Privacy policy

1. Controller

The controller for data processing in the Quizzies app and on quizzies.de is Aplons GmbH, Alte Meeschen 98, 26169 Friesoythe, Germany, represented by its managing director Damian Hildt. E-mail: info@aplons.de, phone: +49 151 41669990.

For any questions about data protection and to exercise your rights, contact us at info@aplons.de.

2. The essentials

These principles apply to the app, the website and all game servers:

• A name of your choice is all you need to play. Guests do not provide an e-mail address.
• No ads, no advertising IDs, no tracking across apps or websites and no third-party analytics or advertising SDKs.
• All servers are located in Germany (Hetzner). We serve fonts and graphics ourselves, without external CDNs or Google Fonts.
• We do not sell data and only share it with the service providers listed below where this is necessary to run the service.

3. Hosting and server logs

We run the website, the programming interface (API), the game server and the database on servers of Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany, in data centres in Germany. Hetzner processes the data as a processor under Art. 28 GDPR.

When you visit quizzies.de and whenever the app connects, our servers process technically necessary data: IP address, date and time, requested address, amount of data transferred, status code and browser or app version and operating system. This serves secure and stable operation, defence against attacks and troubleshooting (Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR). We delete logs containing IP addresses after 14 days at the latest.

4. Playing as a guest

When you first start the app or first join in the browser, we create an anonymous guest account. For this we process a random user ID, your display name, your character (appearance) and your language setting, as well as a session token stored on your device so that you stay signed in.

The legal basis is the performance of the user agreement (Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR). We automatically delete guest accounts that have not been used for 90 days. Anyone under 16 can only play as a guest.

5. Account

You can voluntarily turn your guest account into an account to use your progress and Pro on several devices. We then additionally process your e-mail address (when signing in by e-mail), a hashed password (if you set one), your date of birth as well as profile, stats, unlocks, achievements, your own question sets, crews and your block list.

We use the date of birth exclusively to check your age: accounts are available from 16, adult content from 18 only after confirmation. The legal basis is Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR. We store the data until you delete your account.

6. E-mails (Resend)

For e-mails we use the service Resend (Resend, Inc., 2261 Market Street #5039, San Francisco, CA 94114, USA) as a processor. We transmit your e-mail address, the content of the message and its language.

Sign-in and verification codes are valid for 10 minutes and are deleted afterwards. Notices about your account and about features you use (for example “Your AI questions are ready”, a crew invitation or a purchase confirmation) can be switched off one by one in the notification settings; only sign-in codes are always sent. The legal basis is Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR. We only send news and offers by e-mail with your consent (section 11).

We do not measure opens or clicks in our e-mails: they contain no tracking pixels and no redirected links. Resend only tells us whether an e-mail was delivered, could not be delivered or was reported as spam. We put permanently undeliverable addresses and addresses with a spam report on a suppression list so that we stop writing to them (Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR). For transfers to the USA see section 15.

7. Signing in with Apple or Google

If you sign in with Apple (Apple Distribution International Ltd., Hollyhill Industrial Estate, Hollyhill, Cork, Ireland) or Google (Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland), we receive a user ID, your e-mail address (with Apple, an anonymous relay address if you wish) and – if you agree – your name from that provider. The privacy policies of Apple or Google also apply to the sign-in.

The legal basis is Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR. If you sign in with Apple in the app, we exchange Apple’s one-time sign-in code for an access token and store it encrypted. We use it to revoke the sign-in authorisation at Apple when you delete your account, and for nothing else.

8. During the game

Rooms run on our game server (rt.quizzies.de). During a game we process your display name, character, frame, Pro status, your answers, buzzer times, votes and points there. Everyone in the same room can see this information. There is no chat.

So that a game survives a server restart, we briefly save the room state in the database. We delete these snapshots when the game ends, after 6 hours at the latest. At the end of the game we store the result (points, placement) for leaderboards and stats; we do not store free-text answers permanently. For the record against other players we also count, per minigame, how often two accounts played each other, won and drew. It only exists between people who really played together, and only the two of them can see it.

We automatically check display names and free-text answers with a word filter against insults and offensive terms. We handle reports of questions, player names or sets in order to remove violations of our rules (Art. 6 (1) (b) and (f) GDPR).

