuse of sign-in, we keep a short record of each sign-in request: a normalized form of the email address and a scrambled, one-way code made from your IP address with a secret key. We never store your IP address itself. If you type a wrong pod code, we also keep a short record of the failed attempt, to stop people guessing codes. If we end an account for breaking our Terms of Use, we may block its email address from signing in again. To do that, we keep a normalized form of the address (with any +tag removed, and for Gmail the dots removed), which administrator made the block, and a short internal note. Any other account that uses the same inbox is signed out at that moment and can't sign in again while the block lasts.

Error records. When something breaks on the site, we keep a short technical record so we can fix it: which kind of page or background task failed (for example "a pod page", not the web address you visited), the type of error, a shortened error message with any email addresses masked and quoted values removed, and how many times it happened, and when, hour by hour. We don't record your account, email address, IP address, cookies or the address you visited, and we remove anything we can recognize as something you typed.

Administrator action records. We keep a record of what site administrators do with their powers: which administrator took which action (for example changing a role, renaming or deleting an account, deleting a pod or a pod message, deciding a tile request, changing tiles, episodes or settings), on which account, pod, tile, tile request (named by its phrase), episode or setting, and when. An account is named by its internal id and its username. A deleted account that had no username is named by a masked email address instead. When an administrator opens a pod, we record which administrator and which pod, at most once every 10 minutes. These records never contain pod messages.

Usage records.

• One record per day that you visit the site while signed in.
• When you click a link from the site to YouTube or to a host's website, the link, the time and, if you're signed in, your account.
• Which of our emails we sent you, and when, including emails we skipped because you turned them off. These records don't contain your email address.

The site doesn't ask for or store your name, phone number, postal address, payment details, location or device details. We don't use analytics or tracking tools.

If you email us. This includes reports sent with a pod message's "Report" link, which opens an email from your own mail app naming the pod and the message. We keep your message, your email address and our reply for as long as we need them to deal with your request and keep a record of it.

Information from public sources. To score the game, we process the captions or transcripts of public podcast episodes. They contain no information about players.

What is public

Please read this part carefully. Some of what you do on the site is visible to other people.

Visible to anyone:

• Your card pages. Every player with a username is dealt a card automatically each round, even without editing it. When the episode is published and cards lock, your card gets a share page with its own link. That page shows your username, your House, the episode, every pick, your hits, your score and your rank. It also has a preview image, with your username, card and score, that appears when the link is shared on social media. Anyone with the link can see it. We ask search engines not to index card pages or their preview images. The major search engines honor this, but it is a request, not a lock, and a card page listed before we made this change can take a few weeks to drop out. You can't make a card private, except by deleting your account.
• Episode pages. Each episode's page shows the winner's username, House and full card, and lists the top ten players with their usernames, scores and Houses. These link to the players' card pages. A recap adds totals for the round, such as how many players took part and which phrases were said on the most cards. The page's preview image, which appears when its link is shared, shows the winner's username and score. Search engines can index episode pages.

Visible to signed-in players: leaderboards (your username, score, hits and House) and, in the card builder, "requested by" credits on tiles that came from requests. Approved tile phrases also appear on public card pages, but without the credit.

Visible to pod members: the usernames, Houses, roles and join dates of a pod's members, and its messages. Site administrators can also open a pod, one at a time, to review its members and messages, for example after a report. We keep a record of which administrator opened which pod, and when (see Retention), but the record doesn't contain the messages.

Episode ratings are shown only as averages and counts, never individually. Your email address is never shown to other players. The admin screens show only a masked form of it. We see the full address only in the database, when running the site requires it.

Because your username appears on public pages, we suggest choosing one that doesn't reveal your real name.

