Privacy Policy

Last updated: 7 September 2026

Photon 47 is a free browser game at photon47.com. This policy explains exactly what we collect, why, and who else sees it. It is written to be read, not to be survived.

Play without an account

You can play without creating an account. Your progress is written to localStorage in your own browser and stays on your device. Clearing your browser data deletes it, and we cannot recover it. Our optional site analytics is separate from sign-in and remains off unless you choose Allow.

What we collect if you do sign in

Signing in exists for one reason: so your heroes and progress follow you from your laptop to your phone. It gives us:

• Your email address, and a display name if you set one.
• Your game data — heroes and cards owned, Photon Dust and other currency, unlock progress, match history, rank, homestead, and settings.
• Your Photon47 community activity — votes, music comments, community posts and replies, reports, friend requests, social opt-in, and private messages you choose to send.
• Your purchase records — the music tracks or other digital items your account is entitled to, payment status and identifiers, and records of short-lived download links issued to your account. We do not receive your full card number.
• If you sign in with Google or Discord, we receive your basic profile from that provider. We never receive your password.

Photon47 community and who can see it

The Music library and Community discussions can be read without signing in. If you sign in and participate, your display name, approved profile image, random public profile key, music comments, community posts and replies, their times, and aggregate voting activity may be shown publicly in the relevant Music, mode, world, team-up, help, or creations channel. We never publish your email address or sign-in-provider account ID. Rankings show totals, not a public list of voters.

Friend requests and private chat are optional. Chat opens only after both accounts enable Photon47 social features and become friends. Messages are returned only to the two participants; deleting a message hides it from your view, while reports may retain a protected copy for safety review. We rate-limit social actions, permit reporting and owner deletion, and may hide or remove content for safety or legal reasons.

Public Community text is erased when its author deletes it; its empty tombstone and request receipts are scheduled for removal after 30 days, Community reports after 180 days, and moderation audit records after 365 days. Music request receipts are scheduled for removal after 30 days, deleted Music comments after 90 days, and private messages and Music abuse reports after 365 days; a message hidden by both participants may be removed after 30 days. Active public posts, comments, and votes remain while the relevant community feature operates, unless you delete them where available or ask us to delete account-linked data. If scheduled maintenance is delayed, removal completes after its next successful run.

Aggregate music play totals

When a catalogued song plays naturally, audibly, and in the foreground for at least 10 seconds, the Music library or game sends Supabase the song identifier, whether it played on the website or in game, a random per-tab token, and a random request identifier. Supabase immediately hashes the tab token. We do not attach an account, IP address, location, full URL, referrer, device fingerprint, or raw user-agent string to this event.

The public website and in-game totals combine a visibly disclosed editorial launch baseline with qualifying real-play events. The baseline is curated launch metadata, not measured listening. The per-tab token and a short counted-song list live only in session storage, prevent a reload or replay in that tab from adding duplicate plays, and disappear when the tab session ends. Hashed request receipts are deleted after 30 days and temporary rate-limit buckets after expiry; aggregate real-play counters remain while the Music feature operates. This narrow counter is separate from the optional site analytics below and records nothing unless you deliberately play a song for the qualifying period.

Optional, consent-based site analytics

Our first-party site analytics is off by default. Only after you choose Allow, we record a page view on a strictly allowlisted public Photon 47 page and a separate event if you follow one of its Explore AI company links.

• An event contains its type, the allowlisted path without query parameters, time, language, viewport-size band, and a random per-tab identifier that is hashed before storage. Company-link events also contain the link placement.
• Cloudflare adds an approximate country, region and city plus rounded city-centre coordinates. This is inferred network location, not GPS or a visitor's exact physical location.
• We do not put raw IP addresses, postal codes, full URLs or referrers, raw user-agent strings, fingerprints, account details, or form contents in the analytics database.

A Cloudflare Worker validates the event and writes it to a private Supabase database where Photon 47, Explore AI, OnlineNIW, and Discovery analytics can be viewed as separate sources. The sites do not share identifiers and the dashboard does not link a visitor across them. Raw events stop appearing in the private dashboard when they reach 30 days and are then deleted by an automated task scheduled hourly; if a run is delayed or fails, deletion completes after the next successful run. Summary counts are deleted on the same schedule after they reach the 25-month boundary. The private dashboard is restricted to authorised company administrators.

Your choice and edge-shortcut preference are stored in local storage, and an independent random per-tab identifier for this site is stored in session storage. On the live game page, the shortcut folds completely after a choice so it cannot cover gameplay; press Alt + Shift + P, or use the preference button below, to reopen it and withdraw. Global Privacy Control keeps this analytics off.

Manage analytics preferences

Who processes it

Advertising

Selected public editorial pages and the game may show ads from Google AdSense. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to Photon47 or other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables Google and its partners to serve ads based on visits to this site and/or other sites. Google is currently the only third-party advertising network configured by Photon47. You can review how Google uses information from partner sites, opt out of personalised advertising in Google Ads Settings, or review broader industry opt-outs at YourAdChoices. In the EEA, UK, and Switzerland, advertising choices are collected through the Google-certified consent platform configured for this site.

Advertising is deliberately absent from live gameplay, Community discussions, Music social and purchase flows, legal pages, and account controls. Ordinary display inventory is limited to reserved letterbox space beside a closed list of calm title/reference screens and never overlays the game canvas, result controls, or the rewarded-ad action. Match boundaries use the H5 or host-platform ad API; gameplay pauses and mutes if an H5 full-screen ad actually opens. We do not request commercial ads for an active subscriber, when this site's ad switch is off, or when Global Privacy Control is enabled. We do not automatically refresh display units.

If Google is unavailable or has no eligible ad, a clearly labelled first-party Explore AI house promotion may replace the empty unit. That fallback makes no request to an advertising network. The optional first-party analytics choice above is separate and never stands in for Google's advertising-consent flow.

Cookies and local storage

• Local storage — your saved game, language, sound and graphics settings, plus your analytics choice. Set by us, stays on your device.
• Session storage — a random music-play token and bounded counted-song list for the current tab; separately, a random analytics identifier created only after analytics consent. They end with the tab session; withdrawing analytics deletes its analytics identifier immediately.
• Sign-in cookies — set by Clerk to keep you signed in.
• Advertising storage — Google may set cookies or local-storage entries only on the selected ad-eligible surfaces described above, subject to the applicable consent choices.

Children

Photon 47 is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has given us personal information, email us and we will delete it.

Your rights

You can ask us to show you the data attached to your account, correct it, or delete it. Email [email protected] from the address on the account and we will action it within 30 days, subject to records we must retain for tax, accounting, fraud prevention, dispute handling, or other legal obligations. Deleting your account deletes its cloud save and cannot be undone; purchase and entitlement records may need to remain for those purposes. Optional site-analytics records contain no account identifier, name, email address, or durable cross-tab identity, so we may not be able to associate an event with you; you can stop future collection instantly through Privacy choices.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects you, we will update the date at the top and say so in the game.

Contact

[email protected]