Privacy policy

What is public

Your username and picture, the art you place, where and when you placed it, and any link you add. These stay in the wall's public history after your art is replaced. Your real name and email address are never shown. New accounts get a neutral username like “artist_3f9a12c4”, which you can change on the My art page.

What we collect

• Account: your email address and username. If you sign in with Google, Google shares your name, email and picture with us; we keep only the email.
• Sign-in sessions: a session cookie, plus the IP address and browser type of each session, to keep you signed in and to protect accounts.
• Abuse prevention: when you create an account, a one-way, keyed hash of the network you signed up from (never your IP address itself). It limits free credits and invite rewards to a few accounts per network and helps us spot one person running many accounts, and it is deleted after 90 days. If you joined through an invite link, we also keep Stripe's fingerprint of the card you first paid with (never the card number), so each card earns an invite reward only once.
• Uploads: the images you upload (kept privately until placed), their size and type, and moderation decisions about them.
• Activity: placements, protection and shields, and your credit history.
• Product statistics: counts we keep on our own servers, such as placements and renewals, how long art stays up, snapshot views and how often placement links are followed, to run and improve the wall. They are not shared with anyone or used for advertising.
• Where visits come from: when you open the site, we record the page you landed on, the site that sent you (for example a search engine or a social network) and any campaign tags in the link, under a random visitor id kept in a first-party cookie for up to 13 months. We don’t record your IP address for this or fingerprint your device. If you sign up, your earlier visits are linked to your account. We use this only to learn which links and campaigns bring people to the site; it is not shared with anyone or used for advertising.
• Site usage analytics: we partner with Microsoft Clarity to capture how you use and interact with the site through behavioral metrics, heatmaps and session replays. This usage data is collected anonymously, using first- and third-party cookies and similar technologies, and we use it to optimize the site and for fraud and security purposes. Clarity masks what you type and other sensitive content. For how Microsoft collects and uses this data, see the Microsoft Privacy Statement (privacy.microsoft.com/privacystatement).
• Payments: handled by Stripe. We receive the amount and status of each payment, never your card details.
• Reports: what you tell us, an email address if you give one, and a one-way hash of your IP address used only to limit abuse of the form.
• Technical logs: our hosting provider keeps short-lived request logs (including IP addresses) for security and debugging.

Who processes it for us

• Cloudflare: hosting, storage and the content delivery network.
• Anthropic: the AI model (Claude) that screens uploads for content that isn't allowed. A small copy of each uploaded image is sent to Anthropic for this. Anthropic doesn't use it to train its models.
• Neon: our database (hosted in the United States).
• Stripe: payments.
• Resend: sign-in emails, emails about your art (which you can turn off), and notices to our admins.
• Gravatar (Automattic): your picture. Our server sends Gravatar a cryptographic hash of your email (anyone who already knows your email could compute the same hash) to fetch it; the hash is never shown on the site. Change or remove your picture at gravatar.com.
• Google: only if you choose “Continue with Google”.
• Microsoft (Clarity): site usage analytics.
• Google (Ad Manager and AdSense): ads on some pages. Google and its partners may use cookies or similar technologies to show ads based on your visits to this and other sites. You can opt out of personalized advertising at https://adssettings.google.com. Players who have bought credits don’t see ads on boards.
• Google Places (Google LLC): when you search The World by place name, what you type and your language are sent to Google to suggest places and locate the one you choose. It is not linked to your account.

Your data may be stored and processed in the United States.

Cookies

Essential cookies keep you signed in, remember the language you chose and, for up to 7 days, which share link brought you to the site (so whoever shared it can be credited). Microsoft Clarity sets first- and third-party cookies to measure how the site is used (see Site usage analytics); you can block them in your browser settings without affecting how the site works. On pages that show ads, Google sets advertising cookies (see Who processes it for us); you can opt out of personalized ads at https://adssettings.google.com. A first-party cookie also keeps a random visitor id for up to 13 months, so we can tell which links bring people to the site (see Where visits come from).

How long we keep it

Account data is kept while your account exists. Payment records are kept as long as accounting and tax law require. Database backups are kept for a short period and then deleted. Art in the wall's public history stays as part of that history unless it is removed.

Your choices and rights

You can change your username at any time. To get a copy of your data, correct it, or delete your account, email hello@buymeblocks.com. Depending on where you live, you may have further rights, including to object to processing or complain to a data protection authority. We answer requests within 30 days.

Children

BuyMeBlocks is not for children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will tell you before it applies. The date at the top shows the latest version.