Privacy Policy

Yalla Bola · version 2026-09-terms-v5 · last updated 6 September 2026

You can use Yalla Bola without an account, and then it collects nothing at all. No sign-in, no analytics, no advertising, nothing sent anywhere. Everything you enter stays on your phone. That mode is permanent and it is not a trial.

An account adds a name, an email address and, if you want one, a photograph. It is what lets you back your games up, share them, join bolas with people you have not met, and carry a reputation between them.

Three things are visible to other people, and it is worth knowing which. Your first name, your photo and your rating are shown to signed-in people looking at a bola you have joined. Your profile photo sits in a public bucket, so anyone holding its address can load it. And anyone you send a game link to can read that game's score sheet, including the names on it, without an account.

Who is responsible

Yalla Bola is published by Amr Khalifa. Questions about this policy, or about the data held about you, go to privacy@yallabola.app. You will get an answer within 30 days.

Using the app without an account

To keep score, the app saves the following in a private database on your phone:

• The player names you type in
• Your games — the calls, the tricks won, the trumps, the contracts and the resulting scores, for Estimation, Tarneeb and Trix alike
• Your rule settings and app preferences

None of it is transmitted, backed up to us, or seen by anyone else. There is nothing on a server to ask about, because nothing was sent to one.

What an account holds

An account is optional. If you create one, this is what is stored on our servers.

• Email address — to identify your account and let you sign back in or reset a password. You type it, or Google supplies it.
• Display name — shown to other people. Only your first name is shown on a bola card.
• Profile photograph, if you add one — see Photographs below. A generated pattern is used instead if you add none.
• Language preference — to show the app in the language you chose.
• Consent record — which version of these documents you accepted, when, that you confirmed you are 16 or over, and whether you asked for product emails.
• Password — stored only as a cryptographic hash. Nobody, including us, can read it back.
• Notification setting, and a device token for each phone you have signed in on — see Notifications.

Photographs

You may add a profile photograph. You choose it yourself, either by taking one with your camera or by picking one from your library; the app asks your phone for permission at that moment and never opens either on its own. There is no other camera or photo access anywhere in the app.

The photo is stored in a public bucket. That means it is served without a sign-in check, so anybody who has its web address can load it — the same way a photo on a public web page works. This is what makes bola cards load quickly for everyone at a table. It also means a photo you have uploaded should be one you are content for people to see.

Photos are limited to 2 MB and to JPEG, PNG or WebP. Replacing your photo replaces the file. Deleting your account deletes it.

If somebody reports a photo, a moderator can hide it and remove it. See Reports and moderation.

Notifications

If you allow notifications, your phone gives the app a device token — an identifier for that installation, not for you as a person — and we store it so we can send you a message about a bola you are part of: a seat request, an approval, a result to confirm. Notifications are delivered by Google Firebase Cloud Messaging, which necessarily sees the token and the message.

Turn notifications off in your phone's settings, or in the app, and the token stops being used. Deleting your account deletes every token held for you.

The token is not an advertising identifier, and it is never used to build a profile of you.

Crash reports

When the app crashes we would like to know why, and a message saying “it closed itself” is not enough to fix anything. So, if you have an account, a crash sends: the error, where in the code it happened, the kind of phone and the version of the app, and your account identifier so a crash you tell us about can be found among the others.

It never sends your games, the names you typed, your photograph, or anything you wrote. It is a stack trace, not a recording.

Signed out, nothing is sent at all. Not a crash, not the kind of phone, nothing — which is what keeps the first sentence of this policy true. The switch below only has an effect once there is an account.

Turn it off in Settings → Diagnostics → Send crash reports. Reports are handled by Google Firebase Crashlytics on our behalf and are kept for 90 days.

A record of what accounts do

When an account does something on our servers — puts up a bola, takes a seat, joins a group, confirms a result, files a report — we keep a line saying what happened and when. Not what you typed, not your games: the action, the time, and which bola it was about.

It exists for three reasons and no others: so a moderator deciding about a report can see what actually happened rather than guessing, so we can tell whether something is broken, and so we can answer questions like how many people sign up and never finish a bola without sending anything to an analytics company.

Kept for 180 days, then deleted. Long enough to see whether people come back after a few months; short enough that it never becomes a years-deep record of somebody's Thursday evenings. Deleting your account deletes all of it at once.

Nothing about this is collected without an account. Using the app as a guest puts nothing on our servers, so there is nothing to record.

Decisions a moderator makes — taking a photograph down, suspending an account — are kept separately and for longer, because they are a record of what we did and somebody has to be able to check it. Those keep the decision without keeping the name of the person it was about, once that account is gone.

Cloud backup, if you turn it on

Backup is off by default. Nothing about your games leaves the phone until you switch it on in Account, and switching it off again stops any further copies being sent.

With it on, we store your games — the players, the calls, the tricks won, the trumps and the rules each game was played under — along with your player list and your rule presets. Scores themselves are not stored; they are worked out from those inputs, which is why fixing a rule repairs old games rather than rewriting them.

This exists for one reason: so that losing your phone does not lose your history. It is not analysed, not profiled, and not shared.

