What we keep, and why

For kids: the short version

• Your game stays with youThe game remembers where you are on your own phone, tablet or computer. We do not get a copy.
• A nickname, never your nameThe daily challenge can show a nickname and a score on a scoreboard. If you are under 13, you build your nickname from fun words, like "Brave Otter 7". You never type it.
• No adsNobody pays us to show you things, and we do not sell anything about you.
• Keep it privateNever put your real name, your school, your address or your phone number in a nickname. If anything feels strange, tell a grown-up.

The share buttons work only when you press them. On the home page they send a link to the game. In the daily challenge they share your stars and score, never your name. Ask a grown-up before you share.

For parents: in short

• No personal detailsWe do not ask for a real name, email, phone number, address, photo, voice or exact location.
• One age question, kept on the deviceBefore a nickname can go on a scoreboard, the game asks once for the year of birth. Only the age group is kept, on the device. It is never sent to us.
• Under 13: nicknames from word listsA player under 13 picks a nickname from lists of words and an optional number. There is no typing, so no personal information can go in.
• No ads, no tracking cookiesNo advertising, no analytics service that follows a person, and no selling of information. Nobody can contact your child through the game, and there are no purchases for real money.

Who is responsible for the information

The game is developed and operated by Yam Shaham. For any question or request about privacy, including a request from a parent, write to [email protected].

What is kept on your device

The game keeps its information in the browser's local storage, not in cookies. It stays on your device, and the game does not send it anywhere, except the daily scores described under "What others can see":

• Your journey: up to three players on one device, each with their own progress, level, crystals, items and cards.
• The hero: a name the player chooses for the story (up to 24 letters, and it can be made up) and whether the hero is a boy or a girl.
• The daily challenge: the fighter you chose, your nickname (2 to 14 letters), and your own results and records.
• The age group: "under 13" or "13 and over", the date it was set and, for a player under 13, the date the group changes. Never the year of birth itself.
• Settings: sound and music, full screen, difficulty and language.

To delete the saves, use the "Players" button on the home page ("Delete player" or "Start over"), or clear this site's data in the browser settings. Clearing the site's data removes everything above.

How the game picks English or Hebrew

When you first open the game, it looks at two settings of your browser: the list of languages you prefer, and the name of your time zone (for example "Asia/Jerusalem"). It uses them only to choose between Hebrew and English. A time zone name only names a broad region of the world, like "Asia/Jerusalem". It is not your address, your GPS position or your IP address. Both settings are read on your device, they are not sent anywhere, and only the answer ("English" or "Hebrew") is saved. You can change it any time with the globe button on the pause page.

The age question

The English edition is played by children, teens and adults. The first time a player sets a nickname for the daily scoreboard, the game asks one neutral question: "What year were you born?". No year is chosen in advance, and the question is asked only once on the device. The game does not keep the year. It keeps only the age group, on the device, and never sends it to us or to anyone else.

• Under 13: the nickname is built from a list of friendly words (an adjective and an animal or a magical creature) and an optional number from 1 to 99. There is no keyboard, so a child cannot enter a real name or any other personal information.
• 13 and over: the player types a nickname. It is checked on the device and again on our server: letters, numbers, spaces, a few marks and at most one emoji, 2 to 14 characters, no rude words, and no long strings of numbers such as a phone number.

What is sent over the internet

Opening the game downloads its own files from our host: pages, pictures, sounds, music and videos. Some are fetched ahead of time so the board opens fast. Your saves and your names are not part of these requests.

• The daily scoreboard (when it is switched on): after an official daily run, the game sends the nickname, the chosen fighter, the day, the score, the stars, the points and time of each part, and the number of helps used. To do that it signs in as an anonymous guest: a random ID made by the game, with no email, password or name. The ID is kept on the device so the same player is not counted twice. The age group is never sent.
• Sharing: the share buttons open your device's share sheet or WhatsApp with a link to the game, but only after you press them. On the home page the shared text is a fixed sentence and the web address. When you share a daily challenge result, the text shows the day, your stars, your rank, your points and the time for each part, and the game never adds your name. The challenge link carries the same scores in the part of the address after the "#". Browsers never send that part to a server, and it holds no name.
• Links that leave the game: a few pages, like the credits, link to other websites. Those sites have their own privacy rules.

