Privacy Policy

Who we are

WarSquads (warsquads.com) is a fan project. It isn't affiliated with or endorsed by BULKHEAD or Team17. For anything about your data, email [email protected].

What we collect

• Account details: your email address and password (stored only as a one-way hash), or the Discord or Steam account you sign in with. You don't need an email address if you use Discord or Steam.
• Profile: your display name, bio, regions, timezone, languages, playstyles, intensity preference, whether you have a mic, when you usually play, what you're looking for (like a clan), and your WARDOGS and class levels (with the season you entered them in). Only the name is required.
• Linked accounts: your Discord ID and username; your Steam ID and name; and, from Steam, whether you own WARDOGS and your playtime (only readable when your game details are public). If you share your game with your squad, we ask Steam which WARDOGS lobby you're in, and give the squad's other members a button to join it for up to 3 hours, or until you leave the squad or it closes. Your Steam ID isn't shown on the page, but the button hands it to their Steam app, which needs it to find your lobby. We don't collect or show your Discord or Steam picture.
• What you post and do: squads and clans you create or join, where your squad meets in game (shown only to its members), chat messages (including direct messages), ratings you give, reports you file, players you block, and your settings (privacy, pop-ups and sounds, and your theme).
• Activity and devices: when you were last online or using the site; for each device you're signed in on, its IP address, browser, roughly where it was last used (the city, region and country Cloudflare places the IP address in, which only you and our staff see) and when; and logs of requests to the site, with the IP address, browser and page asked for. Our application's own logs leave out sign-in codes, search terms and invite codes; the load balancer's request logs include the full page address.

Cookies

• ws_session keeps you signed in. It's essential, and lasts until you sign out, or up to 30 days after you last use the site.
• ws_signed_in remembers that this browser is signed in, so the home page can show your own page straight away. It holds nothing about you, and lasts up to 30 days.
• ws_oauth_state lasts a few minutes while you sign in with Discord or Steam, to stop forged sign-ins.
• ws_pending_signin lasts up to 10 minutes after you first sign in with a Discord or Steam account we don't know yet, while you choose whether to create an account or connect it to the one you have.
• ws_theme remembers the theme this browser shows (Settings → Appearance), so pages open in it straight away. It holds nothing else, and lasts a year.

There are no advertising or tracking cookies, and nothing follows you across other sites. Cloudflare, which protects the site, may set its own security cookies.

How we use it

• To run WarSquads: accounts, profiles, squads, clans, chat and notifications. When a host sets a minimum level for a squad spot, your class levels decide whether you can take it.
• To keep it safe: verifying WARDOGS ownership (each Steam account can back one WarSquads account), rate limits, spam and scam-link filters (no links in names, bios or descriptions, Discord invites checked with Discord, and chat links that ask before they open), handling reports, and enforcing bans. A ban records the banned account's Steam and Discord IDs and a one-way hash of its email address, so it can't simply sign up again. A Steam account that's disconnected, or whose WarSquads account is deleted, can't back another account for 30 days, so we keep its Steam ID for those 30 days.
• To email you: address verification, password resets, and notices about changes to your account.

We don't sell your data, use it for advertising, or send marketing emails. If you're in the EU or UK, our legal bases are providing the service you signed up for, our legitimate interests in keeping it safe and fair, and legal obligations where they apply.

What other players see

• Your profile: name, bio, preferences (whether you have a mic among them), when you usually play, what you're looking for, WARDOGS and class levels, whether you own WARDOGS and your playtime, public clans and rating totals (never who rated you). Your Steam name and profile link show only if you choose.
• Your Discord username, if you connect Discord: only to players in the same squad or clan as you, and you can turn that off (Settings → Account). It never shows on your public profile.
• Squads and public clans are visible to everyone; private clans and members-only squads only to their members.
• Your online status and last-seen time, to the people your privacy setting allows. Who can message you is your choice too (Settings → Account → Privacy).
• Your squad stats: how many squads you've played in and hosted, and the class you've joined as most. You can hide them (Settings → Profile).
• If you're on the WarSquads staff, your title shows beside your name only if you choose.
• Your email address is never shown to other players.

Who we share it with

• Services that run the site for us: Amazon Web Services (hosting, database and email delivery) and Cloudflare (network security and delivery). They handle data only on our behalf.
• Emails you send to [email protected] pass through Cloudflare, which forwards them to the inbox we read them in, at Google (Gmail).
• Discord and Steam, when you choose to sign in with or connect them (they learn you used them to sign in). Discord also gets the invite codes squad hosts and clans add, as we ask it whether each leads to a server.
• Google Safe Browsing, if we switch on link checking: links posted in chat go to Google, to check them against its lists of unsafe sites. We keep its answer for an hour, filed under a one-way hash of the link.
• Authorities, where the law requires it or to protect someone's safety.

No one else: no data brokers and no advertisers.

How long we keep it

• Your account and profile: until you delete your account.
• Chats: squad chats are deleted 7 days after the squad closes, and clan chats 7 days after the clan is disbanded. Direct messages stay until their sender deletes them. Messages you delete are blanked straight away.
• Signed-in devices: until you sign out, or up to 30 days after you last use the site on them.
• Notifications: 90 days.
• Server and request logs: 30 days. Logs of network connections are kept 90 days, but only ever see Cloudflare's addresses, not yours. Database backups: 7 days.
• Reports, with their copy of what was reported: until 6 months after a moderator deals with them. The IDs and email hash a ban records: as long as the ban. The moderators' log of actions taken is kept to deal with repeat abuse.

Your choices and rights

• Download your data at any time: Settings → Account → Your data.
• Change your profile, privacy settings and linked accounts yourself.
• Delete your account in the same place. That erases your email, password, profile, linked accounts, ratings and blocks; messages you sent stay in their chats as from “Deleted player”. Backups clear within 7 days.
• Or ask us, at [email protected], to access, correct or erase your data, or object to how we use it. We'll answer within a month.
• If you're in the EU or UK, you can also complain to your data protection authority.

Children

WarSquads is for people 13 and older. In the EU and UK, players under 16 need a parent's or guardian's consent where their country's law requires it. If we learn an account belongs to someone under 13, we'll delete it.

Where your data is stored

On servers in the United States (Amazon Web Services). If you're outside the US, your data is transferred there, and our providers protect those transfers with the EU's Standard Contractual Clauses.

Security

Connections are encrypted, passwords are hashed with Argon2id, session tokens are stored only as hashes, and the database isn't reachable from the internet. No system is perfect, though: if you think someone else used your account, change your password, use “Sign out everywhere” in your account settings, and tell us.

Changes

When this policy changes we'll update the date at the top, and for significant changes we'll tell you on the site or by email.

Contact

[email protected]