PRIVACY
A Necessary Kindness — anecessarykindness.com
Version 1.8 · Last updated 29 July 2026

1. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE

Controller: Morrow State Games, registered in the Netherlands; postal address held in the KVK trade register and available on request by email.
Email: [email protected].

2. WHAT WE HOLD, AND WHY

Your handle — chosen by you, and public. It appears in the field and on
the leaderboard, and on your stone if you are condemned. Do not use your
real name; the rules reject handles that look like contact details.

Your secret — the text you write. Strangers are shown it in order to
judge it. If you are condemned it is published beside your handle for 48
hours, its words blacked out progressively, and then the text is deleted
from our storage. If you are absolved it is never published: only the
operator and the strangers who judged it ever see it.

Your email address — optional, and held for one purpose only: contacting
a prize winner. It is never shown to anyone, never published, never sold,
and never used to send you anything else.

Payment data, only if you choose to send a tip — Stripe carries out the
payment and holds the card details as its own controller, under its own
privacy policy. We see that a tip arrived, its amount, and any name or
message you chose to attach to it. We never see your card number. A tip
is not linked to your record in the game, and giving one changes nothing
about how you are judged.

A random token — stored in your browser. It is not a tracking cookie and
not shared with anyone; it is how the site recognises your own record. We
hold the same token with your record so we can show you your fate.

Your IP address — used in two ways. First, to count requests and stop
flooding, in a short counter that expires within an hour. Second, it is
kept with your record while the record lives, for one purpose: to stop
one person from playing as a crowd. A record cannot be judged from the
network it was written from, each network passes judgment on a record
only once, and one network can hold only a few records awaiting judgment
at a time. The address is never public, is visible only to the operator
— together with the name of the network operator it belongs to and its
country, which help us tell an ordinary connection from a rented one —
and it is all deleted when your record is buried or removed. Cloudflare,
our host, also processes connection data to deliver and protect the
site, and when you submit a confession its Turnstile service checks,
without a puzzle, that your browser is operated by a person.

3. WHY WE ARE ALLOWED TO

- To run the game you asked to play: performance of our agreement with
  you, art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.
- A secret is sensitive by its nature. By submitting it you give explicit
  consent for us to process it and, if you are condemned, publish it —
  art. 9(2)(a) GDPR. You choose what to write, and you are told what can
  happen to it before you submit. You may withdraw consent at any time by
  asking us to remove your record: that stops further processing, but it
  cannot un-publish what people have already read.
- Your email address: your consent, art. 6(1)(a). Give it or don't — the
  game plays the same.
- Moderation, rate limiting, security and the fair-play checks described
  above: our legitimate interest in keeping the service usable, lawful
  and honest, art. 6(1)(f), together with our duties as a hosting
  service.
- A tip you choose to send: carrying out the payment you asked for, art.
  6(1)(b), and our legal obligation to keep business records, art.
  6(1)(c).
- Advertising cookies and personalised advertising: your consent, art.
  6(1)(a), asked for before they run and withdrawable at any time.

4. HOW LONG WE KEEP IT

- Published secret text: deleted once its 48 hours are up. The deletion
  runs the next time the field is read after that moment, so in practice
  minutes to hours later — not days.
- Unpublished secret text (awaiting judgment, or absolved): kept while
  your record is active, and deleted when you ask.
- Handle and the emptied stone: may remain in the field as part of the
  record of the game.
- Email address: deleted when your record is buried, or when you ask,
  whichever comes first.
- Rate-limit counters: expire within an hour.
- The network address kept with a record for fair play: deleted when the
  record is buried, deleted, or removed at your request.
- Text routed to crisis resources: never stored at all.
- Records of a tip: seven years, because Dutch tax law requires that of
  business records. This one we cannot delete on request.

5. WHO ELSE SEES IT

- Other players: your handle, your stone, and — only if you are condemned
  — your secret while it is still readable. A stranger judging you sees
  your secret before any verdict is given.
- The operator: everything in a record, including unpublished secrets, in
  order to moderate the game.
- Cloudflare, Inc.: hosting, storage and the Turnstile human-check,
  acting as our processor.
- Google (Google Ireland Limited), for AdSense advertising: its scripts
  run on the page and receive your IP address and information about your
  device and browsing, and may set cookies or similar identifiers. Google
  acts as its own controller for that and describes what it does at
  policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites. In the EEA, the UK and
  Switzerland you are asked first, through a Google-certified consent
  tool. Refusing means non-personalised advertising — never a locked door.
- Stripe (Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd.), if you send a tip: it processes
  the payment as its own controller.

These providers may process data outside the EEA under the European
Commission's standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision.

6. WHAT WE NEVER DO

We do not sell your data and we do not profile you ourselves. The only
measurement is Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookieless and
aggregate: it counts page visits without identifying, fingerprinting or
following anyone, and we see totals, never people. Short campaign links
(under /s/) count how often each link was used — a number per link,
nothing about you. We never connect a secret to a
tip, an advertising identifier, or anything else outside the game. The
only cookies beyond the token described above belong to advertising, and
they are set only if you agree to them. We never ask for your real name,
and moderation actively rejects text that looks like personal details —
of yours or anyone else's.

7. YOUR RIGHTS

You may ask for a copy of what we hold, have it corrected or deleted,
restrict or object to how we use it, take it elsewhere, and withdraw
consent. Email [email protected]. We answer within one month.

One honest limit on deletion: we will delete your record and your email
address, but where a secret was already published we may keep the bare
fact of the record — a stone with no text — as part of the game's
history, and we cannot reach into other people's memories or copies.

If you are unhappy with how we handled your request, you can complain to
the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl), or to the authority where you live.

8. SECURITY

The site is served over HTTPS. Owner and judge tokens never leave the
server. The moderation desk is protected by a secret key and kept out of
search engines. We are a small operation, so we hold as little as we can:
that is the main protection.

9. CHILDREN

The service is for adults, 18 and over. We do not knowingly hold data
about children, and we delete any record we believe belongs to a minor.

10. CHANGES

The version and date above change whenever this page does. Material
changes are announced on the site.