Last updated 10 August 2026
This explains what BrainBuzz collects, why, and what we do with it. We've tried to write it in plain English rather than boilerplate, and to be specific about how the software actually behaves.
BrainBuzz operates playbrainbuzz.com from the United States. For privacy questions, contact support@playbrainbuzz.com.
You can build a Jeopardy board from your own material — a lesson plan, notes, a chapter. That text is sent to our AI provider to screen it and to write the board, and it is not stored on our servers: it is not saved to your library, not written to any log, and not kept after the board is built. The board that comes back is saved, because that is the thing you asked for. Our own records note only that a file was used and roughly how long it was — never the document or any part of it. Only upload material you have the right to use.
Adding a photo is optional. When a player adds one, it is held only in server memory, attached to that game room. It is never written to disk, never backed up, and never sent to any third party. It is destroyed when the player clears it, when the room ends, or when the room expires — at most 12 hours after it was created. Restarting our server also destroys it immediately.
This is written to a log file on our own server and aggregated on a private admin page. It is not shared with anyone and there is no third-party analytics service involved.
When we look at that log, we work out an approximate country from the IP address — for example "United States" or "Spain" — so we can see roughly where the game is being played and which languages to support next.
This site or product includes IP2Location LITE data available from https://lite.ip2location.com.
We set exactly one cookie of our own: a session cookie set when you sign in
to a host account. It holds a random token, is HttpOnly,
Secure and SameSite=Lax, and it expires. It exists
solely to keep you signed in — it is a strictly necessary cookie, not a
tracking cookie, and we set no analytics cookies of our own.
Free accounts see ads, served by Google AdSense, on our marketing pages, the public game catalogue, and the TV screen during a hosted game; a Pro subscription (or a comp) turns them off everywhere, including any TV a Pro account's own game is displayed on. Google may set its own cookies to serve and measure those ads. See how Google uses information from sites that use its services.
| Service | What it receives | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | Your email, payment details you enter directly with them | Processing payments and subscriptions |
| OpenAI | The topic you type and board text being generated, checked, refined or screened | Generating and fact-checking boards, and screening content before it is shown or published |
| Amazon SES | Your email address and the message body | Verification, password reset and billing emails |
| Google Fonts | Your IP address and browser, when a page loads | Serving the site's typefaces |
| Amazon Web Services | Everything — it's where our server runs | Hosting |
| Google AdSense | Standard ad-request data (IP address, browser and device info, the page being viewed) — never your account email or anything you've typed into a board | Serving and measuring ads on free accounts. Not loaded at all for Pro accounts or comped accounts. |
That's the complete list. We don't sell, rent, or trade personal information directly, and account data you give us (your email, boards you save) never goes to an ad network. We may disclose information if legally required, or to protect our rights or someone's safety.
Board topics and board content are sent to OpenAI's API to generate, fact-check and refine questions, and to screen them against a content filter before a board is shown or published. Your account email is not sent with them. OpenAI states that data submitted through its API is not used to train its models by default. Don't type confidential or personal information into the topic box — treat it like anything else you send to a third-party service.
Our pages load typefaces from Google's servers, which means Google receives your IP address and browser information when a page loads. If this matters to you, we're happy to hear from you — self-hosting the fonts is straightforward and something we'd consider.
Saved boards are private to your account by default. Nobody else can list them, open them or delete them.
If you choose to publish one to the public gallery, that is a deliberate act and it changes who can see it: every signed-in BrainBuzz account can then find that board, read it in full — clues and answers — play it, and save their own copy. You choose whether it is credited to your display name or shown as Anonymous; your email address is never attached either way. You can make a board private again at any time, which removes it from the gallery immediately, though anyone who already saved a copy keeps theirs. We may also unpublish a board ourselves if it breaks the rules in our Terms.
Don't publish a board containing anything you wouldn't want other people to read — boards written about a specific family, workplace or classroom are usually best kept private.
BrainBuzz is designed to be played by families and classrooms, so children often play. But:
If you believe a child has provided us information you'd like removed, email support@playbrainbuzz.com and we'll delete it promptly.
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Player photos | In memory only; destroyed when the room ends, at most 12 hours |
| Live game rooms (teams, scores, player display names) | Held in memory while the game runs, with a copy saved to our database so that restarting our server doesn't end a game in progress. The copy is deleted when the room closes, and in any case the room expires 12 hours after it was created. Player photos are deliberately left out of that copy — they stay in memory only. |
| Session tokens | Until expiry or sign-out; expired ones deleted hourly |
| Password reset tokens | Short-lived; deleted hourly after expiry |
| Account and saved boards | Until you delete them or close your account |
| Billing records and credit ledger | Retained as required for tax and accounting |
| Analytics log (IP, user-agent, events) | Retained while useful for security and product decisions; we periodically prune it |
Whoever and wherever you are, you can ask us to:
Email support@playbrainbuzz.com and we'll respond within 30 days. We won't discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.
If you're in the EEA or UK, our legal bases are: contract (running your account and games), legitimate interests (security, abuse prevention, improving the product), legal obligation (tax records), and consent where we ask for it. You may also complain to your local data protection authority.
If you're in California, we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined by the CCPA/CPRA, and we have not done so in the preceding 12 months.
Our servers are in the United States. If you use BrainBuzz from elsewhere, your information is transferred to and processed in the US, which may have different data protection laws than your country.
Passwords are hashed with bcrypt. Sessions use random tokens in HttpOnly, Secure cookies. Traffic is encrypted with HTTPS. Payment details go straight to Stripe and never through our systems. Player photos are size-limited, format-checked, and never persisted.
No system is perfectly secure. If you find a vulnerability, please email support@playbrainbuzz.com — we'd much rather hear from you than not.
If we change this policy materially, we'll notify account holders by email or in the app before it takes effect. The date at the top always reflects the current version.
This policy was written in English. Translations are provided for convenience; if they differ, the English version governs.