9. Purchases and Quizzies Pro (RevenueCat)

You can only buy Pro via Apple’s App Store or Google Play. The respective store handles the payment; we never receive payment data such as credit cards or account numbers.

To determine whether your subscription is active, we use RevenueCat (RevenueCat, Inc., 1032 E Brandon Blvd #3003, Brandon, FL 33511, USA) as a processor. RevenueCat receives your Quizzies user ID and the store’s purchase information (product, period, status, expiry date, country and currency). The legal basis is Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR. If you delete your account, we also delete the customer record at RevenueCat; statutory retention obligations remain unaffected.

10. Notifications and app delivery (Expo)

If you allow notifications, we store a push token for your device together with a random installation ID (not an advertising ID), the app version, the operating system version and your language. This way every notification only reaches your devices and we can see which app versions are still in use. We send notifications via the Expo Push Service (650 Industries, Inc., USA), which forwards them to the Apple Push Notification service or Firebase Cloud Messaging. The push token and the content of the notification are transmitted.

Without further consent we only send notifications about your account and about features you use (for example “Your AI questions are ready” or a crew invitation); each type can be switched off in the notification settings. News and offers by push are only sent with your consent (section 11). If you tap a notification, we record that it was opened to see which notifications are helpful.

The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR, Section 25 (1) TDDDG), which you can withdraw at any time in your device settings; the next time you open the app we then delete the push token. We also remove it when you sign out or delete your account. We also use Expo to build the app; no user data is processed in that process.

11. News and offers

We only send you news about questions, rounds, events and offers if you explicitly consent, separately for push and e-mail. The app asks once during setup (“May I let you know when there are new questions, rounds or events?”), for e-mail when you secure your account, and you can change it at any time in the notification settings in the app and on the web. Nothing is preselected. Consent is only available from the age of 16.

As proof we store for each channel when you consented or withdrew consent, where (setup, account, settings), the wording or its version, the language and the platform. As a rule we send at most one such message per day and three per week, and never between 9 pm and 9 am (German time). To choose recipients we use details from your account such as language, platform, app version, Pro status and the number and dates of your games.

The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR, for e-mail also Section 7 (2) UWG). You can withdraw it at any time: in the notification settings or via the unsubscribe link in every news e-mail, which works with one click and without signing in. Withdrawal applies to the future.

12. AI questions (Anthropic)

With Pro you can have an AI create questions on a topic. For this we only transmit the topic you enter as well as language, age level, difficulty and round types to Anthropic (Anthropic PBC, 548 Market Street, PMB 90375, San Francisco, CA 94104, USA). We do not send names, e-mail addresses, user IDs or any other personal data. Please do not enter personal data about yourself or others in the topic either.

Under its commercial terms, Anthropic does not use content submitted via the API to train its models. Before the first use we explicitly ask for your consent (Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR); you can withdraw it at any time in the AI settings.

AI pool: generic questions from your AI sets and fair AI holes may, after an automatic second check, also be added as a copy to the public stock that all players get (labelled “AI”). Only the generated content itself is published, never your topic, your context, your wish or your name; the copy is not linked to your account. Sets with their own context or a personal topic (for example family, friends, your own company) and questions about private persons always stay private; when in doubt, everything stays private. You can switch sharing off for every creation with the toggle “Share good questions with everyone” or “Share good holes with everyone”. Your own set or hole stays unchanged and private. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in a growing question stock (Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR); the published content contains no personal data.

Labelling under Art. 50 of the EU AI Act: questions generated by an AI visibly carry the “AI” badge in the game and in the editor.

13. Website, cookies and local storage

On quizzies.de we only use technically necessary cookies and storage entries, which do not require consent under Section 25 (2) TDDDG:

• A session cookie when you sign in, play in the browser or delete your account, so that you stay signed in.
• No language cookie: the language is part of the address (for example quizzies.de/en).
• Stored only in your browser: light or dark theme, name and character for the web game, the lobby settings you used last, a running game (so you can continue after reloading), drafts of your own questions and your answer to the usage statistics question.
• Themed worlds: if you choose a themed world on the website, we remember your choice in the cookie “quizzies-world” (only the name of the world, valid for half a year). As long as themed worlds are not offered, we do not set this cookie.
• Only with your consent (section 14): a random device ID and a session ID for usage statistics.

