Privacy Policy
Introduction
This is Blue Beck’s Privacy Policy. The policy describes how Blue Beck Limited (“Blue Beck”, “we”, “us” or “our”) and its third-party partners may collect, use, process and share information about you. This Privacy Policy applies to all of our website as well as all of our mobile applications and other software whether used on mobile devices, personal computers or on other platforms such as Facebook. It also applies to our marketing and advertising activities on all platforms and other services that we may provide to you from time to time. In this Privacy Policy we refer to our applications, games, websites, marketing and advertising activities and other services collectively as our "Services". Services shall, however, not comprise those that we may develop, from time to time, for third parties under their instruction and branding; for such third-party services, their respective policies apply instead. By downloading, accessing and/or interacting with our Services, you agree to the collection and use of your information in accordance with this Privacy Policy, including consenting to our and our advertising partners' use of your data for targeted advertising purposes as described in the Marketing and Advertising sections below. Those sections also explain how you can withhold or withdraw your consent to the use of your data for targeted advertising purposes. If you have any other concerns about providing information to us or it being used as described in this Privacy Policy, you should not use our games or other Services.
Our Services
By downloading, accessing and/or using our Services, you consent to the collection of information about you by us. Most of this data comes directly from you or your device, such as device information, country and region, and gameplay information. We use this data to provide our games and Services to you, including for the purposes of optimisation, preventing fraud, customising in-game offers and verifying purchases. We may also use it for the other purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, including for Marketing and Advertising purposes. Most of the information that we collect about you comes directly from you when you user our Services. Broadly, the information we collect about you relates to the type of device you are using, how you use our Services (such as historical progress, purchases made, etc.) and may include information that you submit or when you allow us access when you connect to your social network accounts through our Services. We may also collect information from advertising platforms and partners and other third parties, such as information about purchases and interests. In more detail, depending on which of our Services you interact with, we may collect and process the following types of information:
- details about how you use and interact with our Services, advertising and other Services (for example, information about how and when you use our Services or visit our websites, what device you use to access our services or details regarding profile visits);
- information that you provide us with when you fill in forms, answer questions or complete surveys when using any of our Services, when you create an account with us or if you invite your friends to use our games and Services;
- the content of messages sent using our chat and messaging systems;
- if you contact us or respond to messages and communications that we send to you, we may keep a record of that correspondence;
- your interactions with us on our website and social media channels;
- information we collect via cookies and other similar technologies, as explained further below;
- information we collect about you from our other group companies or other third-party companies who have obtained your consent or have another legal right to share such information with us (including publishing partners, platforms, advertising platforms and partners and data aggregators who have obtained it). This may include attributes about you and your interests, as well as other games and services you use, demographic and general location information. We will use this information as described in this Privacy Policy and subject to any limitations in the privacy policy of the company that collected the information from you.
- If you choose not to connect your social media accounts, the information that we collect when you use our Services will be anonymous, but we will collect device level identifiers and other information associated with those identifiers, including:
- the type of device(s) you are using to access and use our Services, identifiers such as IP address, device identifiers, ad identifiers, a specific user ID, and the country or region that you are accessing these from; and
- how you interact with our websites and Services (such as which of our applications you are using, your progress through these Services, session time and duration, purchases made).
In some instances, when you make purchases on or through our website(s), we may collect certain payment information from you on behalf of our payment service providers, but this information is temporarily cached in a way that is unreadable by us. We do not collect or retain credit card information. Our payment service providers will provide us with information about your purchases so that we know if a purchase has been successful. When you purchase items via our mobile apps (such as those you can purchase in the App Store, on Facebook or on Google Play), we do not collect or store any payment information from you. We may, from time to time, ask you for your consent to collect other information from you or your device. For instance, we may invite you to allow us to access your contacts to enable us to invite them to play our games with you. If we do this or something similar, we will tell you what information we would like to collect, why we need it and what we'll use it for. We, our suppliers and group companies, may use this information:
- to enable us to provide our games and other Services to you, to ensure that any purchases you make are verified on our servers and activated in the games, and to provide you with player support if you need it;
- to enable us to optimise our Services for you and for the device that you are using, as well as to deliver customised in-app events, offers and promotions;
- For the other purposes as set out in this Privacy Policy, including for Marketing and Advertising purposes; and
- to enable us to comply with laws that apply to us, to prevent fraud, to ensure compliance with our terms of service or, where necessary, to defend, exercise or establish our legal rights, including our rights under our Terms of Service.
