Privacy Policy

Thank you for using Discord-Buddy.com (“we”, “us”, “our”). Your privacy matters to us. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and protect personal information when you visit our website discord-buddy.com and interact with our services, including the Discord Buddy bot.

Discord Buddy is operated by Sargent Interactive LLC, which is responsible for the personal information described here (the “controller” under laws such as the GDPR). Where a Discord server's administrators decide which bot features collect data about their members, they also decide how that data is used in their server (see section 3.4). Optional cookies are only used with your separate permission, which you control in Cookie Settings.

1. Information We Collect

1.1. User-Provided Information

When you log in with Discord, Discord shares the following with us (you approve this on Discord's login screen):

Your Discord user ID, username, display name, avatar and language setting
The email address on your Discord account
The list of servers you are in and your permissions in them, so we can show the servers you can manage
Your nickname in the Discord Buddy support server, if you are a member

When you use the website, we may also collect:

Server IDs, channels, roles and settings for the servers and features you configure
Server listings, ratings, reviews, comments and reports you submit
Notification choices you make under Account → Notifications: which DMs you want and which of your servers you get owner alerts for. Owner alerts are DMs to a server's Administrators about that server (bot errors, new reviews or comments on its listing, new ban appeals).
Ban appeals you submit to a server through our site: your Discord account details, the reason and context you write, any files you attach, an optional contact email, and the IP address the appeal was sent from (to help that server's staff and us spot abuse). Appeals are shared with that server's staff.
Premium purchases: your plan, subscription status, payment and refund history, and any cancellation feedback you give. Payment card details are entered on our billing provider's checkout and are not stored by us. When you start a checkout, change plans, cancel or request a refund, we log the request together with your IP address and browser user agent for fraud prevention and dispute handling.

This data helps us operate and personalize the Discord Buddy experience and provide guild-specific features and settings.

1.2. Data Collected by the Bot

The Discord Buddy bot only collects data for the features a server's administrators turn on. Depending on those features, the bot may process or store:

Member information (Discord user ID, username, avatar, join date and roles) to send welcome and leave messages, generate welcome images, assign auto-roles, reaction roles and reward roles, keep member and role count channels up to date, and post role, nickname and avatar change logs to the server's log channel.
Invite tracking: which invite a member joined with and who created it, used for invite leaderboards and invite-reward roles.
Leveling / XP: XP totals, levels, message counts and voice time per member. We do not store the content of the messages used to earn XP.
Activity statistics: daily counts of joins, leaves, messages and voice minutes, and which members were active on a given day, used for the Daily Activity Report and server analytics.
Moderation records: warnings, mutes and auto-ban entries (user ID, username and the reason given by staff).
Ticket transcripts: when a support ticket is closed or a transcript is requested, the messages in that ticket channel (author, avatar, message content and time) are saved so the server's staff can review them on our dashboard.
Application answers submitted through the bot's staff application feature.
Guild configuration (channels, roles and feature settings chosen by server administrators).

1.3. Message Content

The bot reads message content only for the features that need it: spam detection, the profanity and blocked URL filters, invite link and image-only channel rules, message edit/delete logs, auto-responders, the counting game, XP anti-farming checks, starboard, ticket transcripts and the AI features described in section 3.2.

Apart from ticket transcripts, message content is not stored in our database. Spam detection and XP checks keep a member's most recent message in memory for a short time (at most a few minutes), and filter and log features post the relevant message to the server's own Discord log channel. Message content is never used to train machine learning or AI models.

1.4. Automatic and Log Data

When you visit our website, we may automatically collect certain information, including:

IP address
Browser type and version
Device and operating system information
Referring URLs and pages visited
Time and date of visits and other usage statistics

This information is used to maintain security, monitor performance, and improve our services.

Page view counts. Public server pages, blog posts and docs show how many unique visitors they've had. To count each visitor once per day without cookies, our server stores a keyed hash of your IP address, browser user agent and the date (not the IP address itself). If you're logged in, the view is counted against your account ID instead. These records are kept so the totals stay accurate.

