Back

Privacy Policy

Last updated 6 September 2026

The short version. SideQuest has no accounts, no passwords and no email addresses. To play, you type a display name and pick an emoji. That name, your emoji, your score and which quests you claimed are stored for the length of the game and then thrown away. We don't sell anything to anybody, because there is nothing to sell.

Who runs this site

SideQuest and YourSideQuest are run by an independent developer based in Singapore. There is no company behind them. If you want to reach a human about anything on this page, write to hello.yoursidequest@gmail.com and you will get a reply from the person who built it.

What we collect, and why

An anonymous ID

When you open a game page, Firebase Anonymous Authentication issues your browser a random identifier and stores it locally on your device. It is not linked to an email address, a phone number, a social account or anything else about you. Its only job is to let the game tell one player in a room apart from another, so that your quest goes to you and your points land on your row of the leaderboard.

Because that ID lives in your browser, opening the game in a different browser or a private window makes you a different player as far as the game is concerned.

What you type into a game

When you join a room, the following is written to our database:

  • The display name you chose. You pick this yourself — it does not have to be your real name, and for most parties it isn't.
  • The emoji icon you picked.
  • Your score, and which quests you claimed, who you asked to verify each one, and whether they approved or rejected it.
  • Timestamps for when you joined and when your browser was last active in the room.

If you host a game, the room name, any custom quests you wrote and any prize you described are stored on the room as well.

What we do not collect

  • No email addresses, passwords or user accounts.
  • No photos, video or audio. Verification is one player tapping Approve — there is nothing to upload and nothing to moderate.
  • No payment details. The game is free and there is nothing to buy.
  • No contact list, calendar, microphone or camera access.
  • No location data. The game never asks where you are.
  • No advertising cookies. Analytics cookies only if you accept them — see below.

What other people in your game can see

Your display name, your icon, your score and your resolved quest claims are visible to everyone else in the same room. That is the game working as intended: the activity feed showing who approved whose quest is what stops players quietly approving each other.

The live dashboard is public. It is designed to be put on a TV, so anyone who has the five-character room code can open the dashboard and see the room name, the player names, the icons and the leaderboard — without joining. Room codes are random, but they are short. Treat a room code like a party invitation: only share it with the people you want in the room, and don't put anything in a display name, a room name or a custom quest that you would not want a stranger to read.

Cookies and similar technologies

SideQuest sets no cookies at all unless you choose to allow them. The only thing stored on your device by default is the anonymous Firebase login token described above, which is what keeps you as the same player if you lock your phone mid-game and come back. It is strictly necessary for the game to work, so it is not something we ask about.

The first time you visit we ask whether you are happy with optional cookies. Nothing optional is loaded before you answer — not a script, not a request. If you choose Necessary only, or simply ignore the question, no analytics or advertising cookie is ever written and no data about your visit reaches anyone else. The game is identical either way. You can change your mind at any time using the Cookie settings link in the footer of every page.

If you accept: Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how the game is actually used — how many people open it, which pages they read, and how far a game gets. It writes cookies in your browser and sends Google an identifier for your browser, your approximate location derived from your IP address, and technical details such as your device type and screen size.

Alongside page views we record a small number of events about the game itself: a room being created, a game being started, a quest being claimed, approved, rejected or swapped, and a game reaching its end screen. These carry counts only. We deliberately do not send room codes, display names, or the text of any quest — and where a room code appears in a web address, it is replaced before anything is sent, so it is never stored in our analytics. Analytics data is kept for 14 months and then deleted automatically.

Google acts as our data processor for this. Its explanation of how it handles data from sites that use its products is at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

Advertising

We do not show advertising today, and no advertising cookie is set even if you accept. We intend to show ads in future to keep the game free. When that happens, Google AdSense and its partners may set cookies or read device identifiers to serve and measure ads, this section will be rewritten to say so specifically, and you will be asked again before any advertising cookie is set.

Who processes the data

The game runs on two services, and no data is shared with anyone else:

  • Google Firebase (Anonymous Authentication and Cloud Firestore) stores game data. Our database is hosted in the Singapore region.
  • Netlify serves the web pages and, like any web server, records standard request logs including IP addresses for security and abuse prevention.

Both are processors acting on our behalf. We do not sell, rent or trade any of it.

How long it is kept

  • Rooms close themselves 24 hours after the game starts — or 24 hours after the room was created if the host never started it.
  • Anonymous accounts are automatically deleted after 30 days of inactivity by Firebase.
  • Old room data is periodically removed. If you want a specific room deleted sooner, send us the room code.

Children

SideQuest is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from them. Some quest packs are marked 18+ and the host chooses which packs a room uses. If you believe a child has provided information through the game, contact us and we will delete the room.

Your rights

Under Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act, and under the GDPR if you are in the UK or EU, you have rights to access, correct and delete personal data we hold about you, and to object to certain processing.

In practice this is unusually simple here: we hold a display name you invented, an emoji and a score, and we have no way to connect any of it to you as a person unless you tell us the room code and the name you used. Email hello.yoursidequest@gmail.com with those two things and we will delete the record. You can also just leave the room, which removes your player entry immediately.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes materially — most likely when advertising is switched on — the date at the top will change and the change will be described here.

SideQuest is a beta product built by one person. This policy describes accurately what the software does, but it is not legal advice and has not been reviewed by a lawyer.