Waraqi Privacy Policy
Last updated: September 14, 2026
Who we are
Waraqi is a card game app published by HD Designs Studio Games LLC, 418 Broadway, Ste N, Albany, NY 12207, United States. In this policy, "we" and "us" mean that publisher, and "you" means the person using the app.
Questions about this policy, or about your own data, can be sent to admin@waraqi.games or through Contact Us inside the app (Settings > Contact Us).
The short version
- We do not ask for your email address, your real name, your phone number, your postal address, or your location.
- You sign in with Apple. We do not store your email address, even though Apple offers us one — we deliberately keep only the identifier that tells us it is you again.
- What we hold is what the game needs to work: a username you choose, that sign-in identifier, an identifier for your device, and your progress in the games.
- We show your chat to the other players at your table, and we keep a copy for one day so that a report can be looked into. If nobody reports anything, it is gone within 24 hours.
- You can delete your account from inside the app, and it deletes what we hold about you except records that protect other people.
- We do not sell your data. We do not share it except with the services listed under "Who else sees anything".
What we collect, and why
When you make an account
You make an account by signing in with Apple. There is no password.
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your chosen username | It is how other players see you. It is public. |
| A sign-in identifier from Apple | It is how we know it is you next time. It is a meaningless string of characters, unique to Waraqi, and it tells us nothing about you. |
| A device identifier | To keep you signed in, to enforce one device per account, and to limit how many accounts can be made from one device in a day. |
| The date you signed up | To know which announcements you were here for. |
We do not keep the email address Apple offers us. Signing in with Apple can pass an email address to the app, including one of Apple's private relay addresses. We discard it. We have no use for it, and holding an address we never send anything to would only be something else to lose.
You can play as a guest without making an account at all. A guest is given a name like Guest123456 and an identifier, and no other details. If you later make an account, it keeps the same identifier so that your games, friends and history come with you.
While you play
- Game results: who won, scores, statistics, your rating and rank in each game, your level and experience.
- In-game currency: coins, gems and game tickets, and what you have spent them on.
- Your choices of look: avatar, table theme, card deck, shuffle, deal and title.
- Where you are from and what languages you speak, if you choose to say so on your profile page. Both are optional, both are shown to other players, and a report or a support message you send carries the languages you picked so that it can be answered in one of them.
- Social: your friends list, your clan, friend and clan chat, tournament registrations, and a list of players you recently played with (kept for seven days).
- Presence: whether you are online, and when you were last seen. You can turn this off in Settings ("Appear offline").
- Recordings of games you played ("replays"), so that you and your friends can watch a game back, and so that a report about a game can be reviewed.
Chat
Messages you send at a table, to a friend, or in a clan are shown to the people they are addressed to.
We keep a copy of table chat for 24 hours. This exists for one reason: if somebody reports a player, we need to be able to see what was actually said. After 24 hours it is deleted automatically. The only exception is chat that has already been attached to a report — see below.
Reports and moderation
If you report another player, or somebody reports you, we keep:
- the report itself, permanently;
- the chat from rooms you shared, and recordings of the games in question, captured at the moment the report is made, and kept for 30 days after a decision is reached;
- any warning or other action taken, permanently.
These records survive account deletion, and that is deliberate: if they did not, deleting an account would be a way to erase a history of harassing other people and start again. Reports you filed survive too, because they are about somebody else.
Creating your avatar
If you buy a custom avatar, you send us two photographs of your face, taken with the camera at the time, together with your confirmation that the photos are of you and that you have the right to use them.
- The photos are used for one thing: drawing your avatar.
- They are reviewed by a person, and shown to the image service that draws the artwork. See "Who else sees anything".
- They are deleted as soon as the order is finished — whether the avatar was made or the order was refunded. No copy is kept afterwards.
- Nothing measures your face. There is no face recognition here, nothing is compared against anybody, and no record of your features is created or kept.
Your network address
Like any server, ours sees the network address your device connects from. We use it for one thing: to limit how many new guest accounts can be made from one connection in an hour. It is held in memory for that hour and is not written to storage, not attached to your account, and not used for anything else.