How we use it

• To run the game: to create your account, deal and score cards, and show leaderboards, episode pages, pods and card pages.
• To sign you in: to send sign-in links and keep you signed in.
• To email you: sign-in links, a warning before we delete an account nobody has used for 24 months, and the optional emails described below.
• To keep the site safe: to limit sign-in requests and pod-code guessing, stop spam and abuse, review reported pods, block the email addresses of accounts we end, find and fix faults, keep a record of what administrators do with their powers, and enforce our Terms of Use.
• To understand how the site is used: daily visit records, link clicks and referral credits show us which features people use and how players find the site. We review these mainly as totals. Site administrators can also see who credited whom.

We don't use your information for advertising, and we don't make decisions about you with legal or similarly significant effects by automated means. Scoring and tile-request decisions are automatic, but they only affect a free game.

Legal bases

If you are in the European Economic Area or the UK, the law requires us to say why we're allowed to use your information:

• Contract: to provide the game you signed up for, including your account, cards, scores, leaderboards, pods and sign-in emails.
• Legitimate interests: to publish card pages and episode results so players can compare and share them; to keep the site secure and working, stop abuse and keep a record of what administrators do; to understand how it's used; to credit a player you chose to credit for inviting you; to keep a record of when you accepted the Terms of Use; to delete accounts nobody uses any more, after a warning, and keep pod chat history short; and to send the optional game emails, which you can turn off at any time. We've judged that these interests don't override your rights, given how little we collect. You can object to any of these uses (see Your rights).
• Legal obligation: where we have to keep or disclose information by law.

Cookies

We use three cookies. All of them are set by moonshotbingo.com itself, can't be read by scripts on the page, and aren't shared with anyone. We don't use advertising cookies, analytics cookies or third-party cookies.

All three are strictly necessary. The site can't sign you in without them. When you sign out, the sign-in system also leaves a short note in your browser's local storage so that your other open tabs sign out too. It contains no information about you.

Referral codes don't use a cookie. If you open another player's shared card or pod invite link while signed out, their username travels with your sign-in link. When you pick a username, we ask whether you'd like to credit them. The box starts unticked, and nothing is saved unless you tick it. Only site administrators can see who credited whom. If your browser still has an mb_ref cookie from an earlier visit, the site deletes it.

Because we don't track you across sites, there's nothing for a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal to switch off. Once you follow a link to YouTube or any other site, that site's own cookies and policies apply.

Emails

We send five kinds of email:

• Sign-in links. Sent only when you ask for one. These can't be turned off, because they're how you sign in.
• Account deletion warning. One email if your account hasn't been used for 23 months, telling you it will be deleted on or after a date at least 30 days away, with a link to sign in. It's a notice about your account, so it can't be turned off.
• Results ready. Your score and rank after an episode is scored.
• Reminder. A nudge if your card is still the automatic one a few days into a round.
• Winner. If you finish in the top three, or win your pod.

Results ready, Reminder and Winner are optional and are on by default. Each one ends with a link to manage your preferences or unsubscribe. You can turn them off from that link, on the email preferences page, or on your profile. Some email apps also show their own Unsubscribe button on these three. Using it turns all three off at once, without asking you to confirm.

Our emails contain no tracking pixels, and their links aren't tracked. If you reply to a results, reminder or winner email, your reply goes to legal@moonshotbingo.com. Sign-in emails and account deletion warnings can't be replied to. To reach us, write to that address instead.

Service providers

A few companies help us run the site. They process your information only to provide their service to us:

• Vercel hosts the site and runs its scheduled tasks. Like most hosts, it keeps request logs, which may include IP addresses and browser details, for a limited time.
• Neon hosts our database.
• Resend delivers our emails. It receives your email address and the content of each email.

We also use YouTube's public data to find episodes. No information about you is sent to YouTube. Links to YouTube are plain links, never embedded players, so YouTube sees nothing until you click one. After that, YouTube's own privacy policy applies.

The site's share buttons work the same way. They're plain links to X, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky and Facebook, and the site sends nothing to those networks. A button opens the network's own page with a draft post, and nothing is posted unless you send it. "Share…", where your device offers it, hands the link to your device's own share menu instead. If you're signed in, the shared link includes your username, which is how a player who joins from your shared card can choose to credit you. Once you open a network's page, its own privacy policy applies.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect people's safety, or to defend the site against abuse or legal claims. If someone else ever takes over running the site, your information would pass to them under this policy.

