Privacy

Last updated 30 October 2026. This policy describes what the software actually does today; it is pending review by legal counsel before commercial use.

What we store

• Account: email address, a hashed password, and login timestamps. Your email is never shown publicly.
• Profile: everything you enter on your character sheet. You control which fields are hidden from public view in settings.
• Activity: applications, saved guilds, posts, comments, event attendance, application answers and messages, and limited first-party operational records such as guild page views, Discord-link clicks, and email delivery and job history. Page ratings are stored as anonymous daily counts by page and score. Application conversations are visible only to the applicant and current guild members with recruitment permissions; reported conversations may be reviewed by moderators and those accesses are logged. These first-party counts are stored in our own database, use no third-party trackers, no advertising identifiers and no cookies, and never include application answers, message bodies or email addresses. To count guild-page visitors we store a hash of your IP address and browser combined with a secret that changes every day; it cannot be reversed and cannot link your visits across days.
• Technical: IP address and browser string on sessions and rate-limit counters, used only for security and abuse prevention. Server error logs contain request ids and account ids, never passwords or message content.

Who can see what

Feedback (including bug reports) is private to site administrators and moderators. We store the message you submit, an optional email, the page path you came from without query parameters (anything that looks like a token in the path is removed), browser and screen size, and technical error and release references. Feedback submitted while signed in is linked to your account. We use the email only to reply to you about that feedback, never for other messages; if you leave it empty, we won’t contact you about it. We send a notification containing your feedback, and your email if you gave one, to our designated feedback contact through our email provider. We do not collect other form contents with feedback. Separate page-rating taps are stored as anonymous daily counts by page and score, without your text or email.

Public profiles and guild pages are visible to everyone, including search engines, unless you set your profile visibility to Hidden, set your recruitment status to Not looking, or hide specific fields in settings. Your email address is never shown to other users. Applications are visible only to you and to the officers of the guild you applied to. Recruiter notes are private to the guild that wrote them and are never shown to the player.

Application conversations are private to the applicant and the current recruiting team. Newly authorized recruiters can read the history; members who lose recruitment permissions lose access. Sharing a connected Discord account or BattleTag is optional and requires an explicit choice to share with the applicant and recruiting team. Earlier contact-sharing consent remains limited to the original participants unless you choose to share with the team.

In an open application's chat, the applicant and the guild's recruiting team can see whether each other has Guilds Forever open right now (a green dot). It shows online or not, never when you were last seen, and stops once the application is closed.

Voice chats on an application run in your browser and pass only through a relay (Cloudflare), so the people in the call never see your network address. Nothing is recorded: we keep who is in the call while it runs, and afterwards only a line in the application chat saying how long you talked.

Battle.net

Connecting Battle.net is optional. If you connect it we store your Battle.net account id and BattleTag to show a “Battle.net verified” badge next to your name. Your BattleTag is shown only to members of your guild, and in an application conversation only when you explicitly choose to share it with that conversation’s audience. We read no characters or game data unless you separately enable verified WoW experience, and we never post on your behalf. Disconnecting removes the link and the tag.

Discord

Connecting Discord is optional. If you connect it we store your Discord ID and username to verify your account and, if you choose, to send you notifications. We never post on your behalf.

Your rights

You can delete your account at any time from Settings › Account. Deletion removes your profile, applications, saved guilds and notifications, removes your posts and comments from public view, and replaces your email address with an anonymous placeholder. Audit and security records referencing your account id may be kept for up to 90 days. To request a copy of your data, email support@guildsforever.com.

Cookies and Google Analytics

The site uses Google Analytics 4 to count visits and see which parts of Guilds Forever people use. It sets cookies and records pages, browser details and approximate location; we use this to improve the site, with advertising features disabled. We do not send Google your email, messages or application answers. In the EEA, UK and Switzerland, or when your location is unknown, it loads only after you accept optional cookies. Elsewhere it loads automatically unless you reject it. A browser sending Global Privacy Control keeps it off. We determine the country using a local IP database without saving your IP for that lookup or sending it to another service. You can reject it or withdraw your choice below; withdrawal stops collection and removes Google Analytics cookies from this browser. You can also block it with browser tracking protection or Google’s opt-out add-on. How Google uses this data.

Country lookup data: IP Geolocation by DB-IP, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

We also keep our own cookie-free guild-view and Discord-link click records, anonymous daily page-rating counts, and operational email and job history; some operational records are linked to your account. Separate cookies keep you signed in and remember referrals and reminders.

Emails

We send three kinds of email, through our email provider (Resend):

• Account email, such as password resets, email confirmation and updates on your applications and messages. These are part of using the site and always arrive.
• Weekly guild matches, only if you turn them on (when you create your profile, on your dashboard, on the Guild matches page or in Settings). Once a week, and only in weeks with something new, we email you guilds that fit the profile you filled in, which guilds viewed or saved your profile, and how your applications stand. They stop when you join a guild.
• Announcements, occasionally, such as a note when guilds that fit you start recruiting.

Every weekly matches email and every announcement has a link to stop it, and your email app’s own unsubscribe button works too. You can change both in Settings › Emails. Turning announcements off also stops weekly matches. We record when and where you turned them on or off. To see which links in our emails get used, links point through our own site first; nothing about this goes to Google or any advertiser, and we don’t track whether you open an email.

Independence

Guilds Forever is an independent community project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment.