Privacy policy
Privacy Policy
This notice sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your sensitive information and how we will deal with it. For the purposes of the Data Protection Act (‘the DPA’) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (‘the GDPR’), sensitive information includes what is defined as your ‘personal data’.
By visiting www.mergegames.com (our ‘Website’) you accept and consent to the practices described in this Privacy Notice including the processing of your personal data under this lawful basis.
In this Privacy Notice, we seek to abide by the letter and spirit of the guidelines laid out by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office in the document ‘Privacy Notices, Transparency and Control’.
About us
We are Merge Games Ltd. We are a company registered in England and Wales with Company number 7113176 and our registered office is at The School House, Alderley Rd, Chelford, Macclesfield SK11 9AP.
For the purposes of the DPA and in-line with the GDPR, Merge Games is the Data Controller.
If you have any concerns about the way we use your information or any questions about this Privacy Notice, please let us know. We can be contacted via email at [email protected], or you can write to us at the address above.
What we do with your information
We will use your information to:
Send you updates about our games and other information we feel may be of interest to you.
Improve our Website, our games and our overall user experience.
Deliver information about the services we provide by other means.
We compile statistics about user trends on our Website, which are used by third-party organisations to understand how users interact with businesses, brands and one another online and to advise about these things. These statistics are drawn from a dataset which does not contain any information from which you can be identified.
If you are an existing user of our Website prior to the date of this Notice then any communication will be delivered to you on the legal basis of legitimate interests.
Information we collect from you
We will collect and process the following information about you:
Information you give us – this is information about you that you give us by filling in forms on our Website or by corresponding with us by phone, email or otherwise. We only request from you the minimum data required for you to use our service.
Email Subscription – The only information we require from you to sign up to our mailing list is your first name, last name and email address.
Contact Form – In order for us to respond to you efficiently we store your name, email address and message. We retain this data in our website database for audit trail and historical evidence purposes.
Information we collect about you – Whenever you visit our Website we will automatically collect the following information:
Technical information – including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform;
Information about your visit – this includes the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL), clickstream to, through and from our Website (including date and time), pages you have visited, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain page and page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs).
Information we receive from other sources – This is information we receive about you if you use any of the other websites we operate or the other services we provide. In this case we will have informed you when we collected that data if we intend to share those data internally and combine it with data collected on this Website. We will also have told you for what purpose we will share and combine your data. We are working closely with third parties (including, for example, business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers, credit reference agencies). We will notify you when we receive information about you from them and the purposes for which we intend to use that information.
Where we hold and what we do with your information
The information and content held on our Website is deployed geographically to maximize user experience. We will never share your user information with third parties for promotional purposes.
Our newsletter and email marketing are powered by MailChimp. If you want to learn more about MailChimp and how they handle your personal data, then please view their website here.
We may also disclose your information to third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this Privacy Notice.
Interaction with Social Networks of Platforms
Our games may allow you to interact with a third party social network or platform, which will provide information about you to us. These applications or websites are created and maintained by a third party which is not a part of, or controlled by Merge Games. You should ensure that you read their terms of service and privacy policies to understand how they treat your data and what data they might share with us. Links to several third-party social network privacy policies can be found below within our Cookies section.
You understand that where you allow our games to interact with any third party social network or platform, we may share data about you with your contacts (and vice versa) in order that you may enjoy playing socially (the “Social Data”). This Social Data includes your name, your social media profile picture and your scores and/or progress in our games.
You can make changes to what data a third-party social network or platform shares with us, or stop our games interacting with that social network or platform by adjusting your settings with that third-party provider, however, you may find you are not able to enjoy all of the same features of our games.
What we do to ensure the security of your personal information
We take the security of your personal data very seriously. Our approach to information security is constantly evolving and continually reviewed.
We have adopted industry best practices from both technological and business process perspectives in order to make the security of your data a key part of the way we do business.
We have policies and practices in place that not only ensure our compliance under the DPA but also the GDPR, including training and adequate procedures put in place for any staff that handle or have access to sensitive information.
Your rights regarding your personal information
We may contact you via email with updates about the services that we offer or any changes that we have made to our Website.
You can opt in or out at any time by clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link in our emails.
Our Website may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates (including, but not limited to, websites on which our service may be advertised). If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites and any services that may be accessible through them have their own privacy policies and that we are not responsible or liable for these policies or for any personal data that may be collected through these websites or services, such as contact and location data. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites or use these services.
Your Rights
You have the right to find out about what information we hold about you. You can exercise that right by contacting us and we will send you any request for information in a suitable electronic form within 30 working days. To make a request for information please contact [email protected] and a member of our team will be in touch.
If your personal data is incorrect then you have the right to rectify this information and ensure that it is accurate and up to date. If your data is incorrect then please contact us at the email address above and a member of the team will rectify this on your behalf.
You have the right ‘to be forgotten’ and to have your personally identifiable information permanently deleted from our systems. Again, if you would like to exercise this right then please contact us at [email protected]
There will be no charge made for reasonable electronic access to your information, your right to rectification or for your right to be forgotten from our systems.
How long we hold your information for
At Merge Games we have procedures in place to regularly review every 12 months what personal data we hold. If you have not interacted with us or accessed our services during this or the subsequent period, then we will delete your personal data from our systems but will send you an email first informing you of our intention to do so. Of course, you have the right to forgotten at any point and can find out more about this in the ‘Access to Information’ section above.
Changes to this Privacy Notice
Any changes we may make to our Privacy Notice in the future will be posted on this page. The new terms may be displayed on-screen and you will be required to read and accept them to continue your use of our services.
Our Cookie Policy
If you’d like to manage you use of cookies or completely turn off cookies then you can find out how to do so by using the link here. Please note that if you do limit or block cookie use on our website, the functionality of both the website and our services will be affected.
Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and allows us to improve our site. By continuing to browse the website, you agree and consent to our use of cookies.
A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive.
As part of our overall approach to privacy and transparency, this section describes what cookies are in the context of our web and mobile interfaces, and what their use means to you. At the end, we’ve included some links to help you research cookies and their impact, and how you can use your web browser to control the way it manages cookies.
We use the following types of cookies:
Strictly necessary cookies –these are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-payment system.
Analytical/performance cookies – these allow us to recognize and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
Functionality cookies –these are used to recognize you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalize our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
Targeting cookies –these cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose, but these cookies will contain no information capable of identifying you personally to us.
You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use below:
Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics to understand general trends about our content and traffic sources; for example, where users come from, which pages are most popular, which sites provide most traffic, how our marketing efforts impact the number of visits we receive.
Google’s statement about privacy can be found here.
Twitter’s privacy policy states they use cookies “to collect additional website usage data and to improve our Services” – You can read the policy in full here.
Facebook’s statement about privacy relating their Connect feature is here and also here. We also use a ‘Facebook Pixel’ to measure the performance of our Facebook adverts and visitors gained through advertising on the Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and Audience Network platforms.
Meta Quest
Meta Quest User ID is read by the application to manage achievement unlocks. No personal user data is collected or stored.
More information about cookies
Still don’t know what cookies are? Then why not follow the link conveniently located here which provides more information about what they are and how they work.
Contact the Information Commissioner if there is a problem
If you consider we have not addressed your problem, you can contact the UK Information Commissioner’s Office for assistance. Further information can be found here.