We may also share your information with third party publishers who develop and provide games and other Services to you on our behalf. We also analyse and use the information that we collect on an anonymised or aggregated basis for product development, to analyse the performance of our games, to troubleshoot and to improve and optimise the respective Services to ensure the best user experience for our users as a whole. A more detailed description of some of the ways that we use your information is set out below and in the other sections of this Privacy Policy.
Providing and optimising our Services
We use your information to enable us to provide our websites, advertising and other Services to you and to optimise all of them so that we can make them the best they can be for you and all our players. This will include use and analysis of aggregated data to make sure that our websites work properly on all devices and are as enjoyable as they can be for all our players.
Customer Service
We use your information, including data that you provide directly to us in communications, to provide you with support through our customer service channels when you need it. We may also use it to contact you, for example, as part of customer service or to send you updates about our Services. Finally, we will use your data to manage your account and relationship with us and improve your experience when you use our Services.
Analytics and Research
We use analytics tools, which may include third party analytics tools, to collect information about how you use our Services. Those tools may use cookies or other similar tracking technologies. We may use your data to carry out research, surveys or to engage directly with you, for example, by sending you communications (including by email), for these purposes. We may also create reports, analysis or similar services for use by us for the purposes of research or business intelligence, for example, to track potential problems or trends with our Services, or to test out new game features and content.
Social and Community
We may operate a number of social and community channels which we use to communicate with our players. If you choose to interact with those channels, we will receive your information and use it in connection with those channels, including to engage with you, and we may also republish your posts to those channels.
Promotions and Competitions
From time to time, we may run promotions or competitions during which we may collect certain personal information from you, such as your name, address, postcode, email address or other information or content submitted in order for you to claim a prize. Those competitions will have their own specific terms and conditions, but we will use personal information that you provide in relation to that competition for the purposes of running the competition. We may also publish the names and entries of competition entrants. That information may also be combined with other account information and will be processed, stored and shared in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Crime and fraud prevention
We may use personal data that we hold to prevent cheating, crime or fraud. We may also need to pass your information to fraud prevention agencies and other organisations involved in crime and fraud prevention, such as the police.
Legal uses
We may use your data as required or permitted by any applicable law. As a specific example, if you live in the United Kingdom or the European Union, this could include for the purpose of providing VAT invoices where we are required to do so by law or where requested by you.
Our websites
When you visit our websites, such as http://bluebeck.co.uk and other websites and forums operated by us (“Websites”), we collect information about you, such as details about how you use and interact with such Websites. We may use the information we collect about you for a number of purposes, including for operating and optimising the Websites, in connection with our advertising purposes, and for research or analysis.
Social Networks
You can choose to connect some of our Services to your account with a third-party network (such as Facebook). If you do this, then your personal information will be visible to other players, and we may also use it for the other purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, including for Marketing and Advertising.
Marketing
Unless you opt out, as explained below, we and our third-party partners use information collected about you to send you marketing communications about other Blue Beck Services based on your interests. For example, we may send emails, serve ads within our Services or place ads on third party websites, apps and Internet-connected devices. We may use the information that we hold about you to promote our Services in a number of ways. This might include:
- advertising within third party websites, apps and Internet-connect devices;
- showing you promotions for other Blue Beck games in the games you play; or
- sending you marketing materials by email.
