Your privacy

Who we are

Bias is a free lawn bowls game at www.johnsav.co.uk/bias, made and run independently in the UK. We are responsible for the personal information described here. See Contact us below to get in touch.

Playing without an account

What stays in your browser

Your settings, player name, choice of bowls and colour, match record, and daily-puzzle streak and stars are saved in your browser's local storage, so they're there next time. They are not cookies and are not sent to us. Clearing your browser's site data for www.johnsav.co.uk removes them.

The daily puzzle

When you play “Over to You, Skip!”, your browser sends a short note to our puzzle statistics service: which puzzle, what happened (for example, that it was opened, or solved with three stars), whether you've played before, and roughly how many days since you last played. We add it to a daily count and keep nothing else: no IP address, no browser details, nothing that identifies you or links one visit to another. We use the counts to see how hard each puzzle is.

Playing online

To find you an opponent and run the match, our online service shows your chosen display name to the player you're matched with, and passes each delivery between your two screens. It keeps a log of the match so that either player can reconnect if their connection drops. A room is deleted after six hours without play.

If you become a member

Membership is optional and free. When you join, or play in a league, we keep:

• Your username. It's your display name, so other members see it in leagues, results and the noticeboard. Please don't use your real name.
• Your password, stored only as a salted, one-way hash. We can't see or recover it.
• A fingerprint of your email address. We store a keyed hash of the address, not the address itself. When you ask for a password reset, the address you type is checked against that fingerprint and the reset email is sent to it. We don't keep the address, and we never send marketing.
• That you confirmed you're 13 or over, and when.
• Your league activity: leagues you've joined, fixtures, results, the moves of each league match (so it can be rebuilt if a connection drops), when your connection to a match drops and comes back (a player away for more than two minutes forfeits the match, and the result records that it was a forfeit), match times you've proposed, the times you tick for a weeknight league and whether you turned up for each game, whether you're shown as available to play, the bowls, colour and bowling arm you choose under My profile in the Clubhouse, and when you last had Bias or the Clubhouse open while signed in. For a few minutes after that, other members see you as on the green, so they can challenge you; you can choose to hide. There is no chat: members can only send each other preset notes.
• Your rating, worked out from your league games and rated challenges. Other members see it in brackets after your username, and on the ratings table.
• Whether you've beaten Walter, the game's top bot, worked out from the match record you carry over. If you have, other members see a small gold bowl, the Golden Wood, beside your username.
• Your flag, if you choose one: the nation you pick under My profile in the Clubhouse. It is shown beside your name to you and your opponent in your matches.
• What you carry over from a browser: name, bowls, colour, settings, match record, and puzzle streak and stars. This is only sent if you agree when you first sign in on a browser, and only you can see it.
• When your account was made, plus the week of your last visit and how many different weeks you've visited. Nothing more about when you play is kept.
• Reports about display names, so league organisers can deal with unsuitable names. A member whose name is reported is never told who reported it.

To keep you signed in, a sign-in token is kept in your browser's local storage. It lasts a week and is renewed while you play.

Services we use

• GitHub Pages serves the game's pages. Like any web host, it handles your IP address to deliver them and may keep it briefly in security logs.
• Cloudflare runs our online play, puzzle statistics and member services. Our code uses your IP address only for a moment, to limit repeated sign-in attempts, and doesn't store it.
• Resend delivers password-reset emails from its servers in Ireland, and only handles your address while sending the email you asked for.

The game's fonts and images are built in, so no font or image service sees your visit. The Facebook and Ko-fi buttons are ordinary links: nothing from those sites loads until you click one, and then their own privacy policies apply.

Why we use it

We use member information to provide the account and leagues you've asked for (contract), and the anonymous puzzle counts and short-lived security checks because we have a legitimate interest in keeping Bias working, fair and safe. We never sell or share your information for advertising.

How long we keep it, and deleting your account

We keep member information until you delete your account. To do that, open Members in the game, then Your account, and choose Delete my account.

Deleting removes your password, email fingerprint, carried-over data, sign-ins, availability and name reports straight away. League results you've already played stay, so that everyone else's tables still add up, but your name on them is replaced with “Former player” and a number.

Children

Anyone can play Bias without an account. To become a member you must be 13 or over.

Your rights

You can ask to see the information we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, or object to how we use it. To do so, use the contact details below. If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Contact us

For anything about your privacy or your account, message us through the Bias Clubhouse on Facebook or through Ko-fi.

Last updated 5 November 2026. If this policy changes, the date above will change and anything significant will be announced in the game.