Privacy

Who this is

Mafi is made and operated by Bitesites LLC, a company registered in the United States. Bitesites LLC decides what is collected and why, which makes it the data controller for everything on this page. Questions about any of it go to support@bitesites.org, which is also the address on the contact page.

What we collect

Everything in this list is either something you typed or something the game cannot run without.

• An account identifier. A random id issued by Firebase Authentication when you first open the app. If you play as a guest, that id is all there is — no email, no password, no name attached to you anywhere.
• An email address, only if you make an account. Adding one is optional and exists so your games follow you to another device. It is used to sign you in and for nothing else.
• A display name. Whatever you type. It is shown to everyone in your game, it appears in the story the Narrator tells, and it does not have to be your real one.
• What you send in a game. Chat messages in Online rooms, the fixed quick-chat bubbles, votes, and the record of what happened — who was in the room, what phase it was, who left the game and how.
• Interests, only if you switch them on. The tags you can give the Narrator to build a scene from. This is off by default and stays off until you turn it on; nothing reads them while it is off.
• A push token per device, only if notifications are on. It identifies a device, not a person, and turning notifications off deletes it.
• Preferences. Sound, haptics, reduced motion, and your language, so the app behaves the same next time.
• How the app is used, unless you turn it off. Google Analytics for Firebase counts things like which screens are opened and how many games are started and finished. It is tied to your account id and to the app installed on your device. It is never sent your name, your chat, your interests, or your role. Turn it off under Account → Help improve Mafi, which applies to the device you turn it off on.

What we do not collect

• No advertising, and no advertising SDK.There are no ads in this version. The usage counting described above is our own, and it is deliberately built without any advertising identifier — the iPhone app ships a build of the analytics library that has no access to Apple’s advertising ID at all, and the Android app has ad identifiers switched off. Nothing in Mafi tracks you across other apps or websites, and nothing it collects is sold, shared, or used to target advertising.
• No crash reports or diagnostics. Mafi ships neither Crashlytics nor Performance Monitoring. If the app stops working we find out because somebody tells us, not because a report was sent from your phone.
• No location, contacts, photos, or calendar. The app never asks for any of them.
• No audio. Push-to-talk voice chat is switched off in this release. The app does not record, transmit, or store anything from your microphone.
• No payments. There is nothing to buy, so there is no payment information to hold.

Why we are allowed to hold it

If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area, the law wants us to say which legal basis covers each thing above, so here it is in the same order.

• To give you the game you asked for. Your account identifier, your display name, your email if you added one, what you send in a game, and your preferences. Without these there is no account and no game, so the basis is the contract between you and us.
• Because you switched it on. Your interests and your push tokens. Both are off until you turn them on, the basis is your consent, and turning them back off withdraws it — which you can do at any time without giving a reason and without affecting anything we did while it was on.
• To keep the game usable. Reports, blocks, and the moderation records behind them. The basis is our legitimate interest in a game strangers can play safely, which we think plainly outweighs the interest of somebody in not having their abuse written down.
• To find out what is broken. The usage counting. The basis is our legitimate interest in knowing which screens are opened and which games are finished. The switch under Account → Help improve Mafi is how you object to it, and it takes effect on that device immediately.

Who else sees it

Four companies may process some of this on our behalf. We give each only what its part of the service needs.

• Google (Firebase). Sign-in, the database, the server, file storage, notification delivery, and the usage counting described above. Everything above is stored on Google Cloud infrastructure.
• Apple. If you choose Sign in with Apple, Apple authenticates your Apple Account and may give Mafi your name and email address, or an Apple private-relay address if you choose to hide your email. Mafi receives no Apple Account password.
• Anthropic.When a room has the AI Narrator switched on, we send it the facts of the night it is about to describe: the day number, the display names of who left the game and who is still in it, and any interest tags whose owners opted in. It is never told anyone’s role, and it is never sent an email address or an account id.
• ElevenLabs. The finished paragraph — which contains display names — is sent to be read aloud. The audio is stored so the same paragraph is never rendered twice.

