Privacy

• Embershard keeps what it needs to run your account and the game: your email address, your password (scrambled so nobody can read it), what you write in chat and letters, and the IP address it came from.
• No adverts, no analytics and no tracking, and nothing about you is sold.
• A few companies help run it: the server, the network, email and error reports. Each gets only what its job needs.
• You can delete your account yourself, from your account page. Ask about anything here at privacy@embershard.com.

Embershard is run by Mark Brady, an individual in London, UK, who decides what it keeps and why. Write to privacy@embershard.com about anything on this page, including a request or a complaint.

• Your account: your email address, your password as a one-way hash that cannot be turned back into it, your time zone so times show in yours, and when you confirmed your address. So you can sign in, get the links you ask for, and keep the account yours.
• Each browser you sign in on: its IP address, what browser it says it is, and when it was last used. To keep your account safe and to spot misuse.
• Your characters: their names, levels, what they carry and wear, and what they have done. That is the game.
• Chat and letters: what you wrote, to whom, when, and the IP address it was sent from. To deliver it, and as evidence if somebody reports it.
• Moderation: who you have muted, and who has muted you; whether you are banned; and any message of yours an admin took down. To keep the game safe for everybody. Some of this comes from other players rather than from you.
• Notifications, only if you turn them on: an address at your browser's push service, and the keys to encrypt messages to it.
• Errors: when something breaks, a report with your account and character numbers, the page address and your browser type, so it can be fixed.

An email address and a password are all you have to give, and without them there is no account. Everything else comes from playing.

In the law's terms, the reasons are running the game you signed up for (contract); keeping it safe, fixing it and backing it up (legitimate interests); and anything the law itself requires. Nothing relies on your consent. Notifications, the one thing you choose to turn on, are part of the game you asked for, and your account page turns them off again.

• Anybody, signed in or not: each character's name, levels, what it wears, its kills, pets, deaths and recent duels, on its profile and the leaderboards, and whether its account is banned.
• Signed-in players: what you say in chat, with your character's name and where you are, and who is in the same place as you.
• Only the player you wrote to: your letters.

No other player ever sees your email address, your IP address or your time zone.

These companies handle data only to do their job for Embershard, under contracts that require them to protect it:

• Hetzner (Germany) runs the server, in Germany. Everything above is stored there.
• Cloudflare (US) carries every request to the server, decrypting it on the way, so it sees your IP address and everything you send and load. It also stores the nightly backups, which since 29 September 2026 are encrypted with a key only I hold, and passes on mail sent to privacy@embershard.com.
• Resend (US) sends the emails you ask for, such as confirmation links and password resets, so it has your email address and each email.
• Honeybadger (a US company, storing data in Frankfurt) receives the error reports described above. They never carry your email address, your IP address or what keeps you signed in.
• GitHub (US) is where I track bugs: an error's title and a link to its report, nothing about you.

If you turn notifications on, your browser's push service delivers them: Google, Mozilla, Apple or Microsoft, chosen by your browser rather than by Embershard. It sees when one is sent but cannot read it.

Hetzner's server and Honeybadger's storage are both in Germany, in the EU, which UK law treats as protecting data as well as the UK does. Where a company is in the US, the transfer is covered by the UK's data bridge with the US or by the UK's approved transfer contract; write to privacy@embershard.com for a copy.

Beyond these, data is handed over only where the law requires it, to the police, the National Crime Agency, a court or a regulator, or to protect somebody from serious harm.

• Your account: until you delete it. A sign-up whose address is never confirmed is deleted after 7 days.
• Signed-in browsers: until you sign out, or 30 days after one was last used.
• Chat and letters: 365 days, then deleted. A letter goes at once when the player it was sent to throws it away.
• What your characters did: the record of each fight and task for 7 days.
• When you leave: your characters lose their names, levels and everything they carry, and your email address and password are erased. What you said in chat, letters you sent, things you sold and duels you fought stay, as a departed player. The IP addresses on your messages and your time zone are deleted 30 days later.
• Backups: made every night, and each kept for 30 days.
• Errors: Honeybadger keeps a report for 15 days after the error last happened. The server keeps its own copy of the most recent errors, about 5 MB of them, with email addresses taken out. A background job that failed for good keeps what it was given, which can be an email address, for 30 days.
• Emails: Resend keeps a record of each one for 30 days.
• Server logs record the IP address, browser and page of each request. They are kept until newer requests overwrite them as they fill, with no fixed time limit, and are never backed up.
• Floods: to turn them away, the game counts recent requests from each IP address, and recent emails to each email address. A count runs for an hour at most, and is cleared from storage within two weeks.

There is no cookie banner because nothing is used for adverts, analytics or tracking, and no scripts are loaded from anybody else. This is what is kept on your device, all of it so the game works:

• session_id keeps you signed in on this browser. It is removed when you sign out, and stops working after 30 days unused.
• _embershard_session protects forms from forgery and carries one-off messages between pages. It goes when you close the browser.
• fight_log, queue_repeat, zone_tab, character_view, map_extent and hide_locked remember choices you made on screen: an open fight log, a repeat count, the tab, view or map you last chose, and whether locked recipes are hidden. Each is set only when you make that choice, and kept for a year.
• In your browser's own storage: the last chat line you read, so the Chat tab can count new ones; which account turned notifications on in this browser; and, until the tab is closed, text typed into a filter box. When the game reloads a page itself, it also keeps when you last touched it, until the page has loaded.
• A small background script your browser keeps to show notifications. It is installed when you open your account page in a browser that can show them, and does nothing unless notifications are on.
• Cloudflare may set a security cookie to tell people from bots.

You can clear any of these in your browser. You will be signed out and the game will forget your choices; nothing else changes.

You can ask me:

• for a copy of what Embershard holds about you, or a copy another service can read;
• to correct it (you can change your email address on your account page yourself);
• to delete it. You can do this yourself under Leaving on your account page, which says what stays and why;
• to limit how it is used while something is sorted out.

I will answer within a month, or tell you within that month why it needs longer. If I need to check the request is yours, I will reply to the address on the account.

Your right to object. Where Embershard keeps something to keep the game safe, fix it or back it up, you can object, and I will stop unless there is a strong reason not to, such as the evidence behind a ban.

If you are unhappy with how your data is handled, write to privacy@embershard.com. I will tell you within 30 days that I have it, look into it, and tell you what I did. You can also complain to the UK regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (now the Information Commission), at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

You need to be 13 or over to play. If you are under 18, nothing on this page changes: there are no adverts, nothing about you is sold, notifications are off until you turn them on, and nothing about you is public beyond what the list above says other players see. If you think somebody under 13 has an account, write to privacy@embershard.com and it will be deleted.

If this page changes in a way that matters to you, the news will say so.