14. Our own usage statistics

To improve Quizzies we count selected events ourselves, without third parties and without analytics SDKs, for example “game started”, “paywall shown”, “notification opened” or, on the website, “page viewed” (only the path without parameters). We store the event name, the time, platform, app version, language and a few details about the event, such as the number of players. We never store IP addresses or advertising IDs for this.

By default we count anonymously: without a user, device or session ID, so the events cannot be attributed to a person. The legal basis for the brief processing on receipt is our legitimate interest in a stable and understandable app (Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR).

Only if you switch on “Analyse usage anonymously” (in the app under Settings, on the web via the notice on the page if we show it) do we link events to a random device ID and a session ID stored on your device and, once you are signed in, to a hashed (pseudonymised) user ID. The session may then include its origin (invite link, notification, e-mail, campaign tag or the domain of the referring page), the operating system and the device type. The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR, Section 25 (1) TDDDG). You can withdraw it at any time; we then delete the IDs on your device.

We delete events and sessions after 13 months.

15. Recipients and transfers to third countries

We have concluded agreements under Art. 28 GDPR with all processors. For recipients in the USA we base the transfer on an adequacy decision of the EU Commission (EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, Art. 45 GDPR) where the recipient is certified, and otherwise on the EU Commission’s standard contractual clauses (Art. 46 (2) (c) GDPR).

Overview:

• Hetzner Online GmbH, Germany – hosting of all servers
• Resend, Inc., USA – sending e-mails (sign-in codes, notices and, with consent, news)
• RevenueCat, Inc., USA – subscription status for Pro
• 650 Industries, Inc. (Expo), USA – push notifications
• Anthropic PBC, USA – AI questions, topics only, no personal data
• Apple and Google – sign-in, app stores and payment processing as independent controllers

16. How long we keep data

We delete data as soon as we no longer need it:

• Room snapshots during a game: 6 hours at most
• Sign-in codes: 10 minutes
• Server logs with IP addresses: 14 days at most
• Database backups: 14 days, then they are overwritten
• Unused guest accounts: 90 days after the last activity
• Our own usage statistics: 13 months
• Delivery log of notifications and e-mails: 13 months, delivery reports from Resend: 90 days
• Proof of your consents: as long as your account exists, so that we can demonstrate them
• Suppression list of undeliverable addresses: until the address is reachable again or you ask us to delete it
• Accounts: until you delete them; game results then remain only in anonymised form (“Deleted player”)

17. Your rights

You have the right of access (Art. 15 GDPR), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20) and to object to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21). You can withdraw consent at any time with effect for the future (Art. 7 (3)). You can download a copy of your data on the web under Profile → Settings → “Export data” or request it at info@aplons.de.

You can also lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority, for example the authority responsible for us, the Data Protection Commissioner of Lower Saxony (Die Landesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz Niedersachsen), Prinzenstraße 5, 30159 Hannover, Germany.

18. Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself at any time: in the app under Profile → Account → Delete account or on the web at quizzies.de/konto-loeschen. We then delete your profile, stats (including your record against other players, for both sides), unlocks, your own sets, push tokens and the customer record at RevenueCat; in other people’s results you will only appear as “Deleted player”.

A running subscription does not end automatically. Cancel it in the subscription settings of Apple (https://apps.apple.com/account/subscriptions) or Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/account/subscriptions).

19. Children and young people

Accounts are only available from the age of 16. Younger people can play as guests; apart from a display name of their choice, we do not process any personal data. Adult content is only accessible to accounts with a confirmed age of 18 or older and only after explicitly enabling it. We only send news and offers to people aged 16 or older.

20. No automated decisions

We do not make decisions based solely on automated processing that have legal effects on you (Art. 22 GDPR). The word filter only hides offensive terms in the game.

21. Changes

If the app or the legal situation changes, we will update this policy. You can always find the current version at quizzies.de/en/datenschutz and in the app.