Safe to hand to a kid
GHBL is built so that a child can play without giving anything away. Here is exactly what that means, including the ads.
Nothing personal, ever
- No names, emails, phone numbers, birthdays, addresses, photos or locations are asked for or kept.
- There is no text box anywhere on the site. Team names are built from two word lists plus a number the site picks, so nobody can type a real name or a rude word onto the standings.
- There is no chat, no messaging and no way for players to contact each other.
- No analytics services, no trackers, and no fonts or game code from other companies: the 3-D engine (three.js) and the fonts are served from ghbl.us itself. The site sets one cookie, which protects its forms from forgery.
The ads
Some pages (the home page, schedule, standings, the diamonds, history, rules, pricing and about) show one banner ad at the bottom, from AdEngine (adengine.us), the small ad network run by WeldonPC, the company behind GHBL. There is never an ad in the game, on the practice or league game pages, on team pages, or on this page.
- House ads only, chosen by the page, not by the person. The ads are for WeldonPC's own services. AdEngine sets no cookies, gives nobody an ID, builds no profile and does not follow anyone from site to site. There is no behavioural or "interest-based" advertising.
- What it does see. Like any website, adengine.us receives the visitor's internet address and browser type when the banner loads. It uses the address only to show the banner, to count each view or click once, and to leave out robots; the address is not stored with the counts.
- Kid-safe clicks. Clicking an ad never leaves GHBL straight away: a "You are leaving GHBL to see an ad. Kids: ask a grown-up" page comes first.
How a team works without an account
Making a team gives you a private link. Whoever has the link can play the team's games, so keep it like a house key: bookmark it or write it down. The database keeps only a scrambled fingerprint of the link (a SHA-256 hash), so a lost link cannot be looked up or sent to you. Like every page address, the link also appears in the web server's logs until they rotate; those logs are used only for security. The team page has a Delete button.
What the site does keep
- Each team's made-up name, jersey colour and leagues, and each game's swing times and score.
- To stop one connection from making hundreds of teams, a scrambled form of the visitor's internet address goes into daily counters that are deleted after two days. Backups never include these counters.
- Like any website, the hosting server keeps standard access logs (internet address, time, page) for security and to count visits. They are the host's own logs, not an analytics service, and they are not shared.
- Database backups (teams and games) are kept for up to 14 days, plus a few restore points saved when the site is updated.
Children's privacy
GHBL does not ask children, or anyone, for personal information. The only identifiers involved are the internet address every website sees (in the server's logs, scrambled in the abuse counters, and seen by the ad network as described above), the private team link and the form cookie. They are used only to run the game and the ads and to keep them safe, never to track anyone or to choose ads for a person. Grown-ups with questions can reach the people behind the site through WeldonPC.com.
Screen time
League games happen only at three game times a day, 3:00, 5:00 and 7:00 PM Eastern. A league game takes a few minutes; a team plays at most one game per game time, and each game can be started at most three times (in case a page closes). Practice is unlimited and saves nothing.
Money
The game is free. Optional: Clubhouse Pass $1.95/month or $19.50/year · Free during preview. The Pass is for a parent or adult to buy, through PayPal, once payments open; the way in is behind a grown-ups question, and nothing in the game asks a child to pay.