What we do not collect
We do not collect your location, your contacts, your photo library (the avatar photos are taken with the camera at the moment of purchase and are the only images we ever receive), your browsing on other apps or sites, or any advertising identifier. The app asks for no permissions beyond the camera, and only at the moment you buy a custom avatar.
How signing in works
Waraqi has no passwords. You sign in with Apple, and Apple tells us only that the sign-in succeeded and gives us an identifier for you. We do not see your Apple password, and we hold no password of yours that could be guessed or stolen to get into your account.
If you lose access, you sign in with Apple again — there is no password to reset and no reset email to send.
You may connect other sign-in services to the same account later. Connecting a second one is worth doing: it is how you get back in if you ever lose access to the first.
Who else sees anything
Apple, and — if you buy a custom avatar — the image service that draws it. No one else today. This section is updated before any other service is added.
- Sign in with Apple. Apple handles signing you in. Apple knows that you use Waraqi; we receive only an identifier, and we discard the email address Apple offers. Apple's own privacy policy governs what Apple does.
- Purchases made through the App Store. Apple tells us that a purchase happened; we do not see your card details at any point.
- The image service that draws a custom avatar. Your two photographs are shown to an outside image service, because that is how the artwork is made. It is used for that purpose only. Its setting for improving its own models from what we send it is turned off, so your photographs are not used to train anything.
This applies only to players who buy a custom avatar. It is a single optional purchase, and if you do not make it, we hold no photograph of you and no outside service receives your data from us.
We run our own game servers and use no analytics service.
Two things are expected to be added, and this policy will be updated before either goes live:
- An advertising provider — the app shows banner adverts, and an ad provider will receive the information it needs to serve them, which typically includes an advertising identifier. You will be asked for permission first where the law requires it.
- Google and Facebook sign-in — only if you choose to connect them, and only the basic identifier needed to sign you in. As with Apple, we would not keep the email address they offer.
We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for anyone else's advertising.
Automated players
Some of the players you meet are operated by our software rather than by people. See the Terms of Use for what that means. It has no privacy consequence for you beyond this: those players are not people, so no other person is watching that table through them.
How long we keep things
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Table chat | 24 hours |
| Chat and recordings attached to a report | 30 days after a decision |
| Reports and moderation decisions | Permanently |
| Recent-contacts list | 7 days |
| Custom avatar photographs | Until the order is finished, then deleted |
| The rest of your account | Until you delete your account |
Deleting your account
Settings > Account > Delete Account removes your account from inside the app.
It cannot be undone. There is no grace period and no restore.
It deletes what we hold about you across the game — your account, games, statistics, ratings, currency, purchases, friends, chat, clan membership, tournament entries, replays, support messages and cosmetics.
Three things are kept, and each is about somebody other than you:
- Reports in both directions, and any moderation decisions.
- Chat and recordings already attached to a report.
- Your username, recorded as taken. Usernames appear on reports and on games other people saved; releasing yours would let somebody else wear the name of a person who has left.
Your rights
Wherever you live, you may ask us to tell you what we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, or to send you a copy. The deletion right is built into the app (Settings > Account > Delete Account). For anything else, write to us and we will answer within a month.
You may also withdraw a consent you have given, object to what we do with your data, or complain to the privacy regulator where you live.
We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not use it to make decisions about you automatically, and we do not profile you.
Why we are allowed to hold what we hold. We hold your username, sign-in identifier, device identifier and game progress because we cannot run the game for you without them. We keep table chat for a day, and reports permanently, because we have a genuine need to protect players from harassment and to answer a complaint fairly. We rely on your consent for the custom avatar photographs, and you can withdraw it by canceling the order.
Where your data is held. Our servers are in the United States. If you use Waraqi from outside the United States, what we hold about you is held there.
Children
Waraqi is not for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect anything from a child below that age. Some countries set a higher age for a child to agree to this kind of service on their own; where that is so, the higher age applies.
If you believe a child under 13 has made an account, write to us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top and tell you in the app. If a change is significant, we will say so plainly rather than quietly replacing the text.