We do not sell anything to anybody, and we do not share any of it for advertising.

Where it is processed

Bitesites LLCis in the United States, and so is the service. Mafi’s database, its server, and its file storage run on Google Cloud in Google’s us-central1 region in Iowa, and the four companies above process what they are given in the United States. Wherever you play from, that is where your data is going.

If you are in the UK or the EEA, that is an international transfer. Each of those providers is engaged under data-processing terms that carry a lawful transfer mechanism — in practice the UK and European Commission Standard Contractual Clauses, and, where the provider is certified to it, the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. We do not move your data outside those arrangements, and we do not have a separate copy anywhere else.

Who can see your messages

The people in your game, and us. Chat and the story are visible to the players in that room, which is the point of a game about talking to each other — so treat a room as a public place and do not put anything in it you would mind a stranger reading.

If somebody reports a message, we read that message and the ones around it in order to act on the report. That is the only routine reason anybody at Bitesites LLCreads a game’s chat.

How long it is kept

Your profile and preferences stay until you delete them. Games, and the chat inside them, are kept as part of the record of the game that was played. Usage counting is kept by Google Analytics for two months and then deleted, and turning it off under Account → Help improve Mafi stops any more of it being collected from that device.

You can delete your account from inside Mafi, on any device: open your account screen and choose “Delete my account”. It is immediate and it cannot be undone. We delete the account itself, the profile, the interests, the stats, your block list, and every push token. We detach your name from messages you sent — the messages stay, because a game’s record is not one player’s to erase — and seats in games still being played are kept, with the name off, so the rest of the table can finish. Reports filed about a message are kept, because deleting them would make the safety record deletable by whoever caused it.

If you cannot reach the app — you have uninstalled it, or lost the guest session — email support@bitesites.org from the address on the account and we will do it for you.

Your rights over your data

Everyone gets these. If you are in the UK or the EEA they are rights in law, under the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR respectively; if you are somewhere else we will do the same things anyway, because arguing about jurisdiction is a worse use of everyone’s time than answering the email.

• See what we hold. Ask and we will send you a copy of your profile, your preferences, your stats, and the messages you sent, along with what is on this page.
• Correct it. Your display name, email, interests and preferences are all editable in the app, which is the fastest version of this right. Ask us if something is wrong that you cannot reach.
• Delete it. Delete your account from inside the app on any device. What survives, and why, is described above and on that page — chat bodies and in-play seats stay with your name taken off them, and reports about you are kept.
• Take it elsewhere. The copy we send is in a structured, machine-readable format, and we will send it straight to another service if that is technically possible.
• Object, or ask us to pause. You can object to the usage counting with the switch in the app, and you can object to anything else we do on the basis of legitimate interests by writing to us. You can also ask us to restrict processing while a dispute about accuracy or grounds is being sorted out.
• Withdraw consent. Turn interests or notifications off. That is the withdrawal; nothing else is required, and it does not make what happened before unlawful.
• Not be subject to automated decisions. There are none. Nothing here profiles you or decides anything about you automatically — the Narrator writes prose about a game and does not make decisions about people.

Use support@bitesites.org for any of them. We answer within one month, which is the deadline the GDPR sets, and we will tell you if a request is genuinely complex enough to need longer. We do not charge for this. We may need to establish that the account is yours before we act, which for a guest account can be genuinely hard — that is a consequence of collecting almost nothing about you, and we would rather have that problem than the other one.

If we get it wrong, complain about us.In the UK, to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk. In the EEA, to the supervisory authority where you live, work, or where you think the problem happened. You do not have to talk to us first, though we would rather you did — most of this is fixable by reply.

Children

Mafi is for players 13 and older and is not directed to children under 13. It is not in the Kids Category and we do not knowingly collect anything from a child under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, email us and we will delete it.

Changes

If this page changes in a way that affects what we collect or who sees it, the date at the top changes with it, and a material change is announced in the app before it takes effect.