Privacy policy

Effective 12 September 2026 · Last updated 12 September 2026

Contents

1. What information do we collect?
2. How do we use your information?
3. Will your information be shared with anyone?
4. Is your information transferred internationally?
5. How long do we keep your information?
6. How do we keep your information safe?
7. Do we collect information from children?
8. What are your privacy rights?
9. Controls for do-not-track features
10. Do we make updates to this notice?
11. How can you contact us about this notice?

1. What Information Do We Collect?

In short: a village needs no personal information at all. The waiting list needs an email address, because it exists to send you one email.

Your village

When you start a village, we do not ask for a name, an email address, a phone number or a date of birth, and we do not create an account in the usual sense. Your village is identified by codes that are generated at random on our servers and shown to you:

• a manage code, which is the owner's key to the village;
• a recovery code, which lets you claim the village back if you lose the manage code;
• a view code, which you can give to someone so they can look at your village without changing it;
• an optional PIN, a short convenience secret that only works together with the manage code. We store it hashed, never in readable form.

None of these codes is derived from anything about you, and none of them is connected to an identity we hold. We therefore cannot tell who owns a village, and we cannot find your village for you from your name or your email address. Keep your codes somewhere safe: they are the only way in.

Alongside the codes we store the village itself, which is game data: the buildings you place, your paths, resources, residents and the progress of the simulation, together with the time your village was last active.

The iPhone waiting list

If you join the waiting list, we store the email address you typed, the moment you joined, and which language you were reading the site in. That is the whole record. We do not store your IP address with it. Your address is used once, to tell you the iPhone version is ready to try, and for nothing else.

Problem reports from the game

When the game runs into an error, it may send us a technical report so we can fix it. A report contains the error message and stack trace, which part of the game was running, the build and version, the interface language, the browser or device user-agent string, performance measurements such as memory use, and a short trail of the last few actions and log lines leading up to the failure. Reports describe the software, not you: they carry no codes, no village contents and no contact details. Your IP address is not stored in a report; it is turned into an irreversible hash purely so we can limit how many reports one sender can submit.

Cookies

We use cookies only to make the site and the game work, never for advertising, tracking or analytics profiles:

• cozycity_language remembers the language you chose, so the site opens in it next time.
• While you are playing, a session cookie, a refresh cookie and a security token cookie keep you signed in to your own village and protect the connection against cross-site request forgery.

There are no third-party cookies on CozyCity, and no advertising or social network trackers.

Ordinary server logs

Like every web server, ours records requests so we can keep the service running and investigate abuse and faults. These operational logs are short-lived and are not used to build a picture of you.

2. How Do We Use Your Information?

In short: to run the game, to fix it when it breaks, and to send you the one email you asked for.

• To run your village. Storing and simulating your village, and letting you and anyone holding your view code reach it. Legal basis: performance of our agreement with you.
• To keep the service working and safe. Diagnosing errors, measuring performance, limiting abuse and protecting the service against attack. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in a service that works.
• To send the waiting-list email. One message when the iPhone version is ready. Legal basis: your consent, given when you submit the form, which you can withdraw at any time.
• To comply with the law where we are required to.

We do not profile you, we do not make automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects, and we do not use your data for advertising.

3. Will Your Information Be Shared With Anyone?

In short: we do not sell anything to anyone, and the list of people who touch your data is very short.

We never sell personal information, and we never share it for anyone else's marketing. We share data only in these situations:

• Service providers. The companies that host our servers and infrastructure, acting on our instructions under a data processing agreement, and operating within the European Union.
• Legal obligations. Where we are legally required to disclose information, for example in response to a valid order from a competent authority.
• Protecting people and the service. Where it is necessary to investigate or prevent fraud, abuse or a threat to someone's safety, or to establish or defend a legal claim.
• Business transfers. If the business or a part of it is ever sold or merged, data may pass to the acquirer, who would remain bound by this notice.

Sharing a view code is your own choice, not ours: anyone you give it to can look at that village.

4. Is Your Information Transferred Internationally?

In short: no. Everything stays in the European Union.

Our servers and infrastructure are in the Netherlands, inside the European Union. We do not transfer, store or process personal information outside the European Economic Area, and we work only with providers and sub-processors that operate entirely within the EU and are subject to the General Data Protection Regulation.

This means your data is not subject to foreign government access requests under laws such as the US CLOUD Act or FISA Section 702. If you play from outside the EEA, your information is processed in the Netherlands, and it is protected by this notice and the GDPR wherever you are.

5. How Long Do We Keep Your Information?

In short: villages for as long as you play them, waiting-list addresses until we have written to you, problem reports briefly.

• Villages are kept while they are in use, so that you can come back to yours. A village that has been inactive for a long time may be removed; we will give notice on the website before any such clear-out.
• Waiting-list addresses are kept until the iPhone version is released and we have sent the one email, or until you ask us to remove you, whichever comes first.
• Problem reports and operational logs are kept only as long as they are useful for fixing faults and protecting the service, and then deleted.

Backups are encrypted and rotate on their own schedule, so deleted data can persist in a backup for a short period before it is overwritten. We may keep information longer where the law requires it or where it is needed for an active dispute.

6. How Do We Keep Your Information Safe?

In short: with appropriate technical and organisational measures, and by holding as little as possible.

Traffic to CozyCity is encrypted in transit. PINs are stored only as salted hashes using PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 at current recommended parameters, never in readable form. Access to production systems is limited to the people who need it. Backups are encrypted.

The strongest protection is structural: because a village carries no name, email address or other identifier, there is very little personal information to lose in the first place.

No transmission over the internet and no storage system can be guaranteed to be completely secure, so we cannot promise that a determined attacker will never succeed. We do our best, and we will tell you and the supervisory authority about a breach where the law requires it.

7. Do We Collect Information From Children?

CozyCity is a gentle game and is suitable for children, and playing it requires no personal information at all. The iPhone waiting list is meant for adults: if you are under 16, please ask a parent or guardian before entering an email address. If you believe a child has given us an email address, write to privacy@cozycity.net and we will delete it. The age rules for playing are in our terms of service.

8. What Are Your Privacy Rights?

In short: the full set of GDPR rights, with one honest limitation.

If the GDPR applies to you, you have the right to ask for access to your personal data, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to its processing, and to receive it in a portable form. Where we rely on your consent, you may withdraw it at any time without affecting what happened before.

The limitation. Because a village holds no identifying information, we usually cannot connect a request to a village. If you ask us to delete "my village", we have no way to find out which one is yours unless you send us the code. This is a consequence of collecting so little, and it is why your codes matter. For the waiting list, which does hold your email address, simply write to privacy@cozycity.net from that address and we will act on it.

Deleting things yourself

• A village can be deleted from within the game by whoever holds the manage code.
• A view code can be rotated so that anyone you previously gave it to loses access.
• Site cookies can be cleared in your browser at any time.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. In the Netherlands this is the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl); elsewhere in the EEA you may contact your local authority, listed at edpb.europa.eu.

9. Controls for Do-Not-Track Features

Most browsers offer a Do-Not-Track setting. No uniform standard for honouring it has been agreed, so like most services we do not respond to it. This makes no practical difference on CozyCity, because we do not track you across websites in the first place.

10. Do We Make Updates to This Notice?

We will update this notice when the game or the law changes. The date at the top always tells you when it was last revised, and the new version applies as soon as it is published here. If a change materially affects you, we will point it out on the website rather than leaving you to spot it.

11. How Can You Contact Us About This Notice?

Questions, or a request about your data, can go to our Data Protection Officer, Dominique Henkes, at privacy@cozycity.net, or by post to: