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Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 26, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains what data TickleGame ("we", "us") collects across the ticklegame.com domain and its subdomains, why we collect it, how we use it, and the choices you have. By using our Services you agree to this Policy.

For the purposes of this Policy:

  • Marketing site — ticklegame.com
  • Julie the Tickler — julie.ticklegame.com
  • Julie 2: Mansion of Secrets — julie2.ticklegame.com
  • Chat — chat.ticklegame.com

1. Summary

We collect the minimum data needed to operate the Services. The categories are:

  • Analytics — anonymized usage data (Google Analytics, Google Ads conversion events) across all sites
  • Authentication data — Patreon/Afdian IDs, email addresses for legacy buyers, session cookies
  • Chat data — your typed messages, AI replies, and a small set of facts the system extracts from your messages to give characters persistent memory (Chat site only)

We do not sell personal data. We do not show third-party advertising on our Services.

2. Data we collect, why, and how long we keep it

2.1 Analytics & advertising measurement (all sites)

We use Google Analytics 4 (ID: G-65QYYW97V1) and Google Ads conversion tracking (ID: AW-18184660174). These services collect:

  • Pages visited, time on page, navigation paths
  • Referrer (the previous URL that sent you to us)
  • Approximate location (country/region level — never street address)
  • Browser type, device type, OS, screen size
  • An anonymous client ID stored in a cookie
  • Click ID (gclid) when you arrive from a Google Ad — used to attribute conversions to the ad that brought you
  • Conversion events such as "Play game CTA clicked", "Chat first message sent", "Chat engaged at 4th message"

Data is processed by Google under its own privacy policy and retained per Google's defaults (commonly 14 months). You can opt out of GA tracking using the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, by disabling cookies in our consent banner, or by using a tracker-blocking extension. Disabling analytics does not affect access to the Services.

2.2 Authentication data (game & chat sites)

To access paid features you authenticate via one of three flows. Each collects different data:

  • Patreon OAuth (until 24 August 2026) — we received your Patreon numeric user ID and tier status. Patreon removed our page on that date; we keep the ID to preserve your access, nothing else is collected from Patreon any more. Sessions are stored as HMAC-signed cookies (7-day expiry) on your device only.
  • Afdian login — we receive your Afdian display name and verify your active sponsor status with Afdian's API. Same handling as Patreon (memory cache, HMAC cookie).
  • Account recovery email (since 25 August 2026) — Patreon removed our page and Patreon sign-in no longer works, so if you ask us to restore your access (via ticklegame.com/recover, the owner console, or Discord) we store the email address you give us together with your Patreon or Afdian user ID (table supporter_contacts), the tier we granted you and until when, and a note of how we verified it was you. We use it for two things only: to email you one-time sign-in links and codes, and to reach you about your access. Sign-in links are stored hashed (table login_tokens), work once and expire after 15 minutes. Recovery requests you submit (name on Patreon, tier, email, the private fact you told us) are kept in table recovery_requests until resolved and for our records afterwards; pending requests expire after 14 days. We do not use this address for marketing. You can ask us to correct or delete it at any time (Section 6).
  • Launch notifications: if you ask us to tell you when a new way to support the games is available (the notify box on ticklegame.com/recover under "Not a member yet?", or the "email me when other ways to pay open" checkbox when you pay by crypto on ticklegame.com/join), we keep only that email address (table launch_notify) until we have sent that one email or you ask us to remove it. Nothing else is sent to it.
  • Legacy buyer email codes — if you originally purchased Julie the Tickler we hold your email in a database (table legacy_buyers: email, nickname, original purchase timestamp). When you request a login code, we generate a 6-digit code, store it temporarily (table login_codes, 15-minute expiry), and send it via Resend (a US transactional email service). Used and expired codes are purged. The buyers table is retained as long as we operate the legacy login path, since it is the proof of original purchase.

2.3 Chat conversations (chat.ticklegame.com only)

Chat is a long-form AI conversation product. To keep characters in character across days and to give them persistent memory of you, we store:

  • Your typed messages and the AI-generated replies — in tables conversations and messages, indexed by your Patreon/Afdian ID and the character you chatted with
  • "Memory facts" — short statements the system extracts from your messages to help the character remember context (e.g., "user mentioned their pet's name is Whiskers"). Stored in table memory_facts
  • Mood tags — a single-word tag the AI emits to drive its portrait expression
  • Analytics events — counts, timestamps, conversation milestones (e.g., satisfaction thumb up/down, first/fourth message). No raw message content.
  • Safety-filter records — every message you send is screened by an automated safety classifier before it reaches a character (Section 5). When a message is blocked, or when it is flagged and then cleared on review, we keep a short record in table safety_blocks: the category that fired, the message length, the character, your Patreon/Afdian ID, and a redacted excerpt of up to 300 characters of the message with email addresses, web links and long digit sequences masked out. These records are visible only to the site owner, are never sent to analytics or to any third party, and are automatically deleted after 30 days. We keep them for one reason: the classifier makes mistakes, and without an excerpt there is no way to find out which blocks were wrong and stop them happening to you again.

Your typed messages are sent in real time to our AI provider (OpenRouter, routing to a large-language-model vendor) for response generation. The provider's policies govern that transit; we do not store user content with any provider outside our own database.

We will permanently delete your chat data on request (see Section 6).

2.4 Server logs

Our hosting provider (Railway) keeps short-term server logs (typically days) containing IP addresses, timestamps, requested URLs, and error traces. These are operational — used to debug outages and detect abuse — and are not used for behavioral profiling.

