Privacy Policy

Last updated 2026-08-27

Rival Rooks is a chess training app. You can use all of its training on your own, without an account and without giving us anything. This page explains what happens to your information when you do choose to sign up, and what leaves your device when you do not.

What stays on your device

Your training progress is stored locally on your device and is not sent anywhere unless you create an account. That includes:

• Your puzzle rating and how many puzzles you have solved.
• Your daily streak, freeze tokens and XP.
• Which puzzles are scheduled for review, and when.
• Which difficulty rungs you have completed in each training mode.
• Your settings: board colour, light or dark theme, and sound on or off.
• Whether you have unlocked premium.

If you create an account

An account is optional and only needed for the social features — clubs, friends and puzzle challenges. Training does not require one.

Accounts are email and password only. We use Google Firebase Authentication to handle sign-in, which means Google receives and stores your email address and a secured form of your password on our behalf. We never see or store your password ourselves.

Once you have an account, we store a profile for you in Google Firestore containing: a display name you choose, a randomly generated six-character friend code, an avatar choice, the club you belong to if any, and a copy of your training stats (rating, puzzles solved, streaks and XP) so they can appear on club leaderboards.

Your training progress on your device stays the source of truth. The copy in your profile is a mirror, updated when you solve a puzzle while signed in.

What other people can see

The social features work by showing your information to other players, so it is worth being specific about which:

• Anyone signed in who knows your friend code can find your display name and avatar and send you a friend request. You choose whether to accept it.
• If you join a club, the other members see your display name, avatar and training stats on the leaderboard.
• If you play a friend challenge, the other player sees whether you solved the puzzle, how long you took, and how many hints and wrong moves you used.
• Your email address is never shown to other players.

Purchases

The one-time premium unlock is sold through the Apple App Store or Google Play, depending on your device. Your payment details go to Apple or Google and never reach this app — all we keep is a note on your device that premium is unlocked.

Premium is not purchasable on the website.

Cookies and browser storage

On the website, your training progress and your preferences are kept in your browser's own local storage rather than in cookies we set. That storage is what makes the app work offline and remember where you were; it is not used to follow you around other websites. Clearing this site's data in your browser removes all of it.

If you sign in, Firebase Authentication also keeps a session token in your browser so that you stay signed in between visits.

The only third-party storage on the site comes from the advertising described next.

Advertising on the website

The website shows at most one advertising banner, on the home screen, served by Google AdSense. Google may use cookies or similar device identifiers to select and measure the ads it shows you, under its own privacy policy at policies.google.com/privacy.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, Google's own consent message asks for your choice before personalised advertising is used, and it lets you change that choice later. Declining does not take away any part of the training — every drill on this site works the same either way.

The banner is hidden entirely if you have unlocked premium. The iOS and Android apps contain no advertising code at all.

Hosting

The website is hosted on Google Firebase Hosting, which keeps standard server request logs including IP addresses and browser user-agent strings. These are used to operate and secure the site.

What we do not do

• We do not include any analytics or tracking SDK in the app.
• We do not sell or rent your information to anyone.
• We do not build advertising profiles about you ourselves.
• We do not send marketing email.

Children

This app is designed to be usable by beginners, including young players, and all of its training works without an account or any personal information at all.

If you are under the age where you can agree to this on your own, please ask a parent or guardian before creating an account, and pick a display name that is not your real full name. A parent or guardian can contact us at the address below to see or delete an account.

Keeping and deleting your data

We keep your account information for as long as the account exists.

To delete your account and the profile, club membership, friend requests and challenge results attached to it, email us at the address below and we will remove them.

To clear the training progress stored on your device, uninstall the app, or clear this site's stored data in your browser.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the date at the top of the page changes with it. Significant changes will be noted in the app.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or requests about your information, can go to privacy@rival-rooks.com.