Privacy Policy

1. Who this policy is from

Brass Pawn is published by Mincho Milev (“we”, “us”). This policy covers the Brass Pawn app for iPhone and iPad, bundle identifier com.arte-soft.brasspawn, and this website.

You can reach a human at privacy@brasspawn.com, or open an issue at https://github.com/minchopm/chess-trainer/issues. We answer both.

2. What we collect

Nothing, apart from saying who is online and keeping the friends you make in the app (section 6). The app makes no analytics calls, carries no advertising, contains no third-party tracking or attribution SDK of any kind, and has no account system. It does not read your contacts, photos, location, calendar, microphone, camera, health data, clipboard or advertising identifier, and it does not ask for permission to do so, because it has no code that would use them.

We do not build a profile of you, we do not sell or share data, and we do not use anything for advertising or for training any model.

3. What stays on your device

Your training ratings, solved puzzles, review schedule, streaks, game history and purchase state are stored in the app’s own container on your device. Deleting the app deletes them. They are included in an encrypted device backup if you have one turned on — that backup is between you and Apple, and we have no access to it.

There is no “export my data” button and no “delete my account” button, because there is no account and, outside online play, nothing of yours has left the device. Deleting the app is the deletion mechanism. Your online ratings are on Game Center’s leaderboards, which are Apple’s (see section 12).

4. When the app uses the network

Training is entirely offline: the engine, the puzzles, the games and your progress are all in the app. The app makes network connections in exactly five situations. Three of them are connections to Apple; the others are to us:

• Online play. Game Center finds you an opponent and carries the moves between the two devices.
• Purchases and restores. StoreKit asks the App Store what you own.
• Links you tap. The About screen links to the source repository, this site and the licence text. Nothing opens on its own.
• Who is online, and friends. While the app is on screen it says, every three minutes, that you are online, unless you have turned that off, and the list of players asks who is. It also asks for your friends, and — every twenty seconds, if you have any — whether one has offered you a game, and sends a request, an answer or a game offered when you tap one (section 6).
• Today. Opening the Today screen downloads brasspawn.com/media/feed/v1/latest.json — the latest games from the top events — and, as you scroll back, one file for each earlier day. They are the same files for everybody, and nothing is fetched at launch or in the background. The App Clip, opened from a story’s link on this site, downloads that one story’s file the same way. The request carries no account, identifier or cookie; it reaches Amazon CloudFront, which delivers this site, with your IP address as any web request does. Request logging is off on CloudFront and on the storage behind it, so nothing is kept about who downloaded the file or when.

5. Game Center

Online play uses Apple’s Game Center to find an opponent and to carry the moves between the two devices. In a match your Game Center nickname and your in-app online rating are visible to your opponent, because that is what a game between two people needs.

During a game the two devices talk to each other and both run the rules, so a move is played only if it is legal in the position the receiving device already holds.

Your online rating lives on Game Center’s leaderboards — one for each clock. At the end of a rated game each device works out its own player’s new rating, from both players’ ratings as Game Center held them when the game began, and writes it there, with how sure it is, how many rated games it has and the day of the last one. The app sends it again, unchanged, when you open it signed in to Game Center. Other players see your Game Center nickname and when you were last seen there, as your Game Center privacy settings allow: that is how the app’s rank list shows who each player is, how its lists of active and inactive players are made, and what lets another player invite you to a game. The leaderboards are Apple’s.

If you allow it — Game Center asks the first time you open Friends — the app reads your Game Center friends, to show the ones who play so that you can ask them to be friends here too. They are read on the device and sent nowhere; only a request you choose to send leaves it (section 6).

Apple’s handling of Game Center data is governed by Apple’s privacy policy.

6. Who is online, and friends

Game Center can say who played this week, but not who has the app open now. So the app tells a small service of ours — a function on Amazon Web Services, in Frankfurt, in the European Union — when you are there.

While the app is on your screen and you are signed in to Game Center, it says that you are here — online, looking for a game on a clock, or in one — again every three minutes, and that you have gone when it leaves the screen. Other signed-in players see it beside your nickname in the list of players, so an invitation reaches somebody who is there to play. Each note lasts five minutes and is then deleted: nothing is kept about when you were online. Settings → Show when I’m online turns it off.

