What we collect, why we collect it, and how to make us delete it.
Wiki-Guesser is a Wikipedia guessing game. We collect as little as we can get away with:
The rest of this page is the detail. If anything here is unclear, ask us at wiki.guesser.online@gmail.com and we'll explain it.
Wiki-Guesser is operated by Kyle Maloney. For the purposes of the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation, we are the data controller for the information described below. This policy covers the Wiki-Guesser website and game only.
This is a fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Wikimedia Foundation.
You pick a display name and we generate a random guest ID. Both live in your session record (see Cookies) and are shown to the other players in your room. We create no account and no permanent record of you. When the session expires, it's gone.
We ask those providers for the minimum profile scope and store only what the game needs to show you on a scoreboard:
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Which provider you used (Google or Discord) | To recognise you when you return |
| Your provider account ID | The stable identifier that links you to your rating |
| Your display name | Shown to opponents and on the leaderboard |
| Your avatar image URL | Shown next to your name |
| The date you first signed in | Account housekeeping |
| Whether you have chat switched on or off | So the setting follows you between devices and games |
We do not request or store your email address, contact list, friends, servers, posts, or anything else. We never receive your password. You can revoke our access at any time in your Google account permissions or Discord authorised apps.
If you play ranked matches with an account, we store your rating, games played, and win/loss/draw counts for each ladder, plus one row per completed ranked match recording the mode, both players, the scores, the resulting ratings, and when it finished. This is what makes a ladder a ladder — without it there is no ranking. Casual and private-room games are not recorded.
Chat is relayed in memory to the other players in your room and is not written to a database or log file. We keep no general history of it and cannot go back and read a conversation.
Reported messages are the one exception. When a player uses the report button on a message, that single message is written to our server log so a human can look at it. We record the message text, the display name and account ID of whoever sent it, the display name and account ID of whoever reported it, the room, and the time. Nothing else from the conversation is kept — not the messages around it, and not the messages nobody reported.
We do this to keep the game usable: without it, a report would tell us that something happened but never what. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in protecting players from abuse. Reported messages are deleted with the rest of our server logs, on the schedule in the table below.
You can turn chat off for yourself at any time from your profile or from the chat panel in a game, and the host of a private room can switch it off for everyone in that room.
Our server writes a log line for each web request containing your IP address, the time, the page requested, the response status, and how long it took. We also count requests per IP address in memory to stop one person flooding the service. IP addresses are personal data, and we treat them as such: we use them only to keep the service up and to investigate abuse, and we delete the logs on the schedule below.
We use one cookie and one item of browser local storage. Neither tracks you, and neither is shared with anyone. Because both are strictly necessary to provide a service you asked for, they do not require a consent banner under the ePrivacy Directive — but you should still know they exist:
| Name | Type | Purpose | Expires |
|---|---|---|---|
connect.sid |
Cookie | Keeps you signed in and links you to your game room. Marked HttpOnly and SameSite=Lax, and Secure when served over HTTPS, so it can't be read by scripts or sent from other sites. | 30 days |
wg-theme |
Local storage | Remembers whether you chose light or dark mode. Never sent to our server. | Until you clear it |
We run no advertising, no analytics, and no third-party tracking of any kind. If that ever changes we will update this policy and, where the law requires it, ask for your consent before setting any non-essential cookie.
We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing. It reaches these parties only:
If you are in the UK or EEA, the GDPR requires us to name a lawful basis for each use:
| Data | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Account profile, session, gameplay and ranking data | Performance of a contract — you asked us to run a game for you, and we can't without it. |
| Server logs, rate-limit counters | Legitimate interests — keeping the service available, secure, and free of abuse. We've weighed this against your privacy and limited both what we log and how long we keep it. |
| A chat message someone reported, and who sent and reported it | Legitimate interests — protecting players from abuse and harassment. Only a message a player has explicitly reported is kept, never the surrounding conversation. |
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Session records (including guest names) | 30 days, then deleted automatically |
| Server logs containing IP addresses | 30 days, then deleted automatically |
| Rate-limit counters | Held in memory only; gone on restart |
| Account profile, ratings and match history | Until you delete it — there is a button in your profile — or after 24 months of inactivity, whichever comes first. The inactivity sweep runs automatically every day. |
| Chat messages | Not stored at all — except the one case in the row below |
| A chat message someone reported | Kept in our server logs, then deleted automatically after 30 days |
If you are in the UK or EEA you have the right to access your data, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to receive it in a portable format. Where we rely on legitimate interests, you can object and we will stop unless we have compelling grounds not to.
We extend these same rights to everyone, wherever you live — it would be strange to do otherwise for a game. If you are a California resident, you also have rights under the CCPA/CPRA, including to know what we collect and to request deletion. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined there.
You can delete your account yourself, immediately. Sign in, click your name in the top-right corner to open your profile, and use Delete my account at the bottom. It takes effect the moment you confirm — there is no queue, no grace period, and no soft-delete we could reverse. You do not have to ask us, and you do not have to give a reason.
That erases, in a single database transaction: your profile row (provider, provider ID, display name, avatar URL, signup date), every ladder rating and win/loss record you hold, and every ranked match you played. Because a match record names both players, deleting yours also removes those games from your opponents' histories — we would rather shorten someone's match list than keep your game record against your wishes. Their own rating and win/loss totals are stored separately and are not affected.
For anything else — access, correction, restriction, objection, or a portable copy — email wiki.guesser.online@gmail.com from an account you can demonstrate control of, or tell us your in-game display name and which provider you signed in with. We'll respond within 30 days.
We also delete accounts that have gone 24 months without being used, along with their ratings and match history. This runs as an automatic daily job, not as something we remember to do. Simply signing in counts as using the account and resets the clock.
If you think we've mishandled your data you can complain to your local supervisory authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office. We'd appreciate the chance to fix it first.
Our servers are in the United States. If you access the game from the UK or EEA, your data is transferred there. We rely on the UK/EU Standard Contractual Clauses with our hosting provider as the safeguard for that transfer.
Wiki-Guesser is not intended for children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their data. In some EU countries the age of digital consent is 16 — if you are under the age of consent where you live, please use the game only with a parent or guardian's permission. If you believe a child has given us data, email us and we'll delete it.
We serve the site over HTTPS, mark session cookies HttpOnly and SameSite, apply a strict Content Security Policy, and rate-limit requests. We never handle your password. No system is perfectly secure, and we won't pretend otherwise — but we keep so little data that there is very little to lose.
If we change this policy we'll update the date at the top. If the change is significant — new categories of data, a new third party, or anything involving advertising — we'll say so prominently on the site before it takes effect.
Questions, requests, or complaints: wiki.guesser.online@gmail.com.