We use information about you to try to make sure you only see marketing from us that might be of interest to you. This includes using information that we may have about you, such as:
- ad identifiers and other non-personal information collected from your device (for more information, see below);
- the apps you use and information about how you interact with our Services;
- your age, country or region, and gender; and
- other information that we might acquire from our third-party marketing partners or other third parties who have obtained your consent or have another legal right to share that information with us.
When we market our Services in media published by other companies, we may use various third-party marketing partners to assist us on our behalf, and we may share information which we have collected about you with such third parties for these purposes. Our marketing partners may help us to serve ads to you by combining this information with data which they have collected about you elsewhere. They collect this information when you use their services or the websites and services of third parties. Our partners use this information to make assumptions about the kinds of advertising you would prefer to see. If they determine that you would be interested to see an advert for Blue Beck's Services, they will serve you with an ad for our Services while you are using other websites and services. By accepting this Privacy Policy and downloading or continuing to use our Services, and unless you opt out of interest-based advertising as explained in this section, you consent to our marketing partners collecting and using information about you to improve advertising, targeting and measurement systems as described in their privacy policies. This Privacy Policy does not apply to the collection of your information by our marketing partners. We recommend that you review our partners' privacy policies for more information. You can exercise choices over the direct marketing we send you in the following ways:
- you can withhold your consent for us to send you direct marketing emails by opting out when we collect your email address or by electing not to share your email address with us when you first create an account using your Facebook details;
- you can remove yourself from receiving email marketing from us at any time by simply clicking the unsubscribe link in any direct marketing email we send to you or sending an email to privacy@bluebeck.co.uk; and
- to disable interest-based advertising (see below on how to adjust your preferences for interest-based advertising).
You should note that if you opt out of receiving interest based or targeted advertising, you will still see advertising, and you may see advertising for our Services, but that advertising will not be targeted using your personal information.
Advertising
Our Services may include advertising for third party products and services. By accepting this Privacy Policy and downloading or continuing to use our Services, and unless you opt out of interest-based advertising as explained in this section, you consent to us and our advertising partners collecting and using information about you to improve advertising, targeting and measurement systems so that we can show you relevant third-party ads in our Services. To provide some of our Services, websites and interest-based advertising, we may use ad identifiers, cookies and similar technologies, which may be used by us to provide our Services to you and in order to collect data from your device. These technologies allow us and our third-party advertising partners to:
- recognise you and your device;
- provide interest-based advertising to you;
- allow our Services to interact with a third party social network or platform (where you have chosen to allow such interaction);
- allow us to understand how you interact with our websites (for example, where we use cookies such as the Google Analytics cookie on our Websites);
- allow our payment processors to process your payment instructions; and
- enable us and third parties to provide you with more customized services, for example, to provide our Services in the correct language.
Ad identifiers are non-permanent, non-personal identifiers such as the Android advertising ID and/or Apple's ID for advertising (the "IDFA"), which are uniquely associated with your device. Similar technologies include tracking pixels within ads. These technologies allow companies (including marketers and advertisers) to recognise your device when you use websites and applications. Cookies are small text files that are stored by your browser on your desktop computer or mobile device. You can withdraw your consent to cookies by updating the settings within your browser. You can choose to prevent your device's ad identifier being used for interest-based advertising, or you can reset your device's ad identifier, by changing the settings of your device. Settings vary from device to device, but you will usually find the ad identifier settings under "privacy" or "ads" in your device's settings. If you choose to adjust your preferences in order to prevent these technologies, you may find that you cannot enjoy the full use of our Services. Please note that adjusting your preferences as described in this section does not mean you will no longer receive adverts, it only means the adverts you do see will be less relevant to your interests. We will also still use your device’s ad identifier to serve you with ads; for example, we may use this for frequency capping (in other words, to control the maximum number of times you see the same ad from us).
