Privacy Policy

The short version

We collect the minimum personal information needed to fulfill your order and respond to your questions. We don’t sell or rent your data. Stripe handles your payment details; we never see your card number.

Who we are

Welcome2Mahj is a sole proprietorship based in Dallas, Texas, operating welcome2mahj.com, the MAHJ mobile app, and the MAHJ shop. Contact: info@welcome2mahj.com.

What we collect

When you make a purchase, Stripe collects your name, email, billing address, shipping address, and payment information on our behalf. We receive everything except your full payment card number — Stripe stores that.

When you email us, we receive your email address and whatever you choose to share.

When you use the website or app, our hosting provider (Vercel) logs standard request data: IP address, user agent, page accessed, timestamp. This is used for security and basic operations, not marketing.

We do not run third-party advertising trackers, behavioral analytics, or social media pixels on the site.

Coach and Hand Analyzer

The MAHJ Coach (the chat at /coach) and the strategy advice on the Hand Analyzer (/analyze) generate their answers using third-party AI services. These are the only features of the Service that send user content to external AI providers.

When you ask the Coach, we send your question and the recent conversation (up to 20 most recent turns) to one of several AI providers — currently Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini), or Pollinations (a free public AI service). The choice is made automatically per request based on availability.

When you use the Hand Analyzer’s strategy advice, we send a description of the tiles you’ve assembled and a computed summary (suit counts, joker count, observed patterns) to Google (Gemini). We do not send your name, email, or any device identifier.

We do not store your coach conversations or analyzer queries on our own servers — once the response is sent back to you, the request is gone from our side. The AI providers may retain inputs for their own service operation per their policies (linked below). For that reason, do not type sensitive personal information (real names, addresses, payment info) into the coach.

The lessons, glossary, calculator, cheatsheet, and all other features of the Service work fully without the AI features. If you prefer not to interact with the AI providers, simply do not use /coach or /analyze.

How we use it

• To process and fulfill your order
• To send order confirmations, shipping updates, and respond to questions
• To resolve issues, prevent fraud, and meet legal obligations
• To improve the Service (in aggregate, not individually)

We don’t send marketing emails. If we ever start a newsletter, it will be opt-in.

Who we share it with

We share data only with the providers needed to run the shop and the Service:

• Stripe — payment processing and order receipts (Stripe’s privacy policy).
• Printful — printing and shipping; receives your name, shipping address, and order details (Printful’s privacy policy).
• Vercel — website hosting; standard request logs.
• Anthropic — powers some Coach answers using their Claude AI model; receives your question text and recent conversation (Anthropic’s privacy policy).
• Google— powers some Coach answers and the Hand Analyzer’s strategy advice using their Gemini AI model; receives your question text, conversation, or hand state (Google’s privacy policy).
• Pollinations — a free public AI service used as a fallback for Coach answers when the primary provider is unavailable. Pollinations is community-run and we do not control its data practices.
• Apple — if you downloaded the iOS app, Apple handles app distribution under their own privacy policy.

We may also disclose information when required by law (e.g., valid subpoena) or to protect our rights or the safety of others.

Data retention

We keep order records for as long as needed to fulfill the order and meet tax and accounting obligations (typically 7 years for tax purposes in Texas). Email correspondence is kept for as long as needed to provide support, then deleted.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

• Tell you what information we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate information
• Delete your information (subject to legal retention requirements)
• Stop processing your information for non-essential purposes

California residents have additional rights under the CCPA; EU/UK residents have additional rights under GDPR. To exercise any of these, email info@welcome2mahj.com. We’ll respond within 30 days.

Cookies

The site uses minimal cookies — we don’t use advertising or analytics cookies. The Stripe checkout flow may set cookies on stripe.com (their domain) for fraud prevention; those are governed by Stripe’s policies.

Children

The Service is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us information, please email us and we’ll delete it.

Security

We use industry-standard practices: HTTPS everywhere, payment processing through Stripe (PCI-DSS Level 1), no storage of payment card data on our servers. No system is perfectly secure, but we keep our footprint small for that reason.

Changes

We’ll update this policy if our practices change. The “last updated” date at the top reflects the most recent change.

Contact

Welcome2Mahj
2920 Carlisle St Apt 901
Dallas, TX 75204
info@welcome2mahj.com