Privacy at socializeME

Last updated: 13 October 2026

The German version is the authoritative one.

socializeME brings people together through game rounds. That needs a few details about you — considerably fewer than you might expect. This page says exactly which ones, what we use them for, and who else gets to see them.

The short version

• We do not sell data and we run no advertising.
• No analytics or tracking services. There is no Google Analytics, no Facebook pixel, nothing of the sort.
• We need neither an email address nor your real name. A nickname is enough.
• We only use your location with your permission, to find rounds near you. Nobody else sees your coordinates.
• After each game, an AI service analyses the round's chat so that we can spot trolls and troublemakers. What that means and how to object is explained under “Where AI is involved”. Only players who are verifiably adult (18+) are analysed.

Who is responsible

The controller under the GDPR is the operator of socializeME. Name and contact details are at the top of this page.

What we process

Your account

Nickname and the four-digit number after it, date of birth, gender and who you are looking for, your city, spoken languages, interests and — if you upload one — your profile picture. Plus the cosmetics you earn or buy in the game.

Gender and “who you are looking for”: Together, the two can reveal your sexual orientation, which is a special category of personal data. We use the “who you are looking for” choice only for dating rounds (18+) and only with your explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a) GDPR), which you give when you make the choice. Other players cannot see it. Without consent, “everyone” applies. We record when you consented. You can withdraw your consent at any time in your profile; “everyone” then applies again, and the lawfulness of the processing before withdrawal is not affected.

Location

When you look for rounds nearby, the app sends your coordinates to our server so it can work out distances. For an ongoing search they stay with us only briefly and are deleted a few minutes after the search ends. If you open a round, or one is put together for you, we do store the coordinates, as precisely as your device provides them, as the location of that round. People looking for rounds nearby see the distance to it, not the coordinates.We delete the exact coordinates of an open round 24 hours after it is created; the round's city stays stored. In the list of games you only see the distance roughly (“under 1 km” or rounded to whole kilometres).

The app can determine your city via GPS. To do so it sends coordinates rounded to about one kilometre to our server, which works out the nearest city from a local list of places. No location data goes to third parties. This happens when you trigger it in your profile and, once you have granted permission, now and then on its own so your city stays up to date. You grant location access in your operating system and can withdraw it there at any time. The city lookup uses place data from GeoNames (www.geonames.org), licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0).

What you write and play

Chat messages, voice messages, images and GIFs you send, group names and pictures, your answers and drawings from game rounds. A round's chat history is kept for a limited time and expires; friend and group chats stay until you remove them. If someone reports a round, we save its history as evidence for the review.

How you play

Rounds played, points, experience, achievements and statistics. Also rough patterns: which times of day and modes you play and how often you leave rounds early. From this and from the AI analysis of your round chats (see below) we derive your automatic title (for example “the Night Owl”), which others see next to your name unless you pick a different one. Our team sees these values when handling reports.

Leaderboards

With your points you automatically appear in the app's leaderboards (weekly and all-time, also by city), in the high-score lists of individual games and in the weekly rankings of your groups. Others see your nickname with its number, your city and your results there. There is no switch to opt out, but you can object to being listed (see “Your rights”).

Purchases

If you buy Somis or a membership, payment runs entirely through Apple or Google. We never see payment details. All that reaches us is the transaction identifier and your balance.

Technical data

A device identifier, the app build in use, the operating system, your IP address (processed by our host) and — if you allow notifications — a token that lets Apple or Google deliver them.

Protection against abuse

Someone who gets banned should not simply be able to delete the app and carry on with a new account. So each time the app starts we store a few technical characteristics of your device and your connection, but only in pseudonymised form: as a check value that we create with a secret key and use only to compare against banned accounts. On iPhones we also use a device check from Apple that lets us recognise a previously banned device without our learning which device it is.

We delete these characteristics 7 days after your last app start. If an account is banned, we keep its device characteristics for as long as the ban lasts, at most two years (network characteristics derived from the connection at most six months), and delete them immediately when the ban is lifted. A match never leads to an automatic ban, only to review by a human — housemates and family members share a connection too.

Security log: In addition, each time the app starts we log which IP address your account connects to our server from, and when. This lets us detect attacks and abuse and clear up harassment or criminal offences committed through the app. We delete this log automatically after 7 days.

Preservation when there is cause: If an account is reported, we preserve that account's IP entries and characteristics separately as evidence (not for reports of spam). If the report turns out to be unfounded, we delete the preserved data immediately, otherwise after 30 days at the latest. If a violation is confirmed or we ban the account, we keep the preserved IP entries for at most six months, or, during ongoing criminal or court proceedings, for as long as they require; we review this at least every twelve months. A report preserves only the data of the person reported, not that of the person reporting.

Authorities: We answer requests from authorities only where there is a legal basis. For criminal offences that endanger life or limb, we may also inform authorities on our own initiative. We record every disclosure internally with a case reference.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a service where harassment has consequences and criminal offences can be investigated (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Download buttons and web dashboard

When you click a download button for iOS or Android on bygue.app (or a subpage), open a beta page or download an Android app, we store: which app and which button, the page you came from, the time, your IP address, the approximate country, city and internet provider (derived from the IP) as well as browser, operating system and device type. The same applies to sign-ins to the maXXteam web dashboard, where we also store your username.

We use this to protect beta access from abuse, to spot shared links and to see which apps people want. There are no cookies and no tracking across other websites; the data is not passed on to anyone.

The IP address is deleted after 30 days, everything else after 180 days. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in keeping beta access and the dashboard secure (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Why we process all this

Who else sees something

Other players see your nickname, profile picture, city, cosmetics, title, leaderboard positions and whatever you write in rounds and chats. Your date of birth, your coordinates and your technical data are not visible. In voice calls, the audio always runs through our service provider Cloudflare; the other participants do not see your IP address.

