Privacy

Who is responsible

For RankT as an application – web pages, database, the code on the screen – the operator of RankT is responsible. RankT is currently a pilot running in a handful of venues; who that is stands in the legal notice – where the address and contact details are still marked as gaps, and will be filled in before it runs in a venue that is not ours.

For the display on the wall, the pub itself is responsible: it decides which rankings run and who appears on them. Who that is and how to reach them is in that pub’s privacy text – reachable from the phone page behind the QR code. The quickest way is to ask at the bar.

What is stored when you take part

• An account with no name. When you open the phone page, your browser is given a random identifier and a cookie to go with it. At first there is nothing but that identifier – no name, no email address, just a way of recognising this phone again. Without that cookie, nobody can enter a result.
• Your email address – but only if you attach it yourself. Below your row in the ranking it says “That name is mine”. Tap it and you attach an email address to exactly this account and get a link to confirm. After that you find your name and your points again on a new phone – you simply sign in with the same address. What is stored is the address itself, plus the time and confirmation of the sign-in; that lives in Supabase’s authentication service, not in the ranking. It never appears on the screen on the wall, and the landlord cannot see it. Anyone who never taps it uses RankT exactly as before: it is not a condition for anything.
• The name you choose. Two to fourteen characters, freely chosen. It appears with your points on the screen in the pub, where every guest can see it. So pick a name you are happy to have up there.
• Your results. Who played whom, on which device, the score, the time, and whether the opponent confirmed or objected. The database calculates the ranking from that.
• The fact that you were there. When you redeem the code from the screen, the time and the screen are stored. This presence lasts two hours and is what stops anyone inventing wins from home.
• Wrong codes. If you type in a wrong code, the database remembers that for a day, together with your phone’s identifier and the address the request came from. After more than ten wrong codes in ten minutes the phone is blocked for ten minutes; after more than a hundred from the same address, that address is blocked too. This protects the code from being guessed.

Not stored: your location, your contacts, your phone number, and nothing from other apps. There is no advertising, there are no analytics tools, and nothing is passed on to third parties for marketing.

What the pub can see

The landlord signs in with their email address – either with a password or with a link from an email. If they set a password, only a checksum of it lives in Supabase’s authentication service; the password itself is stored nowhere, not with us either. They can see the names of all guests at their pub, their results, disputes and which devices are being used. They can change names and take players off the ranking. They cannot see which phone belongs to which name, and no addresses – not even the email address a guest has connected their phone to.

If you use the enquiry form

The RankT home page has a form for landlords who want RankT in their pub. Anyone who sends it is not part of any ranking – this section is about that form and nothing else.

• What is stored. Your name, the name of the pub, the town, a phone number or email address, the optional message, the language the form was filled in, and the time. No account, no cookie, no identifier – you do not sign in to ask a question.
• What for. To call or write back. Nothing else: no advertising, no newsletter, nothing passed on. The legal basis is Article 6(1)(b) GDPR – steps before a contract that you took yourself.
• For how long. Until the matter is settled, and at most two years after the last contact. If you want it gone sooner, one line to the address in the legal notice is enough; no reason needed.
• The IP address. When you send the form it is noted separately from the enquiry, for one day, and it serves one purpose only: more than five enquiries in ten minutes from the same address are turned away. After that the entry is deleted. It cannot be matched to the enquiry itself – there is no IP address in the enquiry.

Where the data is kept

The database runs on Supabase in the Frankfurt am Main data centre. The web pages are served by Vercel, which produces the usual server logs containing IP address, time and the page requested; Vercel deletes these after a short period. Both providers are processors with whom a contract under Article 28 GDPR is in place. Fonts are bundled when the site is built – your browser does not connect to Google.

For how long

Results stay for as long as the pub uses RankT; depending on the setting, the ranking on the wall shows the current evening, week, month, quarter or year – or everything. Presences expire after two hours, wrong codes after a day. If a pub is deleted, all its names, results and screens go with it.

What happens when something is deleted

You want your name off the list. Say so at the bar and the landlord will take it down. The matches themselves stay in the database – each one also carries your opponent’s result, and that is not yours alone. Your name no longer appears on the screen afterwards.

You want your email address gone. Write to us and we delete the account along with the address. Your names stay, but afterwards they belong to nobody: no one can enter results under them, not even you. If you want both gone – address and names – say so, and both go together.

Detaching the email address on its own and keeping the phone account is something only we can do at the moment, not something there is a button for on the phone. The authentication service will not let the last sign-in method be removed from an account.

Your rights

You can find out at any time what is stored under your name, have the name changed, or disappear from the list entirely. The quickest way is at the bar; otherwise by email to the address in your pub’s privacy text. You can also complain to a data protection supervisory authority if you believe something here is not right.

The legal basis for all of this is the legitimate interest in running a ranking that cannot be faked (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR), and, for the landlord’s sign-in, the contract with them (Article 6(1)(b)).

Cookies

RankT sets only the cookies it cannot work without: your phone’s session – with or without an email address – and, for the landlord, their sign-in. Anyone moving their names from a phone to an account has a one-time key in browser storage for the half hour in between; after that it is spent. The screen on the wall remembers its pairing in the device’s browser storage. There are no third-party cookies, which is why there is no cookie banner either. Your language choice also lives in browser storage and never leaves your device.

What a lawyer still needs to look at

This text was written by people who are not lawyers. It describes honestly what actually happens – but whether it is sufficient as a privacy notice can only be judged by someone with the right training. These points should be reviewed before any permanent operation:

• RankT’s legal notice still has the address and contact details marked as gaps. Before it runs in a venue that is not ours, that has to carry a name and an address where legal documents can be served.
• Whether the pub and RankT are joint controllers under Article 26 GDPR and need an agreement to that effect – or whether RankT is the pub’s processor.
• Whether legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)) covers showing a name on a publicly visible screen, or whether consent is required for that.
• Whether storing the IP address to prevent abuse is permissible in this form.
• Whether RankT needs its own legal notice under § 5 DDG, and what it has to contain.
• Whether retention periods have to be defined – today results stay until the pub stops using RankT.
• Whether minors need to be treated separately.
• Whether the optional email address requires consent under Article 6(1)(a) – or whether it falls under the same legitimate interest as everything else.
• Whether it is enough to offer the English version purely as a reading aid, or whether an application with an international audience needs a translation of equal standing.

Which version applies

This text exists in German and in English. The German version is the authoritative one; the English version is here so that guests who do not read German can understand what happens with their data. Where the two differ, the German text applies.