COMMUNITY ACCOUNTS
EMAIL & SIGN-IN DETAILS
When you register, we store your email address, username, display name, account creation time, and a salted password hash. We do not store your password in readable form. Your email address and password hash are not shown on public profiles. Site administrators can access the account records needed to operate and support the service. Email verification and password recovery use one-use, expiring links when email delivery is connected. We store a hash of each link token and its expiry; verification links expire after 24 hours and password-reset links after 30 minutes.
PUBLIC CONTRIBUTIONS
PROFILES, TOPICS & REPLIES
Your username, display name, bio, profile picture, topics, replies, and relevant posting or joining times can be viewed by other visitors. They may be copied or indexed by others. Uploaded profile pictures are stored on our server; image metadata is not automatically removed. Do not put private information in your public profile or posts.
SHARED ARCADE LEADERBOARDS
NAMES & BEST SCORES
Submitting a score uses your signed-in community account and sends the game, score, round duration and, where available, accuracy to our server. We also record when the stored score was updated. We keep your highest submitted score for each account, game, and timed round; top entries are public. New leaderboard scores are linked to your signed-in community account. Your display name, avatar and profile link appear publicly, and personal bests appear on your profile. Older guest scores remain unlinked.
COOKIES & BROWSER STORAGE
KEEPING YOU SIGNED IN
The website and community share a signed sign-in cookie that can last up to 30 days and a form-protection cookie that normally lasts for your browser session. Logging out clears the sign-in cookie. Arcade code uses local storage for your local game preferences, local best scores and a reset marker; those values remain until cleared or reset. You can clear cookies and site storage in your browser, but this does not delete server-held accounts, posts or scores. Cloudflare and embedded services may also set their own cookies.
PURPOSE & SECURITY
RUNNING THE COMMUNITY
We use this information to provide accounts and profiles, publish conversations and scores, protect forms and sessions, reduce spam, operate the website, and respond to support or privacy requests. IP addresses and recent request times are used in service memory to limit repeated requests; these counters are not stored in the forum or leaderboard databases and are cleared on a service restart. Network providers and server logs may also process IP addresses, URLs, request times, browser details and errors.
HOSTING & EXTERNAL SERVICES
LOCAL DATA, EXTERNAL DELIVERY
Forum records, uploaded profile pictures and shared leaderboards are stored on the Bookie Lounge server. Cloudflare handles website delivery and security, so requests pass through its network and may be processed outside New Zealand. Kick video/chat and the Discord widget connect your browser to those providers when their embeds load. When forum email delivery is connected, Gmail processes account email addresses and verification or recovery messages. Social links take you to their services. Their own policies apply: Cloudflare, Kick and Discord.
RETENTION & BACKUPS
HOW LONG INFORMATION STAYS
Accounts, public posts, profile uploads and leaderboard records currently have no automatic expiry. They remain until removed, reset or deleted by an administrator. Owner moderation records retain the acting account, deletion type, content ID and time. Restricted backups can contain earlier copies and are not immediately rewritten when live records change. Web-server logs are configured to rotate daily and keep 14 rotations; provider retention is governed by its own policy. Unused older avatar files may remain until manually removed.
YOUR CHOICES
ACCESS, CORRECTION & REMOVAL
You can edit your display name, bio and profile picture in your forum profile. For access to your information, corrections, or a request to remove an account, post, picture or score, email [email protected]. Please identify the relevant account or content; we may need to confirm ownership. There is currently no automatic account-deletion screen. Copies made by other visitors or external services are outside our direct control. You can also contact the New Zealand Privacy Commissioner about your privacy rights.
OTHER CONTACT & GAME SERVERS
EMAILS & PLAYER ACTIVITY
If you email us, your message and contact details are used to handle the enquiry and may be retained with related support records. Connecting to a game server or joining Discord is a separate interaction from browsing this website. Those services may record player identities, connection details or chat. Website status cards display availability and player counts; they do not ask for your game-account password.
PRIVACY CONTACT
ASK BOOKIE LOUNGE
Send website privacy questions and requests to [email protected]. This notice will be updated when the way the website handles information changes.