No selling or sharing

We do not sell or share personal information, as the California Consumer Privacy Act defines those terms. We don't use it for targeted advertising, and we don't give it to anyone beyond the service providers listed above.

International transfers

We run the site from the United States, and our service providers process information in the United States and may do so in other countries where they operate. Data protection laws there may differ from those where you live. Wherever it is processed, we protect your information as this policy describes.

Retention

Our service providers keep logs and backups for limited periods under their own policies. Deleted information can remain in those for a while before it rolls off.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself from your profile. You'll be asked to type your username to confirm. Deletion happens immediately and can't be undone. If you signed in but never chose a username, email legal@moonshotbingo.com from that address and we'll delete the account for you.

What is deleted: your account and email address, your cards and their history, your scores and card pages, your House history, your pod memberships, every pod message you've posted, your episode ratings, your tile requests and notes, your visit and click records, your email records and any pending sign-in links or sign-in records. You're signed out on every device.

What remains:

• Your username goes on a retired list, so nobody can register it later and pretend to be you. The list holds only the name, with no link to you or your email.
• Approved tile phrases you requested stay in the game, with your credit removed.
• Past results aren't re-ranked. Player rankings and host totals already published keep the positions they had, and a winner slot you held on a past episode will show as empty. House Cup totals may be recalculated from the cards that remain.
• Pods you own pass to the member who has been in them longest. A pod with no other members is deleted.
• A blocked address. If we ended your account for breaking our Terms of Use and blocked its email address, the normalized address and our note stay until we lift the block.
• Administrator action records. If an administrator took an action on your account or your pod, the record of it (your account's internal id and your username, or a masked email address if you had no username) stays for 2 years.
• Provider copies in logs and backups roll off on our providers' own schedules.

If you stop using your account. We delete it the same way, with the same results, after 24 months without use. At 23 months we email a warning to the address on the account. It gives a date at least 30 days away and a link to sign in. Using your account keeps it and starts the 24 months again: visiting the site while signed in, asking for a sign-in link, or doing anything in the game. Receiving our emails doesn't count. We delete the account only on or after the warning's date, and only once our email provider has accepted the warning for delivery. If the provider turns it down, we try again the next day. Administrator accounts aren't deleted this way.

If you leave a pod without deleting your account, your messages stay in the pod, though each pod keeps only its newest 100. You can delete them yourself first.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• see the information we hold about you, and get a copy in a portable format;
• correct it if it's wrong;
• delete it;
• object to, or ask us to limit, how we use it.

You can delete your account and change your email preferences yourself. For anything else, email legal@moonshotbingo.com from the address on your account. To protect you, we'll confirm the request with that address before acting on it. We'll respond within one month. We won't treat you differently for using any of these rights.

If we turn down your request, we'll tell you why. You can ask us to reconsider by replying to our answer. If you're in the EEA or the UK, you also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.

Children

Moonshots Bingo is not meant for children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information from them. If we learn that a child under 13 has an account, we'll delete it and its information. If you're a parent or guardian and think your child has signed up, email legal@moonshotbingo.com and we'll take care of it.

Security

The site is served only over encrypted connections (HTTPS). There are no passwords to steal. Sign-in links work once, expire after an hour and are stored only in hashed form. Our database keeps IP addresses only as one-way codes. Sign-in cookies are encrypted, and you can end every session at once with "Sign out of all devices" on your profile.

Pod messages are private to pod members (and to site administrators reviewing a pod), but they aren't end-to-end encrypted, so don't post anything sensitive in them. No method of storing or sending information is perfectly secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll post the new version here and update the "Last updated" date. For important changes, we'll also put a notice on the site when they take effect, keep it up for at least two weeks, and say at the top of this page what changed. If a change would let us use information we already hold in a significantly different way, we'll ask for your consent where the law requires it.

Contact

For questions or requests about your privacy, email legal@moonshotbingo.com.