Each note carries your Game Center team player ID — Apple’s identifier for you in our apps, which is not your name, e-mail address or Apple Account — with Apple’s signature proving it is yours, and the service keeps it only as a scrambled code, a one-way hash of it. Your IP address reaches Amazon, as any web request’s does. Nothing else is sent. The function’s logs are deleted after fourteen days.

Friends

Game Center makes friends through Messages, with somebody in your contacts, and has no way to ask a player on a list by nickname. So the app keeps friends of its own, on the same service.

When you ask somebody to be friends, the service keeps the request under both players’ scrambled codes, with the Game Center nickname each of you had then — so each list can say who is who — and when it was made. Once it is accepted it is a friendship, kept the same way. Declining a request, taking it back or removing a friend deletes it on both sides at once. A game offered to a friend is kept, with its clock, for two minutes, and deleted as soon as it is answered or taken back. Only you and the other player see a request or a friendship.

Both are for online play, and nothing else: nothing in them is sold, shared or used for advertising or tracking. The legal basis is our legitimate interest, and yours, in invitations that reach somebody who is there, and your own request for the friends you ask for.

7. Purchases

The subscription and the one-off unlock are handled entirely by the App Store. We never see your name, your payment details or your Apple Account. The app only asks StoreKit whether a purchase is currently active and stores that answer locally so it can stop showing you a paywall.

Apple provides us with aggregate, anonymised sales reports — units sold per territory, and nothing that identifies a purchaser.

8. Crash reports and App Store analytics

We include no crash-reporting or analytics library. However, iOS itself has a setting — Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements → Share with App Developers — and if you have turned it on, Apple may share aggregated crash logs and usage statistics for this app with us through App Store Connect.

That data comes from Apple, is aggregated by Apple, and does not identify you. You control it entirely from that setting, and turning it off changes nothing about how the app works. We mention it because a policy that says “we collect nothing” while Apple hands us a crash dashboard would be, at best, incomplete.

9. The chess content

The bundled puzzles and games come from the Lichess database, released into the public domain under CC0, and from positions generated on our own machines. They contain no personal information: the imported games keep the two players’ ratings and moves, and not their usernames.

10. Children

Outside online play the app collects no personal data from anyone. Our service keeps only what section 6 describes — who is online, for five minutes, and the friends you make, until they are removed — as scrambled codes and Game Center nicknames, never a name, an e-mail address or an Apple Account. It shows no advertising, contains no third-party content, has no chat, no user-generated content and no external links other than to the source repository, this website and the licence text.

Online play through Game Center is subject to Apple’s own parental controls, which a parent can use to restrict multiplayer entirely (Settings → Screen Time → Content & Privacy Restrictions → Game Center).

11. International transfers and retention

What our service keeps (section 6) is held by Amazon Web Services in Frankfurt, in the European Union: each note for five minutes, friend requests and friendships until they are declined, taken back or removed, a game offered for two minutes, and the logs for fourteen days. Data on your device stays on your device for as long as you keep the app.

12. Your rights

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, California, or anywhere else with a data protection or privacy law, those laws give you rights of access, correction, deletion, portability and objection over personal data a company holds about you.

The only personal data we hold is who is online, for five minutes, which Settings → Show when I’m online stops, and the friends you make in the app, which removing a friend — or declining or taking back a request — deletes on both sides. For anything else — a question, an objection — write to us. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act we specifically confirm that we do not sell or share personal information, and have never done so.

For data Apple holds — your Apple Account, Game Center profile and purchase history — the controller is Apple, and Apple’s privacy portal is where those requests go.

13. This website

This site sets no cookies, runs no analytics and embeds no trackers. Every file it loads — the page, the styles, the scripts, the typefaces and the images — comes from this domain. No third party is involved in serving you this page, so there is nobody to receive your IP address but the server you asked.

The typefaces are worth a sentence because they are the usual exception: most sites load theirs from Google, which hands that company the address of every visitor who reads a heading. Ours are hosted here instead.

The site is a set of static files. It has no login, no forms and no database.

14. Changes to this policy

If the app ever starts doing something this page does not describe, this page changes first and the effective date at the top changes with it. Because the app’s complete source is published, you do not have to take our word for any of it — the code is the primary document, and this page is a description of it.

15. Contact

Questions about this policy, or about anything the app does: privacy@brasspawn.com. If you would rather it were public, open an issue at the project’s issue tracker.

See also: Terms of Service · Licences & attribution