Your Rights
You have certain rights in connection with your personal information and how we handle it. You can exercise these rights at any time by contacting us via any of the methods set out in the “Contact Us” section below. Your rights include:
- Right of access. You have a right to know what information we hold about you and, in some cases, to have the information communicated to you. If you wish to exercise this right, please contact us letting us know that you wish to exercise your right of access and what information in particular you would like to receive. We reserve the right to ask for reasonable evidence to verify your identity before we provide you with any information. Please note that we may not be able to provide all the information you ask for, for instance, if the information includes personal information about another person. Where we are not able to provide you with the information that you have asked for, we will endeavour to tell you why. We will try to respond to any request for a right of access as soon as possible, but we will always do so within one month of receipt of your request and verification of your identity.
- Right to rectification. We try to keep the information that we hold about you accurate and up to date. Should you realise that any of the information that we hold about you is incorrect, please let us know at privacy@bluebeck.co.uk, and we will correct it as soon as we can.
- Right to Erasure. In some circumstances, you have a right to have some of the personal information that we hold about you deleted. Should you wish to have any information about you deleted, please contact us using the information below. Please note that in order to process your request, you must delete our games from your mobile devices and clear our cookies from any device where you have played our games in a web browser. Where we delete personal information about you, we may still retain some or all of that information for other purposes such as maintaining financial records, protecting or enforcing legal rights, maintaining marketing suppression lists or for technical reasons such as maintaining technical security or our database integrity. We may also retain your information in an anonymised form. In some instances, personal information about you that is visible through gameplay, such as username, avatar, your high scores and any chat messages, may be cached on other players'devices and we may not be able to remove or update that data from those devices, for example, if that device is not connected to a WiFi network.
- Data portability. In some circumstances, you may have the right to request that data which you have provided to us is provided to you, so you can transfer this to another data controller.
- Restriction of processing. In some cases, you may have the right to request a restriction of the processing of your personal data, such as when you are disputing the accuracy of your data held by us.
- Right to object. You have the right to object to the processing of personal data about you, which is processed on the grounds of legitimate interests (see “Legal Bases” below).
- Direct marketing opt out. If you have elected to receive direct marketing communications from us, you can change your mind at any time by following the opt out link in any marketing communication that is sent to you. If you have elected to receive more than one type of marketing communications from us, you may need to opt out of all of them individually. It may take a few days for us to update our records before any opt out is effective.
You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. Please contact us at privacy@bluebeck.co.uk if you wish to make a request. There are other ways in which you can control the personal information that we collect about you. For instance, you could disconnect your Facebook or other social network account from our Services, or delete our Services from your mobile device. You could also reset your mobile advertising identifier or limit ad tracking altogether using the settings in your phone. Finally, you could limit or prevent the use of cookies in your web browsers. More information on all of these options is provided elsewhere in this Privacy Policy.
Children
You must be over a certain age to play our games and use our Services, depending on where you live. For the full list of age restrictions by country, please see below. We do not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from or direct or target interest-based advertising to anyone under the ages set out below, or knowingly allow such persons to use our Services. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child under the age set out below, please Contact Us.
Sharing
In addition to the other disclosures described in this Privacy Policy, we may also share your information:
- where we have your consent to do so (including as set out in this Privacy Policy);
- as reasonably necessary in order to provide the Services to you (for example, by providing your personal information to suppliers we may use to fulfil the Services or to communicate with you);
- where it is necessary to carry out your instructions (for example, to process a payment instruction we must provide your personal information to our payment processors);
- where your data is in an anonymous and aggregated format, meaning you could not be personally identified from it;
- as we reasonably believe is permitted by law or regulation or as is necessary to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms and conditions and/or any other agreement with you; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Blue Beck, our users, or others; and
- if there is a sale of the assets of Blue Beck or a corporate restructuring, or as a result of a change of control of Blue Beck or one of its group companies, or in preparation of any of these events. Any third party to which Blue Beck transfers of sells Blue Beck's assets will have the right to continue to use the personal and other information that you provide to us in the manner set out in this Privacy Policy.