Cookie choices. When you make a choice in our cookie banner or Cookie Settings, we record a receipt: a random receipt ID, the categories you allowed, the version of the notice, the date, how you made the choice, and whether your browser sent a Global Privacy Control signal. The receipt does not include your IP address, account or browser details.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

Provide, operate, and maintain our website and Discord Buddy bot
Offer and customize features for your Discord server
Store and apply your guild configuration and preferences
Monitor service performance and improve functionality
Respond to support requests and communicate with you
Detect, prevent, and address technical issues, abuse, or misuse of the service

We do not sell your personal information for money. If you allow Marketing cookies, Google AdSense may use cookies and identifiers to personalize ads, which some US state privacy laws treat as “sharing” personal information or targeted advertising. You can refuse or withdraw that at any time in Cookie Settings, and we honor Global Privacy Control signals as an opt-out (see section 4).

2.1. Legal bases (where applicable)

Where laws such as the GDPR or UK GDPR apply, we rely on:

Performance of a contract — to provide the website, bot and Premium features you ask for;
Legitimate interests — to keep the service secure, prevent abuse, count page views and fix problems;
Consent — for optional cookies and similar technologies (analytics, advertising, embedded videos), which you can withdraw at any time;
Legal obligations — for example, keeping billing records.

We only share information in limited circumstances, as described below:

3.1. Service Providers

We may share data with trusted third-party service providers who help us operate our services, such as hosting providers, database services, or error-tracking tools. These providers are only authorized to use your data as necessary to provide services to us. They include:

Cloudflare, which delivers and protects the website and receives every request made to it;
Discord, for logging in with Discord and showing server icons, banners and avatars;
Sargent Interactive's billing service and its payment processors, when you buy Premium;
Public code-library hosts (jsDelivr, cdnjs, code.jquery.com), which your browser contacts to load site code.

Only if you allow them in Cookie Settings, Google also receives data from your browser for Google Analytics (Analytics), Google AdSense (Marketing) and YouTube embedded videos (Functional). Google uses this data under its own terms and privacy policy, including for its own purposes such as ad-fraud prevention and, for AdSense, ad personalization. See our Cookie Policy for details.

3.2. AI Processing (OpenAI)

Some optional features send message text to OpenAI's API to generate a response:

AI ticket summaries (only if a server administrator turns on this setting): the ticket's messages, each with the sender's username
The /summary and /vibecheck commands: recent messages from the channel where the command is used, each with the sender's username
The /showdown command (some game types): recent messages from the channel with usernames, plus the server's name and description
The /improv and /story-mode commands: the text of recent messages from the channel and of messages sent while the session runs, without usernames

This text is sent only when one of these features is used, only to produce that response, and we do not store it or the AI's output in our database. Under OpenAI's API terms, data sent through the API is not used to train OpenAI's models. See OpenAI's Privacy Policy for details.

3.3. Legal Requirements

We may disclose your information if we believe such action is necessary to:

Comply with a legal obligation or lawful request
Protect and defend our rights or property
Prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing
Protect the personal safety of users or the public

3.4. Server Administrators and Bot Permissions

Data sent to the Discord Buddy bot (such as messages related to support tickets or logging features) may be visible to server administrators and other users according to the permissions and configuration of your Discord server. We do not control how server owners or administrators use that data.

4. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We use strictly necessary cookies to keep you signed in, protect the site and forms from abuse, and remember your cookie choices. With your permission only, we also use:

Functional — embedded YouTube videos;
Analytics — Google Analytics 4, which measures how the site is used with a random visitor ID (Google signals and ad personalization are turned off). Google keeps this data for the retention period set in our Analytics account;
Marketing — Google AdSense ads for visitors without Premium.

Optional categories are off until you turn them on in the cookie banner or Cookie Settings (linked in the footer of every page), and you can withdraw at any time. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as an opt-out of sale/sharing and targeted advertising and keep advertising off on that browser. Full details, including every cookie's name, provider, purpose and lifetime, are in our Cookie Policy.

