Privacy Policy

Most privacy policies are written to be survived rather than read. This one is short because there is genuinely little to say: you cannot register on Wordgames, we do not want your name, and the only reason any data moves at all is to keep the lights on and the games loading.

• No account, ever
• What we collect
• Why we are allowed to
• Games from other studios
• Advertising
• How long we keep it
• Children
• Your rights
• If you are in the United States
• Changes

No account, ever

In short: there is nothing to sign up for, so there is no profile of you here.

Wordgames has no registration, no login and no user accounts. We never ask for your name, your email address, your date of birth or your location. Nothing you play is attached to a person, because there is no person on file to attach it to.

The one exception is the contact form, and only because a reply has to go somewhere. That is covered further down.

What we collect

In short: traffic statistics, one cookie of our own, ordinary server logs, and whatever you type into the contact form.

Analytics. We use Google Analytics to count visits and see which games get played. It records the pages you opened, roughly where in the world you are, and what kind of device you used. We read it to decide which games stay on the site and which pages need rewriting. Google's own handling of that data is covered by Google's privacy policy.

One cookie of ours. When you rate a game we store a small cookie so the same browser does not count twice. It holds a game number and nothing else.

Server logs. Our servers record requests, including IP addresses, as part of running and securing the site. They are kept briefly and are not used to build a profile of anybody.

The contact form. What you write, and the address you give so we can reply, are stored so a person can read and answer them. Nothing from that form is used for anything else, and it is never sold or handed to an advertiser. The form is protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks that a person rather than a script is sending it; it looks at how the browser behaves and sends your IP address to Cloudflare for that check. It sets no cookie and is not used to identify you or to advertise to you. Cloudflare's handling is covered by their Turnstile privacy policy.

Why we are allowed to

In short: keeping a public website standing, and answering what you send us.

Under European data protection law every use of data needs a reason. Ours are simple. Server logs and security measures rest on our legitimate interest in keeping a public website standing. Answering your message rests on your having sent it. Analytics and advertising rest on our legitimate interest in knowing which games are worth keeping and in paying for the hosting, and you can switch both off through your browser. Our cookie policy explains exactly how.

Games from other studios

In short: a game running on this page is somebody else's software, and their policy applies inside it.

Many of the games here are made by other studios and are loaded into the page from their own servers. While a game is running, that company can see the request and may set its own cookies. We do not control what they collect and we cannot answer for it. Their policy rather than ours applies inside the game frame.

Advertising

In short: advertising pays for the games, and you can switch off the targeting.

Where advertising is shown, ad providers may use cookies to measure it and to target it. Blocking third party cookies in your browser, or using the industry opt outs listed in our cookie policy, removes the targeting rather than the advertising: you will see the same number of ads, chosen from what the page is about rather than from anything about you.

Which companies are involved is public information, published at /ads.txt, which is the file the advertising industry uses to declare who is authorised to sell space on a site.

How long we keep it

In short: logs for days, analytics for months, your messages until they are dealt with.

Server logs are rotated within days. Analytics data is held by Google under the retention setting on the property, currently fourteen months, after which it is deleted on their side. Contact messages are kept while the matter is open and cleared out once it is closed. Cookies expire on their own; the schedule is in the cookie policy.

Children

In short: the games suit all ages, and we deliberately do not collect what would be needed to know how old anybody is.

Wordgames is built to be safe to hand to a child: no chat, no messaging between players, no profiles and nothing to sign up for. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children, and because there is no registration we have no way to and no reason to.

If you are a parent and believe a child has sent us something through the contact form that should not be there, write to us and we will delete it.

Your rights

In short: ask us what we hold, ask us to fix it, ask us to delete it. Reply within a month.

If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom you can ask for a copy of any personal data we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected, ask for it to be deleted, ask us to restrict what we do with it, object to processing based on legitimate interest, and withdraw a consent you gave earlier. Withdrawing consent does not undo what was done while it stood.

Ask through the contact form. We answer within one month. In practice, for almost every visitor, the honest answer will be that we hold nothing tied to you at all.

You also have the right to complain to your national data protection authority, and you do not have to come to us first.

If you are in the United States

In short: we do not sell personal information, and the state rights still apply.

Residents of California and other states with comparable laws have the right to know what is collected, to have it deleted, to correct it, and to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising. We do not sell personal information. Personalised advertising is switched off through the browser controls in our cookie policy, and requests under these laws go through the contact form like everything else. We will not treat you differently for exercising any of it.

Changes

In short: when this page changes, the date at the top changes with it.

We do not send notifications about policy updates, because we have no address to send them to. The date at the top is the honest record of when this was last touched.