Privacy Policy

1. Who we are and what this policy covers

Queens Game is a free online logic puzzle site published at queensgame.online. This Privacy Policy explains what information is collected when you visit the site, who collects it, why, and what choices you have. It applies to every page on queensgame.online, including the daily challenge, the puzzle archive and all generated puzzle pages.

We have tried to write this in plain language rather than legal boilerplate. If anything here is unclear, you are welcome to email us at [email protected] and we will explain it.

2. Information you give us directly

None is required. Queens Game does not have user accounts, does not ask you to register, and does not request your name, email address, postal address, phone number or payment details in order to play. You can use every puzzle on the site without identifying yourself in any way.

The only time we receive personal information is when you choose to send it — for example, if you email us a question or a bug report. In that case we use your message and email address solely to reply to you, and we do not add you to any mailing list.

3. Information collected automatically

Like nearly all websites, our hosting provider and the third parties listed below automatically receive certain technical information when a page loads. This typically includes your IP address, browser type and version, device type, operating system, referring page, and the date and time of your request. This information is used to deliver the page, keep the site secure, and understand aggregate traffic patterns.

We do not attempt to combine this technical information with any other data in order to identify you personally.

4. Cookies, local storage and similar technologies

A cookie is a small text file that a website or its partners place on your device. Related technologies — local storage, session storage and advertising identifiers — work in a similar way. Queens Game uses these in two distinct ways, and it is worth separating them clearly.

First, on our own behalf: your puzzle progress, completion history, streaks, chosen colour palette and light/dark theme preference are saved in your browser's local storage on your own device. That data stays on your device, is never transmitted to our servers, and can be erased at any time by clearing your browser's site data. We do not use our own cookies to track you across other websites.

Second, on behalf of advertising partners: because this site is supported by advertising, our third-party advertising partners set and read their own cookies and identifiers in your browser. Those are described in the next section, and they are the main reason this policy exists.

5. Advertising, Google AdSense and third-party cookies

Queens Game is free to play and is funded by display advertising. We use Google AdSense to serve those advertisements. This means third parties, including Google, place cookies and similar identifiers on your device and read them when you visit this site and other sites across the web.

Specifically, and as required by Google's publisher policies: Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this site. Google's use of advertising cookies — including the DoubleClick DART cookie — enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and/or other sites on the Internet. These cookies may be used to measure ad performance, limit the number of times you are shown the same advertisement, and detect invalid clicks and fraud.

Third-party vendors and ad networks other than Google may also serve advertisements on this site and may likewise use cookies or web beacons to do so. We do not control these third parties' cookies, and their use of your information is governed by their own privacy policies rather than this one.

We never transmit personally identifying information — such as your name or email address — to advertising networks, and we do not place personal data in the URLs or page parameters that are passed to ad requests.

6. How to control or opt out of personalised advertising

You have several independent ways to limit or switch off personalised advertising, and none of them require an account with us.

You may opt out of Google's use of advertising cookies for personalised ads by visiting Google's Ads Settings at https://www.google.com/settings/ads. You may opt out of personalised advertising from many other participating vendors at https://www.aboutads.info/choices and https://optout.networkadvertising.org. You can also block or delete cookies entirely through your browser's own settings, and most browsers offer a private or incognito mode that discards them automatically.

Opting out of personalised advertising does not remove advertising from the site. It means the advertisements you see will be selected from general, non-personalised criteria such as the content of the page and your approximate location, rather than from a profile of your browsing history. More information about how Google uses data when you use its partners' sites is available at https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

7. Analytics

We use Plausible Analytics to understand aggregate traffic — page views, referring sites, and broad browser, device and country information. Plausible is a privacy-focused, cookieless analytics service: it does not set cookies, does not assign persistent identifiers to visitors, and does not collect personally identifiable information. It is used only to tell us which puzzles and pages are popular.

Analytics data is aggregated and cannot be used by us to identify an individual visitor. It is kept separate from advertising, and we do not supply it to advertising networks.

8. If you are in the European Economic Area, the UK or Switzerland

Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, our legal basis for processing differs by purpose. Delivering the site and keeping it secure rests on our legitimate interest in operating a functioning website. Storing your puzzle progress on your own device is necessary to provide the feature you have asked for. Personalised advertising and any other non-essential cookies rest on your consent: where a consent management platform is presented to you, your choices there govern which advertising cookies may be set, and you may change or withdraw those choices at any time. You can also withdraw consent at any point by clearing your browser's site data or by using the opt-out controls in section 6.

You have the right to request access to the personal data held about you, to request correction or erasure, to object to or restrict processing, and to data portability. Because we operate no accounts and hold no user database, in most cases we simply do not hold any personal data about you to disclose — the data described in section 5 is held by our advertising partners, and requests concerning it should be directed to them. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your national data protection authority.

9. If you are in California or another US state with privacy laws

We do not sell personal information for money. Some US state privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the CPRA, define "sale" and "sharing" broadly enough to include the use of third-party advertising cookies for cross-context behavioural advertising. To the extent that definition applies, you may opt out using the advertising controls described in section 6, and by enabling a Global Privacy Control signal in a browser that supports it.

Depending on your state, you may also have the right to know what personal information is collected about you, to request its deletion or correction, and not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights. Requests may be sent to [email protected].

10. Children's privacy

Queens Game is a general-audience puzzle site. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information — for instance by emailing us — please contact us and we will delete it.

11. Data retention, security and transfers

We do not operate a user database, so there is no stored profile to retain. Data saved in your browser's local storage remains on your device until you clear it. Email correspondence is retained only as long as needed to resolve your query. Server logs held by our hosting provider are retained for a short period for security and troubleshooting.

The site is served over HTTPS, so traffic between your browser and the site is encrypted in transit. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. Our hosting and advertising partners operate internationally, which means the technical data described above may be processed in countries other than your own, including the United States, under those providers' own safeguards.

12. Third-party links

The site contains links to external websites that we do not operate. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of those sites, and this policy does not apply to them. We encourage you to read the privacy policy of any site you visit from here.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as the site changes or as legal requirements evolve. The "last updated" date at the top of this page always reflects the current version, and material changes will be signposted on the page itself. Continuing to use the site after an update constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

14. Contact us

Questions, privacy requests or corrections can be sent to [email protected] and we aim to reply within a few working days. You can also reach us through the contact page, which lists what to include so we can help you quickly.