Privacy Policy

The short version

chessdesk is a chess workspace and a set of free chess tools. The free tools (game review, analysis board, best-move finder) run the engine in your browser. We do not sell your data, we do not run advertising, and we store as little as possible. You can use every free tool without an account.

The free tools

The public tools are designed to keep your data on your device. The chess engine that powers game review, the analysis board, and the best-move finder runs locally in your browser; the positions you analyze are not sent to us. When you fetch games by username, those games are requested directly from the public Chess.com and Lichess APIs and analyzed on the fly; we do not store them on our servers. When you upload a screenshot to the best-move finder, the image is sent only to our position recognition service so it can read the board, used to return the detected position, and not retained afterwards.

Accounts

You can create an account to save your work. When you do, we store:

• Account data: your email address and display name, used to sign you in and to contact you about your account, plus basic account metadata such as when you signed up.
• Your password, stored only as a salted hash. We never store or have access to your plain-text password.
• Training activity: puzzles you attempt and your puzzle rating; Woodpecker sets, cycles, and results; studies, repertoires, and games you save; coaching relationships (who your coach or students are) and lesson activity.
• Billing data: if you subscribe, your subscription status and billing period. Payment card details are handled directly by Stripe and are never stored on our servers.
• If you connect a Lichess account through the optional OAuth import, the access token needed to fetch your games on your behalf. You can disconnect Lichess at any time from your settings, which removes the stored token.

Analytics and error reporting

We use privacy-friendly product analytics (Umami and PostHog) to understand aggregate usage, such as which tools are used and how features perform. These are configured to collect usage data in aggregate rather than to build advertising profiles, and we do not sell or share this information. We also use Sentry to capture technical errors and crashes so we can fix them; error reports can include diagnostic details such as the page, browser, and error message. We do not use any of these services to sell or rent personal information.

Services we use

We may change providers to improve or secure the service. Our own application and database run on self-hosted infrastructure.

Cookies

We use cookies and similar storage that are necessary to operate the service, primarily to keep you signed in to your account and to remember basic preferences. Our analytics (PostHog, Umami) are privacy-friendly and EU-hosted. During checkout, Stripe sets cookies necessary to process the payment and prevent fraud. Cookie-consent requirements differ from one jurisdiction to another, so what you are shown (for example, a consent banner) may depend on where you are located.

Data retention and deletion

We keep account data for as long as your account is active. The free tools are built to avoid retention: fetched games and uploaded screenshots are processed and not stored. If you have an account, you can ask us to delete it and the studies, saved games, and other data associated with it by emailing us at the address below; we will action the request and confirm once it is done.

Your choices

You can use every free tool without an account and without signing in. If you have an account, you can edit or remove your saved studies and games, disconnect Lichess, or request full deletion of your account by contacting us.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the service evolves. When we make material changes, we will update the date at the top of this page.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or want your data deleted? Email [email protected].