Sharing a bola

You can share a bola as a link or as a picture.

A link is a random token that lets whoever holds it read that one score sheet — including the player names on it — without an account. Anyone you forward it to can do the same. A link can also carry an invitation to claim a seat, which is how somebody says “that column is me”. You can revoke a link you have issued.

A picture is a screenshot of the result that goes to your phone's own share sheet when you tap the button. What happens to it next is handled by whichever app you send it to, under that app's privacy policy. We keep no copy of it.

Public bolas, groups and what other people see

If you host or join a public bola, or a bola inside a group, the following is held and shown:

• The bola — its title, any note, the district, the date and time, the language, the level and the game being played.
• The exact address, if the host gives one. This is not public: only the host and people whose seats are confirmed can read it, and only through a request that checks who is asking.
• Your seat — that you asked, were approved, confirmed, attended, left late or did not show.
• Your rating, once you have played rated bolas. It is a number derived from results, and other signed-in players can see it.
• Your show-up record, for the same reason: people deciding whether to seat a stranger can see whether that stranger turns up.

Browsing without an account shows no people. The public feed is readable without signing in, deliberately, so that a link to a bola works for somebody who has not joined yet — but names, photographs and ratings are withheld from anyone who is not signed in. They appear once you have an account.

Group names, bola titles and notes are written by people, are visible to people they have no relationship with, and are subject to the acceptable-use rules in the Terms.

Ratings and results

A rated bola produces a result the four players confirm. From it we store the result, each player's placing, your rating and the history of changes to it. A player can dispute a result; a disputed result is frozen and a moderator decides. Ratings that came from a voided result are removed.

Ratings are calculated by us, from results. No third party is involved, and nothing about them is sold or shared.

Reports, blocks and moderation

You can block somebody, which hides you from each other in the app. We store who blocked whom.

You can report a person, a photograph or a bola. A report stores who reported, who or what was reported, the reason you gave and the time. Reports are read by a moderator — a small number of named accounts — who can hide or remove a reported photograph, dismiss the report, or suspend an account that breaks the rules. Moderation decisions are recorded, so that a decision can itself be reviewed.

Somebody who is reported is not told who reported them.

What the app still does not do

• No analytics, no behavioural tracking, and nothing that follows you between apps. Crash reports are the one exception and they are described above — they say what broke, never what you did
• No advertising, and no advertising identifiers
• No access to your contacts or address book — the app never asks, and never will. Invitations are ordinary links you send yourself
• No matching of your contacts against other people's accounts
• No location permission. Districts are chosen from a list; your phone is never asked where it is
• No microphone or file access
• No selling of your data, and no sharing of it with advertisers
• No third-party tracking software of any kind

Who processes it for us

Three companies handle data on our behalf, and only to make the service work.

• Supabase hosts the database, the sign-in service and the photo storage. Data is stored on their infrastructure, which is outside Egypt.
• Google Firebase Cloud Messaging delivers notifications. It receives the device token and the text of the notification.
• Google Firebase Crashlytics receives crash reports, and only from accounts that have not switched them off.
• Google Sign-In, only if you choose “Continue with Google”. Google then tells us your account identifier, email address, name and profile picture link. Google's own handling is covered by Google's privacy policy.

None of them is permitted to use your data for their own purposes through us.

How long it is kept

Account data is kept for as long as the account exists. Delete the account and it is deleted immediately — there is no grace period and no archived copy. Data on your phone lasts until you delete it or uninstall the app.

Two things outlive your account, and both are stripped of your identity first: a bola other people played in keeps its result, so their history is not rewritten by your leaving; and a moderation record keeps the fact that a decision was made, without the name of the person it was about.

Getting a copy of your data

In the app: Account → Export my data. It produces one JSON file containing everything — the games on your phone, and, when you are signed in, everything held about you on the server: your profile, your seats, the bolas you hosted, your ratings and their history, your attestations, the reports you filed and the people you blocked.

You can also simply ask, at the address above.

Deleting your account

In the app: Account → Delete my account. You will be asked to confirm who you are, shown exactly what goes and what stays, and then it happens immediately.

Without the app: if you have uninstalled it, email privacy@yallabola.app from the address on the account. The steps, and the full list of what goes and what stays, are on the account deletion page.

Deleting the account does not delete the games on your phone. Those are yours, they stay where they are, and the scorekeeper carries on working as a guest.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of the data held about you, ask for it to be corrected, withdraw a consent you gave, object to a use of it, or have the whole account deleted. Write to privacy@yallabola.app and you will get an answer within 30 days. You can change your name, photograph, language and email preferences yourself in the app at any time.

If you are in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, the same rights are available to you under the personal data protection laws of those countries, at the same address.

Children

Using the app without an account is suitable for all ages and collects no personal information from anyone. An account requires you to be 16 or older. If you believe a child under 16 has created an account, write to us and it will be removed.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, the version identifier at the top changes with it, and the app will ask you to read and accept the new version the next time you sign in. Smaller clarifications are posted with a new date.

Contact

Questions about this policy or the app: privacy@yallabola.app