Last updated & effective from: 28 October 2026 · what changed · previous versions
Applies to: dsnakes.com · games.dsnakes.com · social.dsnakes.com · news.dsnakes.com · search.dsnakes.com · kenionek.dsnakes.com · account.dsnakes.com · tools.dsnakes.com · tsb.dsnakes.com (TeamSpeak banners)
Previous versions (archived, no longer in effect): 9 August 2026 · 15 July 2026 · 14 July 2026 · all legal documents
The DSnakes Network is a hobby-turned-real community platform operated by an individual (referred to here as "Kenionek," "the operator," "we," or "DSnakes") based in Belgium. This single privacy policy is the canonical policy for the whole network and covers all of these sites:
All sites that use an account share one user account, one login, and one backend database. When you sign in on one site you are signed in across the network. The old community.dsnakes.com forum has been retired — it now redirects to social.dsnakes.com's Tutorials section, which this policy already covers.
Data controller: Kenionek / DSnakes (Belgium)
Contact: info@dsnakes.com
No guarantee this runs forever. This is an independent project funded out of pocket and, in part, by the small amount of advertising described in section 7a — not a funded company with guaranteed longevity. If it's ever no longer sustainable to keep running, a site (or the whole network) could be discontinued. See our Terms of Service for the fuller detail on this.
On games.dsnakes.com you can play as a guest. We assign a random guest name stored only in your browser's local storage; scores stay on your device and are not sent to our servers. No personal data is collected in guest mode.
social.dsnakes.com stores more, and more sensitive, data than the rest of the network because it is an interactive social app. Here is exactly what it holds:
| Data type | What it is | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Chat messages | 1:1 and group messages, including any media you attach. | Message text is encrypted at rest so it is protected if the database is ever leaked. This is not end-to-end encryption — the server holds the key and can read messages when required for moderation or abuse reports. |
| Friends & subscribers | Your friend requests, friendships, and who you subscribe to / who subscribes to you. | This "social graph" is used to build your feed and show friends' activity. |
| Posts & comments | Feed posts (text and images), likes, and comments/replies. | Visible according to your settings and the network's normal visibility rules. |
| Uploaded photos & videos | Images and videos you upload, including short-form and long-form videos and "Bubbles" (ephemeral location-tagged photo/video posts). | Self-hosted on our server. Bubbles automatically expire. Videos carry your own flags such as "made for kids" or "mature." |
| Uploaded music | Original music tracks you upload (title, artist name, audio file, cover art, duration). | Only original/self-hosted uploads are stored; commercial catalogue playback uses embedded third-party players instead. |
| Precise location | Latitude/longitude for the Hangouts (map events) and Bubbles (nearby posts) features. | This can be precise GPS coordinates. Location is only used when you opt into these map features. In Settings you can turn off accurate location and instead set a manual city-level location, or leave it off entirely. See section 9 on your rights. |
| Profile extras | Custom status, bio, birthday, interests, pronouns, external social links (e.g. Instagram, X), language, and per-field privacy settings. | Optional. Your privacy settings control who can see each field (public, subscribers, or friends). |
| Push notifications | If you enable browser/device push notifications, we store the push subscription (endpoint and keys) for each device you opt in on. | Used only to deliver notifications (new messages, friend requests, likes, etc.). You can disable it anytime. |
| Blocks & reports | Users you block, and reports you file for moderation. | Part of the safety/moderation system shared across games and social. |
| Voice/video calls | 1:1 and group calls, including screen sharing. | Calls connect directly between participants' devices (WebRTC) wherever possible; our TURN relay server only helps establish the connection when a direct one isn't possible, and does not record, store, or inspect call audio/video. |
| Feedback & bug reports | Free-form feedback you submit through the in-app "Send feedback" option, plus the page URL and browser it was sent from. | Used only to find and fix bugs / consider suggestions; reviewed by admins. |
A minor note for completeness: your chosen seasonal theme preference is stored only in your own browser's local storage and is not personal data.
