Privacy Policy

Last updated 24 October 2026

This policy explains what information Esperanes LTD (“Esperanes”, “we”, “us”) collects through our mobile games and our website, why we collect it, and what you can do about it. It applies to BLOCKS, to any other game we publish under the Esperanes name, and to the tournament invite pages on esperanes.com.

What stays on your device

Your current game, your settings and your game history are stored on your device. Deleting the app deletes them (on Android, your Google device backup may restore them if you reinstall). Your player ID, nickname and best scores are also kept on our servers, as described below.

Leaderboards and tournaments

When you first open BLOCKS, the game creates a random player ID on your device. It is not linked to your name, email, phone number or store account. Every player takes part in the leaderboards automatically. On first launch the game registers your player ID with our servers, with an automatic nickname like “Player 1234”, which you can change once a day. Nicknames are filtered for offensive words. The game contacts our servers when you open it and when you finish a game, and we record when you were last active.

When you set a new best score (all-time or for the week), or finish a game while you are in a tournament, the game sends the score to our servers. We store:

• Your player ID, your nickname, and the nicknames you try to set (including ones our filter rejects)
• Your country, worked out from your IP address. Here we store the country, not the IP address (the one exception is the short-lived record described under “Tournament invite links”)
• Your scores, and for your best games the move log, the game’s seed (taken from the time it started), its length, and the number of pieces and lines, so we can check that a score is genuine and look into reports of cheating
• Your device platform (iOS or Android), the app version, and when you were last active
• The tournaments you create or join: their names, your scores and number of games in them, when you joined or left, and for joins through an invite link, the tournament’s creator
• When you send an invite, which way you sent it (for example WhatsApp, or copying the code). Never who you sent it to, and never your contacts. To show the right share buttons, the game checks whether WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE or text messaging are available on your device, and we record which button was offered first
• Reports you make about another player’s nickname, and reports other players make about yours
• Attempts to join a tournament that fail, and why (for example, the tournament has ended)

What other people can see. The leaderboards are public: anyone can see the top players’ nicknames, country flags and scores. Anyone who has a tournament’s code or invite link can see the tournament name, its creator’s nickname, and its members’ nicknames, country flags, best scores, number of games, when they joined, whether they left, and the trophies they have won. Invites and tournament notifications show your nickname and the tournament name to the people who receive them. If you share tournament results, the message includes the top players’ nicknames and scores.

We use this information to run the leaderboards and tournaments, to prevent cheating and abuse, and to moderate nicknames and tournament names. We also attach your player ID to our analytics (see below), so we can understand how players who use these features play the game.

Tournament invite links

A tournament invite is a link to a page on esperanes.com. This section also covers people who open an invite link without having the game. When someone opens an invite page, we record:

• The tournament code, the time, and the country the visit came from (from the IP address, country level only)
• The browser’s standard information: device and browser type and version, language setting, and the page that linked to it
• Which buttons on the page were tapped (for example “Join”, “Update” or a store button), how long after the page opened, and when the page was left
• A salted hash of the IP address, not the address itself. We use it only to tell whether someone who opened an invite joined the tournament within the next 24 hours; if they did, the visit is linked to their player ID. The hash is erased after 24 hours

When an invite link is pasted into a chat app, that app (for example WhatsApp, Telegram or iMessage) fetches a preview of the page, showing the tournament name, its creator’s nickname, the number of players and the time left. We record which app requested the preview, its standard browser information, and when.

The “Join” button opens the game through AppsFlyer’s linking service (OneLink), which receives the visitor’s device and browser information, the tournament code, the creator’s public invite ID, and the tournament name and creator’s nickname for the link preview, so the game can open straight into the tournament even after a fresh install. The store buttons open the App Store or Google Play, and the Google Play link carries the tournament code. When the game tries to join a tournament, we keep the IP address with your player ID for up to 24 hours to stop people guessing tournament codes.

Notifications

The game schedules reminders on your device. They are created on your device, and we record in our analytics when one is tapped. When you open the game, it also gets a push token from Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (which uses Apple’s push service on iPhone) and sends it to our servers with your player ID, so tournament notifications can reach you: when someone joins your tournament, passes your score, or a tournament ends. These messages include other players’ nicknames, scores and the tournament name, and pass through Google’s and Apple’s push services. We record whether a notification was sent and whether it was opened. Notifications are only shown if you allow them, and you can turn them off at any time in your device settings.