We may also share your information with our service providers if necessary to enable them to provide services to us.
Security
We take appropriate security and technical measures to protect your information from unauthorised access, loss and misuse. In addition, we request that our suppliers who process personal information on our behalf take a range of security measures designed to help protect your personal information and maintain an appropriate level of security. However, we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your information online and offline, as the Internet, by its nature, is not a secure environment, and the nature of security risks is constantly evolving. As such, you should always take care when sharing your information online.
Legal Bases
In each case where we process your information, we do so lawfully in accordance with one of the legal basis set out under European data protection law. The legal bases which we rely upon are the following:
- Contractual Necessity. This covers data used by us in order to provide you with Services that you have requested - and that we have agreed - to provide to you, such as our apps, customer services, chat functionality and third party social network connectivity;
- Legal Obligation. This covers data used by us to comply with a legal obligation, such as to maintain records relating to tax or to respond to a valid legal request for certain data;
- Legitimate Interests. This covers data used by us for purposes that are not harmful to your privacy and can be reasonably expected within the context of your use of our Services, such as Marketing, Advertising, analytics, research and optimisation of our games and other Services; and
- Consent. This is used as a legal basis in the following contexts: (i) the collection of data stored on your device by us and our advertising partners, including device information, ad identifiers, IP address, country and region. You consent to this collection when you agree to install our game and you can withdraw your consent to this by uninstalling our games; (ii) the storage of data on your device by us and our advertising partners, including through the use of cookies. By accessing and using our Services, you consent to this storage and you can withdraw your consent by updating your cookie settings; and (iii) the use of your data by us and our partners for targeted advertising purposes (for more information, see Marketing and Advertising above). You consent to this collection when you accept this Privacy Policy and you can withdraw your consent to this processing by following the steps at How to adjust your preferences for interest-based advertising. Where we ask for your consent to use your data for any other purpose, we will make this clear at the point of collection, and we will also make clear how you can withdraw your consent.
In this Privacy Policy, we have explained how you can opt out of certain types of processing that we undertake and where any processing is based on your consent, you can withdraw that consent at any time in the ways described in this Privacy Policy. Nonetheless, if you play our games, we will still collect some personal data about you and process it as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not wish us to collect any personal data about you at all, you should cease playing our games and stop using our Services.
Retention
We will keep your information for as long as your account is active or we consider necessary for the purposes described in our Privacy Policy. We will also retain and use your information for as long as is required in order to comply with our legal obligations.
Location of storage
We store your information on servers that we control which are primarily based in the European Economic Area (EEA). We may also use servers and engage providers that are located outside the EEA in order to process and store your information and to provide services to us.
International Transfer
We may transfer your information to affiliated entities or third parties to jurisdictions outside the EEA. Please note that these countries outside of the EEA may not have the same data protection laws as your own jurisdiction. We take steps to ensure that there are adequate safeguards and mechanisms in place (including the use of EU model clauses) to allow the transfer of your information across borders outside of the EEA.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, and we will post the updated Privacy Policy on this page. Please come back to this page every now and then to make sure you are familiar with the latest version. Any new policy will be effective from the date it is published by us.
Contact us
If you have any questions or concerns about any of the matters in relation to this Privacy Policy, including to exercise any of your rights, you can contact us
- via email to privacy@bluebeck.co.uk; or
- in writing to Blue Beck Ltd, Westminster House, 10 Westminster Road, Macclesfield, Cheshire, SK10 5BX.
For information collected under this Privacy Policy, the data controller is Blue Beck Limited. Our Data Protection Officer can be contacted via dataprotection@bluebeck.co.uk.
How to Complain
You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you are unhappy with how we have used your data. The ICO’s address is: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. Helpline number: 0303 123 1113. ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk