PRIVACY POLICY

We don't ask you for personal information and we don't sell or rent data. Your stats, settings, and in-progress puzzles live in your own browser's local storage and never reach our servers, the site is a static site with no backend and no database. If you accept the cookie notice, we count page visits with Firebase Analytics so we can tell which pages are worth improving; if you reject it, or never answer, nothing is counted, and you can change your answer any time in Settings. Google AdSense will serve the ads that pay for hosting, and Google collects the data described in section 3 to do that.

None.GEOPUNK has no account system, no login, no newsletter, and no contact form that posts to a server. If you email support, we obviously see the address you sent it from, that's the only channel through which we ever receive personal information, and we use it solely to reply.

The following is written to your browser's localStorage on your own device. It is never transmitted to us or to any third party:

• »Your stats, current streak, best streak, plays, win rate, and guess distribution, per game.
• »Your settings, colour palette, distance units, hard mode, direction hints, scanlines.
• »In-progress and completed daily puzzles, so a refresh doesn't lose your run.

Clearing your browser's site data for geopunk.io erases all of it. You can also wipe stats from Settings → Reset Stats. Because this data lives only on one device, it does not follow you to another browser or computer.

GEOPUNK is free, and advertising through Google AdSense is how it is intended to stay free. Ads are not live yet, nothing on this site currently loads Google's ad code or sets an advertising cookie. The rest of this section describes what will apply once it does. We do not run our own ad server and we never hand Google information about you.

• »Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites.
• »Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
• »You may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings, or opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info/choices.
• »Google's advertising practices are described in its advertising privacy notice and general privacy policy.

To serve an ad, Google receives your IP address (from which it infers a coarse location), your user agent, the page URL the ad appears on, and any advertising cookies or identifiers already in your browser. It does not receive your GEOPUNK stats, settings, or guesses, those never leave your device.

The site sets at most one cookie, placed by the analytics described in section 5, and only if you accept the consent notice shown on your first visit. It holds a random identifier and nothing else, no name, no email, no record of how you played. Nothing on the site is gated behind accepting it and the games work identically without it. The cookie policy lists every cookie by name.

The notice is opt-in, as the EEA, UK and Swiss rules require: “Reject” is as easy as “Accept”, no analytics cookie exists before you answer, and rejecting simply means you are never counted. You can reverse either answer at any time with the Usage Analytics switch in Settings. If your browser sends Do Not Track we skip the question entirely and never measure you.

No advertising currently runs on this site and no advertising cookie is set. Before advertising is switched on for visitors in a region where consent is required first, a consent notice will be shown before the initial ad request, on the same terms: rejecting will be as easy as accepting, the site will work identically either way, and rejecting will mean ads are non-personalised and keyed only to the page content.

geopunk.io uses Firebase Analytics (Google Analytics 4) to count page visits. This is a separate Firebase project from the GEOPUNK mobile apps and is not joined to them. We use it to answer one question: which pages people actually look at, so we know what is worth building on. There is no tag manager, no heatmap, and no session recording.

What it records on each page you view:

• »The page address, page title, and the referring page if you arrived from a link.
• »Your approximate location, derived by Google from your IP address and no more precise than a city. The IP address itself is not stored in our reports.
• »Your device type, screen size, browser, operating system, and language.
• »A randomly generated identifier, stored in a cookie in your browser, that lets Google tell a returning visit from a new one. It is not tied to your name or to anything you do elsewhere.

What it never records: your stats, streaks, settings, guesses, or which answers you got right. Those stay in local storage on your device, as described in section 2. We do not use analytics to build a profile of you, we do not attempt to identify individual visitors, and we do not enable Google Signals or advertising features on this property.

Switching it off. Analytics only ever runs if you accepted the cookie notice in the first place. To change your answer either way, open Settings and flip Usage Analytics. The choice is remembered on your device, and it does more than mute the reporting, the analytics code is never downloaded at all on later page loads. We also honour the Do Not Track browser setting: if yours is on, nothing is measured and you do not need to change anything here. Ordinary ad and tracker blockers also stop it, and the site is built to work identically when they do.

Google's handling of this data is covered by its privacy policy, and Google's own opt-out add-on blocks it across every site that uses Analytics.

Separately from all of this, our static host keeps standard web-server access logs (IP address, timestamp, requested path, user agent) for operational and abuse-prevention purposes; we do not use them to build profiles and they are not joined to anything else.

• »Your name, email address, phone number, or postal address.
• »Precise geolocation. The site never calls the browser Geolocation API.
• »Your contacts, calendar, camera, microphone, or files.
• »Anything at all through an account, because there are no accounts.

We do not sell, rent, or trade data. The only third party in the picture is Google LLC, acting as our analytics provider and, in future, our advertising provider, in each case under its own privacy policy. We would disclose data only if compelled by valid legal process, and the only data we hold to disclose is server access logs.

GEOPUNK is a general-audience geography game with no objectionable content, and teachers and students are among its intended users. It is not directed to children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided personal information, email us and we will delete it. Where a visitor appears to be a child, we request that Google serve only non-personalised, family-safe advertising.

If you are in the EU, UK, or EEA you have rights of access, correction, erasure, restriction, objection, portability, and consent withdrawal, plus the right to complain to your local Data Protection Authority. If you are a California resident you have the right to know, delete, and opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information, and not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights.

We do not sell personal information. Because there are no accounts, we hold nothing that identifies you; in practice the fastest way to exercise erasure is to clear your browser's site data and opt out of personalised ads at the links in section 3, and turn off Usage Analytics in Settings. To make a formal request, email us.

GEOPUNK is published from the United States and served from a global content-delivery network. Google processes analytics and ad-serving data on servers in the United States and elsewhere under its own Standard Contractual Clauses and Data Processing Addendum.

• »Browser-local data (stats, settings, puzzle state, analytics choice): kept until you clear site data or reset stats.
• »The analytics cookie: expires two years after your most recent visit, or immediately if you clear site data.
• »Analytics reports: retained by Google for 14 months, the shortest window it offers, then deleted.
• »Server access logs: rotated on our host's standard schedule.
• »Ad-serving data: governed by Google's retention policy.

The site is static, served over HTTPS, and has no database, no login, and no user-submitted content, which removes most of the ways a site like this leaks data. No system is perfectly secure; keep your browser up to date.

We may update this policy. Material changes update the “last updated” date at the top of this page. Continuing to use GEOPUNK after a change means you accept the updated policy.

Questions, complaints, or data-rights requests: support@discovolantelabs.com.

This policy covers the website at geopunk.io. The GEOPUNK mobile apps are covered by their own policy, which differs because they use different vendors.