This Privacy Policy explains how GuessGlobe ("we", "us", or "our") collects, uses, and protects information when you use our website. By using GuessGlobe you agree to the practices described below.
GuessGlobe is a free, browser-based geography quiz game. We do not require registration or any account to play.
GuessGlobe does not require an account, a login, or any registration to play the quiz or read articles. We collect personal data in exactly one situation: when you choose to send us a message through our Contact form.
What the Contact form collects. The form asks for your name, your email address, a subject line, and the body of your message. The form is hosted by Netlify (our static-site provider) and the data you submit is delivered to the GuessGlobe team by email. We use this information solely to read and reply to you. We do not add you to any mailing list, we do not share your message with any third party, and we do not use the data for advertising, profiling, or marketing.
Lawful basis (GDPR Art. 6). Processing of Contact-form submissions is based on (i) your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) and our legitimate interest in responding to questions about the service (Art. 6(1)(f)). You provide consent by voluntarily sending the form; you may withdraw it at any time by asking us to delete your message (see "Your Rights" below).
Retention. Contact-form messages and the email correspondence that follows are kept for no longer than 24 months from the date of last reply, after which they are deleted from our mailbox. Submissions stored by Netlify on its own platform are subject to Netlify's retention policy, summarised at netlify.com/privacy.
What the Leaderboard collects. The leaderboard is optional: a score is only ever submitted if you type three initials and press "Save score" on the results screen. When you do, we store the three characters you chose (letters and digits only — free-text nicknames are not permitted), your score, how many questions you answered correctly, your best streak, the time of submission, and the two-letter country code your browser request arrived from. We do not store your name, email address, or IP address alongside a score. If you never press "Save score", nothing leaves your device: your personal best is kept only in your own browser's local storage, which we cannot read.
Abuse prevention. To stop automated score spam, a one-way salted hash of your IP address is written to our storage for a short period when a score is submitted. The raw IP address is never stored, and the hash cannot be used to identify you or to track you across sites. This processing is based on our legitimate interest in keeping the leaderboard usable (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)).
Removing a leaderboard entry. Tell us the three initials and which board they appear on via the Contact form and we will delete the entry.
Other technical data. Beyond the Contact form and the leaderboard, we do not directly collect any personally identifiable information. The third-party services we use (described below) may collect certain technical data such as:
We use Google AdSense to display advertisements on this website. Google AdSense uses cookies and similar tracking technologies to serve ads based on your prior visits to our website and other websites on the internet.
Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to our site and/or other sites on the Internet. You may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings.
For more information on how Google uses data when you use our site, please visit: How Google uses data from sites that use our services.
We use Google Analytics 4 ("GA4"), a web-analytics service provided by Google LLC, to understand how many people visit GuessGlobe, which pages they read, and which game modes they use. GA4 helps us decide which articles to write next and which parts of the quiz to improve; it does not affect what you see while you play.
GA4 collects the following information when you visit the site:
GA4 IP-address handling: Google anonymises IP addresses before storing them and does not allow us to view individual IP addresses. Default data-retention is set to fourteen months, after which event-level data is automatically deleted. You can opt out of GA4 entirely by installing the official Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, by enabling "Do Not Track" or "Global Privacy Control" in your browser, or by blocking analytics cookies via your browser's cookie settings. For full detail on what Google does with this data, see the Google Privacy Policy and Google Analytics Safeguarding your Data document.
Cookies are small text files placed on your device by websites you visit. This site uses cookies in the following ways:
You can control and/or delete cookies through your browser settings. Disabling cookies may affect the display of advertisements and our ability to measure aggregate site usage. It will not affect your ability to play the quiz or read articles.
Our website uses the following third-party services which have their own privacy policies:
We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these third-party services.
This website is not directed at children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children, and we do not run accounts, forms, or first-party tracking that would allow us to do so. If you believe a child has somehow provided personal information through a third-party service on our site, please contact us so we can address it. If your jurisdiction requires non-personalised advertising for sites that may attract a young audience, our Google AdSense account is configured to comply with those requirements.
The only data we store ourselves is what you voluntarily submit to the leaderboard. Leaderboard entries (three initials, score, question counts, streak, timestamp, country code) are kept in Netlify's storage until the entry is displaced by higher scores or you ask us to remove it. The salted IP hashes used for abuse prevention are short-lived and are never linked to a score. We hold no user accounts and no other database of personal information. Data collected by the third-party services listed above (such as Google AdSense and Google Analytics 4) is subject to their respective retention policies, which are summarised in the sections above and are outside our direct control.
If you are located in the European Economic Area, you have the following rights regarding personal data processed in connection with your visit:
To exercise these rights in relation to data held by Google, please use the Google Account privacy controls.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes will be reflected on this page with an updated date at the top. Continued use of the website after changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please use our Contact page.