news.dsnakes.com collects as little as possible. You can read everything without an account. What it stores, and only when stated:
| Data | When | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Reading preferences | Only if you're signed in and change a filter | Your chosen region, country and original-language filter, linked to your account so they follow you across devices. |
| Saved stories | Only if you're signed in and press "Save" | The ids of stories you saved (at most 500) and when. Signed-out readers' saved stories stay only in their own browser (local storage) and never reach us. |
| Read history | Only if you're signed in | Which stories you opened and when, so the site can show what you've read. You can delete it by deleting your account (section 10) or by asking us. |
| Anonymous view counts | Every story view | Used only for the "Trending / most read" list. We store one number per story per hour. To count a visitor only once per hour, the server keeps a salted, one-way hash of the IP address and story in memory for at most one hour; it is never written to disk or linked to an account, and the salt changes every time the server restarts. |
| Login check | When you're signed in elsewhere on the network | Your browser sends the network's shared login cookie to news.dsnakes.com; our server asks games.dsnakes.com (on the same server) whether it's valid and remembers the answer for up to 60 seconds. No login token is stored in your browser for this site. |
| Server logs | Every request | Like any web server, our web server and its security tooling may briefly log technical data (IP address, time, requested page, browser type) to keep the service secure and working. These logs are not used to profile you. |
News content itself (headlines, short descriptions, links and picture addresses) comes from the public RSS/Atom feeds of the outlets listed on the site. To write our summaries, our server may read the public article pages of those outlets; that article text is processed in memory only and is not stored or published by us. News content can mention people (for example politicians or public figures). We process it on the basis of legitimate interest (GDPR Art. 6.1.f) and freedom of expression and information (GDPR Art. 85); if you believe a story wrongly concerns you, contact us (section 12) and we'll look at it promptly.
account.dsnakes.com is the network's account-management hub — a single place to control the one account you use everywhere. From there you can:
| Purpose | Legal basis (GDPR) | Data used |
|---|---|---|
| Account creation & login | Contract (Art. 6.1.b) | Email, password hash, username/display name |
| Running the games, feed, chat & uploads you use | Contract (Art. 6.1.b) | Scores, posts, messages, media, friend/subscriber graph |
| Location-based map features (Hangouts/Bubbles) | Consent (Art. 6.1.a) | Precise or city-level location — only when you opt in |
| Leaderboards, achievements & profiles | Legitimate interest (Art. 6.1.f) | Display name, scores, achievement IDs |
| Security, 2FA, fraud & abuse prevention, moderation | Legitimate interest / legal obligation | Session data, IP, user-agent, security events, reports |
| Push notifications | Consent (Art. 6.1.a) | Push subscription endpoint & keys |
| Advertising | Consent (Art. 6.1.a) | Handled by Google AdSense once you accept our cookie banner — see section 7a |
| News personalisation (filters, saved stories, read history) | Contract (Art. 6.1.b) | Account id, chosen filters, saved story ids, read history — only when signed in |
| "Trending" view counts | Legitimate interest (Art. 6.1.f) | Hourly totals per story; a salted IP hash kept in memory for at most one hour |
| News aggregation, AI summaries & translation | Legitimate interest (Art. 6.1.f) and freedom of information (Art. 85) | Public news content from outlets' feeds and pages — no visitor data |
| Showing you that a policy changed | Legal obligation / legitimate interest | Which policy version you last acknowledged, linked to your account |
ds_sid for .dsnakes.com that scripts on the page can't read. Some sites also keep short-lived access/refresh tokens in your browser; news.dsnakes.com uses only the cookie.You can clear all locally-stored data at any time through your browser settings, or via the in-app settings on each site.
Your account credentials are processed by our own server and database; no third-party identity provider sees your DSnakes password.
Sites across the DSnakes Network show a small number of ads served by Google AdSense — kept to a deliberate minimum footprint (for example, social.dsnakes.com shows a single small ad at the bottom of its "More" page, and an occasional ad in the main feed, spaced a random 25–50 posts apart, never a wall of ads). We deliberately avoid Google's "Auto ads" feature, which would let Google decide ad placement across a site itself.
No online service can promise perfect security, but we take reasonable measures appropriate for a project of this size.