3. Cookies

We use the following cookies. On first visit you will see a consent banner letting you accept or decline non-essential ones.

  • Strictly necessary (always on): the session cookie tickler_session on the game sites (HMAC-signed, 7 days) and tc_* functional cookies/local storage on chat. These are required for login. We cannot disable them and still let you in.
  • Analytics (optional): Google Analytics cookies (_ga, _ga_*). Lifetime up to 2 years. Used for aggregated traffic measurement.
  • Advertising (optional): Google Ads cookies for conversion measurement and to recognize you across our subdomains. We do not run remarketing or display ads on the Services themselves.

If you decline analytics/advertising in the banner, we will not initialize Google Analytics or Google Ads tags on your subsequent visits. Your choice is stored in local storage on your browser; clearing your browser data resets it.

4. Third parties we share data with

  • Google LLC — Analytics, Ads, Fonts, YouTube embeds. Google Privacy Policy.
  • Patreon, Inc. (no longer active since 24 August 2026) — OAuth login + tier verification until that date. Patreon Privacy Policy.
  • Afdian — sponsorship verification for Chinese audience. Afdian Terms & Privacy.
  • SubscribeStar: processes monthly subscriptions for supporters outside mainland China. If you choose to share it when subscribing, SubscribeStar passes us your email address and tier so we can grant access; you can decline to share it, in which case we cannot link your subscription to an account.
  • NOWPayments: processes cryptocurrency payments. We send them only the price and an internal order reference, never your email or other personal details, and they report back the payment status. We never see your wallet address or private keys.
  • Resend (Resend.com) — sending the 6-digit login codes to legacy buyers, and one-time sign-in links, access codes and recovery replies to members, by email.
  • OpenRouter — routing chat messages to AI model providers for real-time response generation. Messages are not retained by us with the provider outside the request lifecycle.
  • Railway — hosting. Operational logs only.

We do not sell personal data, share it with data brokers, or use it for advertising profiling.

5. AI & automated processing

Chat replies are generated by large language models in real time. Your typed messages are processed by the AI provider to produce the reply, then stored in our database for future context. The "memory facts" we extract from your messages are produced by another automated LLM pass over a recent window of the conversation. These extractions are heuristic; they may be imperfect. You can request review or deletion of any stored chat content (Section 6).

Automated safety screening. Before a message reaches a character it is screened by an automated classifier (Meta's Llama Guard, via OpenRouter) for a small set of categories we will not host under any circumstances — violent crime, sexual crime, and any sexual content involving minors. If it fires, your message is not sent to the character and you receive an in-character refusal instead. Where the classifier reports possible content involving a minor, a second automated model re-examines the same message and the block is lifted only if both agree no minor is involved; if that second check fails, errors, or is unclear for any reason, the block stands. No human reviews your messages as part of this screening.

This screening is automated and it is not perfect — it produces false positives, and a blocked message does not imply any accusation against you. That is precisely why we retain the short redacted excerpts described in Section 2.3: they let us identify and correct wrong blocks. If you believe a message was blocked in error you can tell us at the contact address in Section 11, and you can request deletion of these records along with the rest of your chat data (Section 6).

6. Your rights & choices

You can:

  • Access — request a copy of the data we hold about you (Patreon/Afdian ID we link to your sessions, legacy buyer record if any, all chat conversations and memory facts tied to your account, and any safety-filter records still within their 30-day window)
  • Delete — request permanent deletion of your chat data, memory facts, safety-filter records, and legacy buyer record. We will purge within 30 days. Deletion is final and we cannot recover deleted chats afterwards.
  • Correct — ask us to fix incorrect information (typically the email on file for legacy buyers)
  • Opt out of analytics — through our cookie banner, your browser, or the Google opt-out add-on linked above
  • End your session — log out by clearing cookies on the affected subdomain

Send requests to [email protected]. Include the Patreon/Afdian username or legacy email you used so we can find your records. We will respond within 30 days.

6.1 California (CCPA/CPRA) residents

If you are a California resident, you have the additional rights to: (a) know what categories of personal information we collect and the purposes for which it is used; (b) opt out of "sale" or "sharing" of personal information (we do not sell or share for cross-context behavioral advertising — your only exposure to advertising tech is the Google Ads conversion tag, which you can opt out of via the cookie banner); (c) request deletion; (d) non-discrimination for exercising rights. To exercise these rights write to [email protected]. We will not require you to create an account to exercise rights.

6.2 European Economic Area / UK residents

If you are in the EEA or UK, the lawful bases on which we process your data are: contract (for delivering the Services you signed up for), legitimate interest (operational analytics, security, abuse prevention), and consent (non-essential cookies, marketing). You have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict, and port your data, and to object to processing and lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. Requests: [email protected].

7. Children's privacy

The Services are intended for users aged 13 and older, with mature themes more suited to ages 16 and up. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and believe we may have inadvertently collected such data, contact [email protected] and we will delete it promptly.

8. Security

We use HMAC-signed cookies for sessions, HTTPS for all traffic, environment-isolated secrets, and least-privilege database access. No system is perfectly secure; we do not promise the impossible. If we discover a breach affecting your personal data, we will notify you within 72 hours of confirming the breach.

9. International transfers

Our infrastructure is hosted in the United States. By using the Services from outside the US you consent to the transfer of your data into the US for processing.

10. Changes to this Policy

We will update this Policy as the Services evolve. Material changes will be noted at the top of the page with an updated date. Continued use after changes constitutes acceptance.

11. Contact

Privacy questions, requests, and complaints: [email protected]. We typically respond within 7 business days.