5. Data Retention

We retain personal information only for as long as necessary to:

Provide and maintain our services
Comply with legal and regulatory obligations
Resolve disputes and enforce our agreements

Specific retention periods:

Ticket transcripts: deleted automatically 90 days after the ticket's last message.
Daily activity statistics: deleted automatically after 90 days.
Server analytics: deleted automatically after the period included in the server's plan (30 days on the free plan).
Voice session tracking: deleted automatically after 7 days.
Messages used for spam detection and XP checks: held in memory only, for a few minutes at most, and never written to our database.
Rate-limit records (IP address or account ID with a request count, used to block abuse): deleted automatically after about an hour.
Billing records and the billing request log (including IP address and browser user agent): kept for accounting, tax, fraud-prevention and dispute purposes; there is currently no fixed deletion date.
Ban appeals (including attachments and the submitting IP address): kept until the server's staff or we delete them, or you ask us to.
Page view records: kept so view totals stay accurate.
Cookie choice receipts: deleted automatically after 24 months. Your choice itself is stored in your browser for about 6 months.
Cookies: each cookie's browser lifetime is listed in our Cookie Policy. Data that Google receives through optional cookies is kept under Google's own retention settings and policies.
Configuration, XP/levels, invite tracking and moderation records: kept while the bot is in the server so these features keep working, and until you or the server's administrators ask us to delete them.

6. Security

We implement reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect your information from unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction. Our database is encrypted at rest, including its tables, logs and binary logs. However, no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

7. Your Choices & Rights

7.1. Access, Correction, and Deletion

Depending on your location, you may have rights to request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information. To make such a request, please contact us using the details provided in the Contact Us section below. We may ask you to verify your identity before responding.

7.2. Server-Level Configuration

If you are a Discord server owner or administrator, you may be able to limit what data is collected by enabling or disabling particular features of the Discord Buddy bot inside your server configuration. For example, you can disable certain logging, ticket, or tracking features to reduce what is stored.

7.3. Opt-Out of Certain Data Collection

Every content-based feature is off until a server's administrators set it up. Individual members who do not want their data processed can ask that server's staff, or contact us at the address below to request that their stored data be deleted.

If you do not want certain data to be stored (such as ticket transcripts or specific logs), you can:

Turn off the relevant features in your Discord Buddy configuration, or exclude channels and roles from XP tracking
Remove the bot from your server
Contact us to request deletion of stored data where feasible

7.4. Cookie Choices and Privacy Signals

You can accept, reject or customize optional cookies, and withdraw your consent at any time, through Cookie Settings in the footer of every page. Rejecting optional cookies doesn't affect your ability to use the site. We honor Global Privacy Control signals without requiring you to log in.

8. Children’s Privacy

Our services are not directed to children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we become aware that information has been collected from a child under 13, we will take reasonable steps to delete it as soon as possible.

Like Discord, our services are for people aged 13 and over. If you believe a child under 13 has used our website or provided us with information, email us at the address in section 11 and we will delete the child's account data and website records. Optional advertising and analytics cookies only run when a visitor turns them on.

9. International Users

If you access our services from outside the United States, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States and other countries where we or our service providers (such as Cloudflare, Discord and Google) operate. These countries may have data protection laws that are different from those in your country. Where we use providers to process personal data from the EU, UK or Switzerland in the United States, we rely on the safeguards those providers offer, such as certification under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (Google LLC is certified) or standard contractual clauses.

10. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the “Last updated” date at the top of this page. If a change materially affects how we use personal information we already hold, we will tell you on the website before it takes effect and, where the law requires it, ask for your consent.

11. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, or if you would like to make a request regarding your data, you can contact us at:

Email: privacy@sargentinteractive.com
Mail: Sargent Interactive LLC
PO Box 65, Toney, AL 35773, USA

You don't need an account to make a request. We may ask you to confirm details (for example, by replying from your Discord account's email address) so we only act on requests from the right person.