Some of these providers are based outside the EU, mainly in the USA.

Where AI is involved

Questions, tasks and stories in the game modes are machine-generated. Beyond that, your own text goes to an AI service in several places, and that should not be buried in fine print:

• Analysis of round chats: When a game round ends, we send its history, with the players' nicknames, to a language model, but only for players who are verifiably adult (18+). People who are younger or have not given an age are not analysed, and minors' contributions are removed from the history that is analysed. Anonymous contributions (such as anonymous votes or captions) never enter the analysis. For each person it estimates how they behave in the round: their tone on a few fixed scales (for example direct or reserved, silly or matter-of-fact), a few topics they talked about, and a short note. Over several rounds we combine this into averages and a short description. The purpose is to assess players better, above all to spot trolls and troublemakers who repeatedly disrupt rounds or harass others, and so to protect the community. The model must not record anything about health, politics, religion, sexual orientation or origin. Only our team sees the results; in the app, the values only feed into your automatic title (see “How you play”). Bots are not analysed. Existing analyses of minors are deleted daily. For minors, the automatic title is based only on game statistics, not on the AI analysis.
• Mia in group chats: Mia is socializeME's mascot, an AI character our team can switch on in individual group chats. She then reads along, chimes in now and then to liven up the chat, and replies when addressed. For this, the latest messages of the group chat (up to 40) with nicknames, recent game events and the group's weekly standings go to the AI service. Mia keeps short notes about the group, such as running gags and nicknames; they are stored with the group chat. Mia does not moderate and cannot ban anyone. After six hours without messages she switches herself off. When Mia is active, you can see it in the chat.
• Bots: If you play a round with a bot and write to it in chat, your message is sent to the AI service so it can reply.
• Feedback and support: If you send us feedback or a support request, we have the text smoothed out before it reaches us.
• Reported questions: If you report a quiz question as wrong, the AI service checks the question together with your reason, without your name.

Chats with friends do not go through an AI; group chats only when Mia is active there.

No automated decisions: The AI analysis does not by itself lead to bans, restrictions or any other consequences for you. Bans and other measures are always decided by a person on our team. We do not make decisions based solely on automated processing that significantly affect you (Art. 22 GDPR).

Legal basis and objection: We base the analysis of round chats on our legitimate interest in a safe, respectful community, and Mia on our legitimate interest in a lively group chat (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can object at any time on grounds relating to your particular situation (Art. 21 GDPR); just write to us. We will then no longer process your data for these purposes unless compelling legitimate grounds prevail, such as protecting others from harassment.

Provider: AI requests go through the service OpenRouter (USA), which passes them on to a language model by DeepSeek. In our OpenRouter account, storing requests and using them for training are switched off, and we only let providers that do not store data handle the requests. The content is not used to train AI models.

How long we keep things

• Account and content: until you delete the account.
• Deleted accounts: 30 days in a recycle bin so an accidental deletion can be undone. Then the account is deleted for good. Records of purchases and balances as well as our moderation records are kept beyond that for as long as statutory retention obligations require or we need them as evidence. We do not carry IP addresses over into the recycle bin.
• AI analysis of round chats: the combined values, topics and description until your account is deleted; of the notes on individual rounds we keep only the ten most recent.
• Mia's notes about a group: limited to a short text; older notes drop out as new ones are added.
• Location during a search: a few minutes after the search ends.
• Location of a round (coordinates): 24 hours after the round is created; the round's city stays stored.
• Abuse characteristics (pseudonymised): 7 days after the last app start; for reported accounts until a decision is made, at most 30 days; for banned accounts for as long as the ban lasts, at most two years (network characteristics at most six months).
• Security log (IP address and time): 7 days.
• Preserved IP entries after a report: until a decision is made, at most 30 days; after a confirmed violation or a ban at most six months; during ongoing proceedings until they are concluded.
• Record of disclosures to authorities (who, when, which account, case reference): 3 years.
• Round chats: expire automatically. Histories of reported rounds: as long as we need them to handle the report.
• Leaderboards: until you delete the account or object to being listed.

Your rights

You can request access to your data at any time, have it corrected or erased, restrict processing, object to it, and receive your data in a portable format. You can delete your account directly in the app under Profile, Settings.

Objection (Art. 21 GDPR): Where we rely on our legitimate interest, for example for the AI analysis of round chats, Mia, the leaderboards and the automatic title, you can object at any time on grounds relating to your particular situation. An informal message is enough.

If you believe something is wrong, you can complain to a data protection authority — the one where you live is responsible.

Young people

socializeME is not for children. Only people aged at least 16 can create an account, which is why we ask for your date of birth. Some content is restricted to 18+. In rounds the app puts together at random, minors only play with other minors. If we learn an account belongs to someone too young, we delete it.

Your IP address is a bit like the house number of your internet connection. We remember it for only one week, so that we can clear up attacks and harassment. Longer only if your account has been reported or banned, and even then only as long as necessary.

Kids mode: So that children can play along on an adult's device, there is a kids mode. An adult switches it on on their own account or a second account and secures it with a PIN; it can only be left with that PIN. In kids mode there are only a few simple games (such as Battleship, Connect Four and Memory), no chat, no reports, no calls, no shop, no profile and no friends. Other players appear anonymously as “Player 1, 2 …” with animal figures. The app only brings children together with other children in kids mode, unless the adult also allows games with strangers. Other players see that a child is playing. The account only stores that the mode is on, whether strangers are allowed, and the PIN as a check value (hash).

Contact

Questions about privacy? Write to us — in the app under “Help”, or to the address in the legal notice. We answer.