Privacy policy

What we do not collect

This list is about us. Google's advertising is covered separately further down.

• The letters you enter. These are processed entirely in your browser.
• Accounts. There is no sign-up, so there is no name, email or password.
• Search history. Nothing is associated with you across visits.
• Personal information of any kind, unless you choose to email us.

What is stored on your device

Two things, both of them local to your browser and neither of them readable by us.

• The word list, cached in IndexedDB. Once downloaded it is kept so that later searches need no network at all. Clearing your browser's site data removes it, and the site will simply download it again next time.
• Your light or dark preference, in local storage. A single value recording which theme you picked, so the site does not forget between visits.

Neither is a tracking cookie and neither leaves your device. If you use a private window they are discarded when you close it, and the site works normally without them.

Google's advertising does set its own cookies, which is separate from the two above and is covered in the advertising section below. Your consent choice is also stored on your device so you are not asked again on every page.

Server logs

Like any website, our host records that a request was made: the page requested, the time, the browser's user agent string and the originating IP address. This is ordinary web server logging, it is what makes it possible to notice an outage or an attack, and it is not linked to anything you searched for, because your searches never generate a request.

Advertising

This site carries advertising from Google AdSense, which is how it stays free to use. That means a third party is involved, and it is worth being clear about exactly what that changes and what it does not.

What Google can do

• Set cookies on your device. Google and its partners use these to limit how often you see the same advert, to measure whether an advert worked, and, if you have agreed to it, to choose adverts based on your interests.
• See the usual technical details of your visit. Your IP address, browser, device type and which page the advert appeared on. This is how any advert on any website works.
• Use information from your previous visits to this and other sites to select adverts, where you have consented to personalised advertising.

What Google cannot do

It cannot see the letters you search for. That is not a promise about Google's conduct, it is a consequence of how the site is built: the solver runs on your device and the letters never become part of any request, so there is nothing for an advertising script to observe. The address bar shows the letters on some pages, and a page address is visible to advertising scripts as it is on every website, but the searches you type into the box are not transmitted anywhere.

Your choices

If you are in the UK or the EEA you will be asked for your advertising preferences before any personalised advert is shown, and you can change that choice at any time. You can also review and restrict what Google does at Google My Ad Center, or opt out of personalised advertising entirely at Google Ads Settings.

Declining personalised adverts does not lock you out of anything here. Every tool on the site works identically either way, and you will still see adverts, just less specific ones.

Google's own explanation of how it uses data from sites that run its adverts is in its partner sites policy, which governs that processing rather than this page does.

If you email us

We keep the message so we can reply and, where it reports a missing word or a bug, so we can act on it. We do not add you to a mailing list, because there is not one. Ask us to delete a message and we will.

Children

We collect nothing from anyone, of any age, and that includes children. Teachers using the scramble maker for classroom worksheets can be confident that nothing a pupil types is transmitted or retained: the solver runs on the device in front of them.

The honest caveat is the advertising. This is a general-audience site rather than one aimed at children, but adverts are served by Google and are subject to Google's own rules and to whatever consent choice has been made on that device. If a class is using the site, a school-managed browser with advertising blocked is the cleanest way to be certain.

Your rights

The UK GDPR, the EU GDPR and rules such as the CCPA give you the right to see, correct or delete the personal data a site holds about you. In our case the answer is that we hold none, beyond an email you may have sent us. If you would like that confirmed in writing, or a message deleted, get in touch and we will do it.

Data held by Google as a result of the advertising is a separate matter, because we are not the controller of it and cannot reach into it. Those requests go to Google directly, through your Google account or its privacy tools.

Changes

Any material change will be reflected in the date at the top of this page. We will not quietly start collecting something and leave this text as it stands.