Apart from the daily scoreboard, the English edition does not send your progress, your names or your results to us or to anyone else.

What others can see

English players have scoreboards of their own, apart from the Hebrew ones: the board of the day, the board of the week and "how did everyone do today" (totals only). The English scoreboards may be switched off until we turn them on; while they are off, nothing is sent and nothing is shown. When they are on, other players see only a nickname, the fighter picture, the score with its stars and the time. They never see the guest ID, the age group or anything else. There is no way to chat or send messages, and nobody can contact a player through the game.

The services we rely on

• Cloudflare Pages (a global server network) hosts the site's files. Like any website host, it sees technical data about each request, such as the IP address and the browser type, and keeps it in short-lived access logs for security and operation, under its own policy. The host also counts page visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which Cloudflare describes as working without cookies and without following people from site to site. We see totals, never a person.
• Supabase (a database service) stores the daily scoreboard rows and the anonymous guest IDs, only when the English scoreboards are switched on. Like any server, it sees the IP address of each request.
• WhatsApp (only if you choose to share) receives the link you decide to send.

Because these services run on global networks, a request from your device may be handled in another country.

The English edition does not use Google Analytics, advertising networks, social media plug-ins or tracking cookies.

What is not collected

• Email, phone, postal address, date of birth or a real name.
• Photos, videos or voice recordings of you, contacts, camera and microphone.
• Your precise location.
• Anything for advertising or for building a profile of a child.

Nothing is sold, and nothing is passed to anyone for marketing.

Children, and the laws that protect them

Wordkeepers is played by readers aged 8 and up, teens and adults. We treat it as a service that children use, and we keep to these rules:

• United States, COPPA: we use a neutral age question. A player under 13 cannot type anything that goes online: the nickname comes from our word lists, so it holds no personal information, and the rest of the scoreboard row is game data. The guest ID and the technical data every request carries (such as the IP address) are used only to run and protect the scoreboard and the site. We do not ask a child for personal information. A parent can write to us at any time to ask what we hold, to have it deleted, or to refuse any further collection.
• United Kingdom, the Children's Code (Age Appropriate Design Code): nothing about a player is public except a nickname and a score, nobody can contact a child through the game, and there is no profiling, no location use and no advertising. We do not use pop-ups or tricks that push a child to share more, and there are no purchases for real money.
• European Union and United Kingdom, GDPR: we keep the least information we can. The scoreboard rows and the host's access logs are processed to run the game's scoreboards and to deliver and protect the website (a legitimate interest). You can ask us to delete them at any time.

We think children are safest when a grown-up is nearby, so we suggest reading this page together.

How long we keep it

• What is on your device stays until you delete it.
• English scoreboard rows are deleted automatically once they are more than 12 months old. The clean-up runs while the scoreboards are in use, so a row may stay a little longer if nobody plays.
• The anonymous guest ID holds no personal details. On request we delete it together with everything linked to it.
• The host's access logs are kept for a short period set by the host, and then removed.

Your rights, and a parent's rights

You (or a parent, for a child) can ask what information we hold, ask us to correct or delete it, ask us to stop using it, and complain to a data protection authority in your country, for example the UK Information Commissioner's Office, your EU data protection authority, or the US Federal Trade Commission.

To ask, write to [email protected] and say what you would like. To find a scoreboard row, tell us the nickname and the day it was played. We have no accounts, so we may ask for one more detail to be sure we are talking to the right person. We will answer as soon as we can, and within the time the law gives.

Security

The site is served over an encrypted connection (HTTPS). The scoreboard tables cannot be read or changed directly from a browser: only a few checked server functions can add a score or read a board, and they never hand out a guest ID. What is on your device stays on your device. No method is perfect, but the information involved is very limited to begin with.

The apps in the stores

This page is about the English website. The Wordkeepers apps for Android and iPhone are described in the Hebrew privacy policy. If English is added to the apps, this page will be updated first.

Changes to the policy

If the English edition starts to collect other information, this page will be updated beforehand, and the date at the top will change.