As an EEA resident you have the following rights. You can exercise the first four directly on account.dsnakes.com; for the rest, email us.
| Right | What it means | How |
|---|---|---|
| Access (Art. 15) | Get a copy of the data we hold about you | Export on account.dsnakes.com, or email us |
| Portability (Art. 20) | Receive your data in a machine-readable format | JSON export on account.dsnakes.com |
| Rectification (Art. 16) | Correct inaccurate data | Edit your profile/settings, or email us |
| Erasure (Art. 17) | Delete your account & personal data | Delete on account.dsnakes.com (see section 10), or email us |
| Restriction (Art. 18) | Limit how we process your data | Email info@dsnakes.com |
| Object (Art. 21) | Object to processing based on legitimate interest | Email info@dsnakes.com |
| Withdraw consent | Turn off location or push notifications at any time | In-app settings, or email us |
We aim to respond to all requests within 30 days, as required by GDPR.
The DSnakes Network uses age-based access tiers, based on the date of birth collected at registration (see section 2.1):
This tiered approach is the network's own access policy — it is informed by, but is not a precise legal citation of, the EU's approach to protecting minors' data under GDPR (Article 8 sets a default age of 16 for a child's own consent to data processing, with individual EU member states free to lower that to as low as 13). Rather than determine each visitor's exact country of residence and apply a different threshold per country, we apply one 16-and-over threshold across the whole network, for consistency and simplicity.
If you sign up with "Sign in with Google," which does not give us a date of birth, your account is created but treated as the most restricted tier (no commenting, no social.dsnakes.com) until you provide one in a short follow-up step. If that follow-up shows you're under 13, the account is deactivated at that point, consistent with the under-13 rule above.
A 13–15 year old's games.dsnakes.com account can optionally be linked to a parent or guardian's own DSnakes account for supervision. This is available, but is not currently required to keep using a 13-15 account — it does not lock a teen out of games.dsnakes.com if no guardian is linked.
How linking works: a guardian generates a one-time, single-use code from their own account (Profile → Settings → Guardian Linking on games.dsnakes.com), which expires after 24 hours, and gives that code to their teen directly. The teen enters the code from their own account to complete the link. Nobody can attach themselves as a "guardian" to an account without that code actually being handed to them by the teen (or the teen's real guardian) — a stranger cannot self-serve their way into this by guessing an email address or username.
What a linked guardian can see about the linked teen's account, on a dedicated guardian dashboard:
What a linked guardian can never see, under any circumstance: the content of any message, chat, post, or comment. Guardian linking exposes activity and safety signals only — never what was actually said or posted. (At the time of writing, a 13-15 account also has no friends/social-graph feature and cannot access social.dsnakes.com at all, so there is currently nothing along those lines to show a guardian either — this may change if that changes.)
The teen can see who is linked to their account and unlink at any time, from the same Guardian Linking section of their own account settings — this is never a hidden or covert feature. A guardian can also unlink at any time. More than one guardian can be linked to the same teen account (e.g. both parents).
If you believe a child under 13 has an account, or that a 13–15 year old's account is missing the restrictions described above, contact info@dsnakes.com and we will investigate and act promptly, including removing the account if appropriate.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can lodge a complaint with a data protection authority:
If a personal data breach happens that is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will notify the Belgian Data Protection Authority within 72 hours of becoming aware of it where the GDPR requires this, and notify affected users without undue delay where the risk is high, as required by GDPR Articles 33 and 34. We take reasonable technical and organisational measures for a project of this size (section 8), but no service connected to the internet can guarantee absolute security.
We may update this policy, for example when we add a site or feature or when the law changes. The date at the top shows when the current version took effect, the revision history above explains what changed, and every earlier version stays available under previous versions.
When we make a significant change, signed-in users see a notice on every DSnakes site the next time they visit, with links to the updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and we record that you saw it. Where the law requires your consent for a change, we will ask for it rather than assume it. If you don't agree with a change, you can stop using the service and delete your account at any time on account.dsnakes.com.
See also our Terms of Service. Changes to this policy are explained in section 14.
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