Privacy

1. Who we are

Guarded Servers runs private Minecraft servers for families. We decide what is collected and why, which makes us the data controller. Questions, requests and complaints all go to [email protected], and a person answers.

2. What we collect about you

Because you gave it to us

• Your name and email address, from the signup form.
• Your password, which we store only as a hash. We cannot read it, recover it or tell you what it is.
• Which version of the terms you agreed to and when, along with the IP address and browser you agreed from. Auto-renewal rules expect us to be able to show what was consented to, and that is the record.

Because using the service creates it

• Your plan and its state: whether you are in a trial, paying, paused or cancelled, and the dates involved.
• Sessions. Each device signed in has a record with an IP address, a browser description and when it was last used. You can see the list and end them from your account page.
• Ordinary server logs, which include IP addresses and are kept briefly for security and for working out what broke.

What we never hold

Card numbers. They go straight to Stripe and never reach us. We see the plan, the amount and whether it worked.

3. What we collect about your child

As little as running the world requires, and this is the part we have designed around rather than accepted as a cost.

• No account. Your child does not sign up, does not give us a name or an email, and has nothing to log in to.
• The name they play under. When somebody tries to join, we record the Minecraft username so you know who is asking, along with the time they asked. Approving somebody keeps that name on your list; removing them takes it off.
• Chat. We do not read, filter or monitor what players say to each other. Messages pass through the server and appear in ordinary server logs, which are kept briefly and are only looked at to investigate a fault or a report.
• The world itself, which is what they build, and its daily backups.

You control all of it. Requests to join are approved by you, the approval list lives in your account rather than on the server, and deleting your account takes the whole lot with it.

We do not knowingly let children create accounts, and we do not advertise to them. If you believe we hold something about your child that you did not agree to, email us and we will remove it.

4. Why we are allowed to hold it

• To provide what you signed up for. Your account, your world, the approval list and the emails that make it work.
• Because we have to. Records of payment and of the terms you agreed to, kept for tax and consumer law.
• Because it is reasonable and expected. Keeping the service secure, stopping abuse, and fixing faults.
• Because you said yes. The optional emails, which you can switch off at any time from your account without losing anything else.

5. Who else sees it

Only the companies that help us run the service, only the part each one needs, and none of them may use it for their own purposes.

• Stripe takes payments. They hold your card details and your invoices; we hold their reference to you.
• Resend sends our email, so they handle your address and the contents of what we send you.
• Cloudflare runs the check that distinguishes a person from a bot on the signup and password reset forms.
• OVHcloud and Neon host the servers and the database.

We do not sell your data, we do not share it for advertising, and we do not hand it to anybody else unless the law requires it or you ask us to.

These providers operate in the United States and elsewhere, so your data may be processed outside your own country under the safeguards those providers offer.

6. Cookies

One cookie, which keeps you signed in. It is not shared with anybody and it is not used to follow you around.

There are no advertising or analytics cookies on this site today. Cloudflare’s bot check may set something of its own on the signup and password reset pages, which exists to distinguish a person from a script and nothing else. If we ever add analytics we will say so here and ask first where the law requires it.

7. How long we keep it

• While you have an account, for as long as it is open.
• After you cancel or delete, everything is erased 30 days later. That window exists so a change of mind is possible; nothing survives it.
• Backups are kept for 7 days and go when the account does.
• Invoices stay with Stripe for as long as tax law requires, which is the one thing deleting an account does not reach.
• Server logs are kept briefly, then discarded.

8. What you can ask us to do

Depending on where you live you may have some or all of these rights. We honour them for everybody regardless, because arguing about which apply is not a good use of anybody’s afternoon.

• See what we hold. There is a download button on your account page that gives you the lot as a file.
• Correct it. Your name, email and password are all editable from the same page.
• Delete it. Also on that page, and it is a real deletion rather than a flag on a row we keep.
• Stop the optional emails, without affecting anything else.
• Complain. Email us first and we will try to fix it. You can also complain to the data protection authority where you live.

Everything above can be done yourself in your account, immediately and without asking us. If you would rather we did it, email [email protected] and we will, within 30 days at the outside and usually the same week.

9. Keeping it safe

Traffic is encrypted in transit, passwords are hashed, and the number of people here who can reach production data is small and stays that way. No system is perfect, and we would rather say that than claim otherwise. If something happens that puts your data at risk we will tell you, and we will tell you what we know rather than the least we can get away with.

10. Changes to this page

When something here changes in a way that matters we will email you before it takes effect. The version and date at the top always say which wording is current.