Privacy

Noggin collects the least it can get away with. This page says exactly what that is, in the order it actually happens.

The short version

• We measure how the games are played — which get finished, where people give up — through Amplitude. In the UK and Europe we ask first; everywhere else you can turn it off in one tap. There is no advertising or social tracking.
• You can play every day without giving us an email address or any other detail.
• One cookie is set, it holds a random number, and its only job is remembering which scores are yours.
• We never sell anything to anyone, because there is nothing to sell.

The cookie

When you open a puzzle, Noggin sets a single cookie called nog. It contains a random string and nothing else — no name, no email, nothing derived from you or your device. On our side we store only a one-way hash of it, so the value in your browser cannot be read back out of our database.

It exists so that when you finish a puzzle we know which scores are yours and can show you your streak. It is marked HttpOnly (no script on the page can read it), SameSite=Lax (it is not sent when another site links to us) and Secure (it never travels over plain HTTP). It lasts up to 400 days and is refreshed while you keep playing.

It is not an advertising identifier and is not shared with anyone.

What we store when you play

Finishing a puzzle records one row: which game, which day, whether you solved it, the score, and the measurements the score was worth working out from — how many checks you used, how you did against par, how long a grid took, how many hints you took, how many cells you had right. That is the whole row. We keep only your first finish of a given puzzle.

Your device also keeps its own copy of the current board and your per-game statistics in localStorage. That never leaves the device except as the row described above, and clearing your browser data removes it.

If you sign in

Signing in is optional and exists so your scores survive a lost or replaced phone. If you choose to, we store your email address and attach it to the scores already recorded against your browser.

There is no password, so there is no password to leak. Instead we email you a link and a short code, both of which are stored only as one-way hashes, expire in fifteen minutes and work once. That email is sent through Resend, which handles delivery on our behalf.

If you send feedback

The feedback form sends your message and, so a bug can actually be reproduced, some context about the screen it happened on: the puzzle number, your window and screen size, timezone and local clock, language, light or dark mode, whether the device is touch, your browser and platform (including the device model where the browser provides it), the version of our own files your browser had loaded, and a shortened user-agent string.

An email address is optional and blank by default — leave it empty and the report is anonymous. If you fill it in, it is used to reply and nothing else.

How we measure the games

We use Amplitude to understand how the puzzles are actually played. It answers questions we cannot answer any other way: which games get finished and which get abandoned, how far into a puzzle people give up, whether an ad costs us a player, and whether anyone shares their score. It is product measurement, not advertising — nothing here is used to target ads at you or sold to anybody.

We send Amplitude a small, fixed list of things that happen: opening a puzzle, finishing one (with the score and how you did), giving one up part-way, seeing and dismissing an ad, sharing a score, and signing in. Alongside those, Amplitude records page views, when a visit starts and ends, where you arrived from, and clicks that look like frustration — a tap on something that does not respond, for instance. We have deliberately turned off its options for recording what you type into forms and for capturing every element you click.

These are tied to the same random identifier as your scores, so a returning player is recognizable as the same person. Amplitude also stores an identifier of its own in your browser's localStorage — not a cookie — to recognize this device. Clearing site data removes it.

We never send your email address. The one thing we do send about you rather than about what you did is whether you have an account — a plain yes or no, so we can see whether people who sign in keep playing. Not the address, not your name, nothing that could identify you to anyone reading it.

Amplitude is a United States company and this data is processed there. Your browser loads its software from cdn.amplitude.com and sends measurements to api2.amplitude.com and sr-client-cfg.amplitude.com.

Saying no

If you are in the UK, the EEA or Switzerland we ask before measuring anything, and nothing is loaded until you say yes — not the software, not the identifier, not a single request. Declining is one tap, the same as accepting.

Elsewhere, measurement is on by default and this page is your notice of it. You can turn it off at any time, from anywhere in the world, and there are two ways:

• Menu → Stop measuring my play on the shelf, or this link, which opens the same choice.
• Switch on Global Privacy Control in your browser. We treat it as a no, we never ask you to overturn it, and it works before anything has loaded.

Turning it off stops all of it immediately. Your scores and your streak are unaffected — they are ours, in our own database, and have nothing to do with Amplitude.

Server logs and abuse prevention

Our host keeps standard web server logs, which include IP addresses, for a short period. We also count recent requests per IP address in memory to stop somebody flooding the feedback form or the sign-in emails. That count is never written to disk and disappears when the server restarts.

Advertising

Noggin does not currently show ads, and there is no advertising code on the site today.

We intend to introduce advertising through Google AdSense. When that happens, Google may set its own cookies or read device identifiers to serve and measure ads, under Google's own policies. If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland you will be asked for consent first, and you will be able to refuse as easily as accept. This page will be updated before any of that goes live.

There will be ways to turn ads off — a subscription, or inviting people who play. The machinery for that is already here, so it is worth saying what it records: if you are ever given ad-free time, we store when it was given, what gave it, when it runs out and a reference from whatever gave it, such as a payment identifier. It is attached to the same row as your scores. Nothing grants it today, so for now there is nothing in it for anybody.

Who else sees any of this

• Heroku (Salesforce) hosts the site and the database.
• Resend sends the sign-in email, and only if you ask for one.
• Amplitude receives the measurements described above.
• Google AdSense, once advertising is introduced, as described above.

That is the entire list. Nobody buys anything from us, and there are no advertising or social scripts embedded in these pages.

Other players see your scores on the leader board — every player’s day, averages over a week, a month and all time, and, behind a tap on a name, that player’s scores day by day with the day they joined, their days played, their streak and their average. They see them under the display name you gave, wherever you gave it — the leader board or a group — and as Anonymous if you never gave one. Names and numbers only; nothing that identifies you beyond the name you chose.

How long it is kept

Scores are kept while the account exists, because a streak that forgets itself is not a streak. Sign-in links are deleted shortly after they expire. Feedback is kept until it has been dealt with and is periodically cleared out. Measurements held by Amplitude are kept under their retention policy and go when the account does. A record of ad-free time is kept after it runs out, so that why you had it is still answerable — and it goes with the account if the account goes.

Getting rid of it

• Sign out from the menu to detach this device. Your account and scores stay put.
• Turn measurement off from the menu on the shelf, or with this link. Immediate, and it costs you nothing else.
• Clear cookies and site data for noggin.games to drop the identifier and everything stored on the device. If you have not signed in, this permanently disconnects you from your recorded scores.
• Email admin@noggin.games to have your account and every score on it deleted outright. If you have an account, you can also ask for a copy of what is held.

Children

Noggin is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect anything from them. If you believe a child has signed in, email us and we will remove it.

Changes

If what we collect changes, this page changes with it and the date below is updated. Introducing advertising is the next change we expect to make.

Contact

admin@noggin.games

Last updated 15 August 2026.