Analytics and crash reports

We use Google Analytics for Firebase to understand how our games are played, for example how long a typical session lasts or where new players stop playing. This includes:

• Usage events, such as a game starting or ending, the score reached, ads shown, and the steps of a purchase
• Device and app information: device model, operating system version, app version, country and language
• A randomly generated app instance identifier, your game player ID, and mobile advertising identifiers where the platform provides them
• Approximate location (city, region and country) derived from your IP address. We never collect precise location, and the game never asks for location permission

Some of these events are shared with Google Ads and Google AdMob to measure our advertising. A copy of this analytics data is exported into our own Google BigQuery project so that we can analyse it, for example to count how many games each player has played.

We use Firebase Crashlytics to receive crash reports: what went wrong in the code, the device model and operating system, device state at the time (such as free memory), recent in-app events, and a Crashlytics installation identifier.

From time to time we may turn on Microsoft Clarity for some players to see how people use the game’s menus and screens. When it is on, Clarity records how you move through the app’s screens, including text shown or typed on them, such as nicknames and leaderboards, and creates heatmaps. It is not designed to record the game board itself. Microsoft’s handling of that data is described in the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

Advertising

Our games are free and are funded by advertising. We show ads through Google AdMob, which also requests ads from partner networks, including AppLovin, Unity Ads, Meta Audience Network, Pangle, InMobi and PubMatic. To serve and measure ads, these companies may collect device identifiers, IP address, and information about the ads you were shown and interacted with. Google’s handling of that data is described in Google’s Privacy & Terms. Each partner network describes its own handling in its privacy policy.

On iPhone, the game asks for permission to track. If you decline, the ad networks and our attribution provider cannot access your device’s advertising identifier. On Android, you can reset or delete your advertising ID and limit ad personalisation from your device settings (usually Settings → Privacy → Ads). Doing so does not remove ads, but makes them less specific to you.

Attribution

We use AppsFlyer in every copy of the game, to learn which campaign brought a player to us and to measure what players go on to do in the game. AppsFlyer receives install referrer information, device and advertising identifiers (subject to your device settings), IP address, and the same in-game usage events that we send to our analytics, including ad revenue and purchases. AppsFlyer may share install and in-game event results with the advertising networks we use to promote our games, and on iPhone, Apple’s privacy-preserving install measurement (SKAdNetwork) reports to Apple and AppsFlyer. The AppsFlyer service in the app never receives your nickname, your player ID or anything you type; invite links pass the tournament name and creator’s nickname to it, as described above.

In-app purchases

Purchases are handled by the App Store or Google Play. We never see your payment details. We receive confirmation of the purchase, its order number, price and currency, and the country of your store account, and we record the steps of the purchase in our analytics and attribution data.

Who processes data for us

Our leaderboard, tournament and invite services run on Cloudflare, which hosts our website and stores that data for us. Analytics, crash reports, notifications and BigQuery run on Google, and notifications to iPhones also pass through Apple. The other companies that process data for the purposes above are AppsFlyer, Microsoft (Clarity) and the advertising networks named above. We also use AI assistants (Anthropic’s Claude) to help us analyse game data and run our services. These companies may process data in countries other than yours, including the United States.

Why we use it

Where data protection law such as the GDPR applies, we rely on: providing the features you use (the game, leaderboards, tournaments and notifications); our legitimate interests in preventing cheating and abuse, keeping the game working, improving it, and measuring our advertising; and your consent where the law or your device requires it, for example tracking permission on iPhone and notifications.

Children

Our games are not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, write to us and we will delete it.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to request access to the data associated with you, to have it deleted, or to object to its processing. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

To delete your leaderboard and tournament data, change your nickname in the game to something unique, then write to us at [email protected] with that nickname (this shows us the data is yours), and if you can, a tournament code you took part in. We will delete your scores, nickname, tournament memberships and push token from our servers, and request deletion of the analytics data we can link to your player ID. Uninstalling the app removes what is stored on your device and stops all further collection, but it does not delete what is already on our servers. For anything held by our attribution or advertising providers, write to us and we will help; they identify your device by its advertising identifier, so we may ask you for it.

Data retention and security

Leaderboard, tournament and invite records are kept while those features run, or until you ask us to delete them. IP addresses kept to stop people guessing tournament codes, and the IP hashes of invite visits, are deleted after 24 hours. Analytics data is retained by Google on our behalf according to Firebase’s retention settings. The copy in our BigQuery project stays inside Google’s platform and is kept until we delete it. Access to our servers and data is restricted to Esperanes and the services named above.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle data, we will update this page and the date above. Material changes will also be noted in the app’s store listing.

Contact

Esperanes LTD, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel
[email protected]