Privacy
What the HBLOKS game stores on your device, what reaches a server, and who else is involved.
The short version
- There are no accounts, no login, no ads, no purchases, and no cookies set by the game.
- Your current game, best score and settings are saved in your browser, on your device.
- The game has a public leaderboard. For it, your best score, your Daily challenge medal counts, your nickname if you set one and your device type (such as “iPhone”) are sent to hbloks.com under a random player ID. Anyone can see your line: rank, name, best score and medals. Please don’t use your real name as a nickname.
- You can hide your line with “List achievements on the Leaderboard” in Advanced settings. Your scores are then still sent and stored, but no longer shown. To have your line deleted, email us.
- On hbloks.com, visits and page speed are measured by Vercel, who host the site — cookie-free, with nothing stored on your device for it.
- On a games portal, the portal hosts the game under its own privacy policy. The leaderboard data still goes to hbloks.com; the Vercel measurement is not loaded there.
- Clearing the site data in your browser removes everything the game saved on your device. Your leaderboard line stays until you ask us to delete it.
Who is responsible
Evgeni Hasin, Germany — contact@idearig.com. HBLOKS is a brand of the IdeaRig portfolio (idearig.com). No data protection officer has been appointed; none is required for a service of this kind.
What stays on your device
The game saves its state in your browser’s local storage so that you can close the tab and pick up where you left off: the current game (hbricks-run-v4; older -v3/-v2/-v1 entries are converted and then removed), your best score (hbricks-high-score-v1, hbricks-live-score-v1; legacy hbricks-score-v1), your settings (hbricks-settings-v1), your Daily challenge progress and medals (hbricks-daily-v1, hbricks-medals-v1), today’s undo allowance with its UTC date (hbricks-undo-v1), and your leaderboard identity — the player ID, your nickname, the leaderboard switch and what was last sent (hbricks-player-v1). An old hbricks-lab-v1 entry from earlier versions is read once into the settings and then deleted. A service worker also keeps a copy of the game files in the browser’s cache so it works offline.
None of this contains your name unless you type it into the nickname field. Apart from the leaderboard values described below, none of it leaves the device. It is strictly necessary to provide the game you asked for, so no consent is needed (§25(2) TDDDG / ePrivacy). Clearing the site data for this site in your browser removes all of it from the device. Your leaderboard line is not removed by that, and without the player ID the game can no longer update or hide it; ask us by email to delete it.
What reaches a server
Hosting. hbloks.com is served by Vercel. Like any host, Vercel records technical request data — IP address, browser user agent, the file requested, timing and errors — to deliver and secure the site. Basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in operating a free game.
Visits. On hbloks.com we use Vercel Web Analytics to count page views: the page, the time, the referring site, and the coarse facts every browser sends anyway (country, device type, browser). It sets no cookie and stores no identifier on your device. To tell visits apart within a day, Vercel derives a pseudonymous hash from the IP address and user agent, salted daily, on its own side. Only page views are counted — no in-game actions, scores or moves. Basis: Art. 6(1)(f), our legitimate interest in knowing whether the game is used.
Speed. On hbloks.com we also use Vercel Speed Insights, which reports Web Vitals performance metrics (how quickly the page loads and responds) with the same coarse browser facts. Basis: Art. 6(1)(f), our legitimate interest in keeping the game fast.
Sharing a score uses your browser’s own share sheet, or copies the text to your clipboard. It sends nothing to us; the link it contains is hbloks.com/?utm_source=share.
Apart from these and the leaderboard below, there is no other server, no third-party SDK, no advertising provider and no data broker. Nothing here is sold or used for advertising.
The leaderboard
The game has a public online leaderboard, on hbloks.com and on games portals alike. There is no account. Your device creates a hidden player ID — 32 random characters, not derived from anything about you or your device — and our server functions on hbloks.com store under it:
- your best score (BEST) and how many Daily challenge days you have finished with gold, silver and bronze;
- your nickname, if you set one;
- your device type — iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows, Mac, Chromebook or Linux — read from your browser’s user agent. It makes your default name, such as “iPhone 7F3A” (the last four characters of the ID);
- whether you have hidden your line, and when it was last updated.
The game sends these at each impasse (when no move is left), when you start a new game, when you open the leaderboard, and when you change your nickname or the switch below. Like any request, this also shows Vercel your IP address and browser user agent (see Hosting above); the leaderboard itself does not store them.
What is public. Anyone who opens the leaderboard sees each listed line: rank, nickname (or default name), BEST and the three medal counts. Your player ID is never shown, and the server never sends it out. Because the nickname is public, please don’t use your real name or anything else that identifies you. Nicknames pass an automatic word filter, and offensive ones are removed when reported.
Hiding your line. The switch “List achievements on the Leaderboard” in Advanced settings is on by default. Switching it off hides your line: it is left out of the board, its ranks and its total. Your data is still sent and stored, because the game needs it to show your own scores and medals; switching on again shows the line again. To have your line deleted, email contact@idearig.com with the name your line shows (your nickname, or the default name shown in the Nickname field in Advanced settings).
Basis. Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in offering a shared leaderboard as part of the game. The switch is how you object to being listed; to object to the storage as well, ask us to delete your line.
Where it is kept. The server functions run on Vercel in Frankfurt. The lines are stored in an Upstash Redis database in Frankfurt (EU), connected through Vercel; Upstash, Inc. stores them for us as our processor.
Playing on a games portal
When you play HBLOKS on CrazyGames, Poki, itch.io or a similar portal, the portal hosts the game files and runs its own analytics and advertising under its own privacy policy; it is a separate controller. In that setting the Vercel measurement above is not loaded. The leaderboard works there too, so the leaderboard data described above still goes from the game to hbloks.com.
Transfers outside the EU
Vercel Inc. is a US company, so request logs and measurement data are processed in the United States. Vercel is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, and its data processing agreement applies the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses. Vercel’s own privacy policy describes its handling.
Upstash, Inc. is also a US company. The leaderboard database is stored in Frankfurt; Upstash’s data processing agreement, with the Standard Contractual Clauses, covers any access to it from outside the EU.
How long it is kept
- On your device — until you clear the site data or uninstall the app.
- Leaderboard line — as long as the leaderboard runs, unless you ask us to delete it sooner. Inactive lines are not removed automatically. All lines are deleted when the leaderboard is shut down.
- Web Analytics — reported for 1 month on Vercel’s Hobby plan, the plan we use; Vercel says it may hold the underlying data longer.
- Speed Insights — viewable for the last 7 days on the free tier.
- Request logs — the short period set by Vercel’s plan; we cannot edit them selectively.
Your rights
Under the GDPR you may ask for access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing and portability of personal data, and you may object to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 15–21). The only data we hold per player is the leaderboard line described above; everything else is on your device or in Vercel’s aggregated, pseudonymous measurement. You can change your nickname in the game, and stop your line being listed with the switch in Advanced settings. For a copy of your line or its deletion, write to contact@idearig.com with the name your line shows, and you will get an answer within a month. You may also complain to a data protection supervisory authority (Art. 77) — in Germany, or where you live.
Children
HBLOKS is a general-audience puzzle game. We ask no one for personal data, children included: the leaderboard needs only a random player ID, and a nickname is optional. A nickname should never contain a real name or other personal information.
Changes
The date at the top is the version in force. If a new service or a new kind of data is ever added, this page changes first.