Privacy policy
Last updated 26 July 2026
The short version
No accounts, no cookies, no advertising network, no trackers. One thing does leave your device: whether you got each pairing right, so the game can tell everyone what the crowd picked. It is sent without anything identifying you.
What stays on your device
Your completed rounds, streak, best endless run, and theme preference are kept in your browser's local storage. That data stays with you. We do not transmit it and have no way to read it. Clearing your browser data erases it permanently, including your streak.
What is sent, and why
When you finish a round, the game sends ten true-or-false values: whether each pairing was answered correctly. That is what produces the “62% got this right” figure shown to everyone else. It does not include which topics you saw, how long you took, or anything about you.
Alongside it goes a random identifier generated in your browser. Its only purpose is to stop one browser counting itself repeatedly by refreshing. It is not derived from your device, your network, or anything about you, and it is not a fingerprint: clearing site data produces a new one, and nothing connects the two.
What gets stored is a running tally per pairing: how many people got it right, and how many answered. Individual submissions are not retained, so there is no record to link back to anyone even in principle.
There are no accounts. We never ask for your name, email address, or any other personal detail, so we hold none.
Cookies
TopicTap sets no cookies at all. Local storage is not a cookie and is not transmitted with requests. Because nothing here tracks you across sites, there is no consent banner to click past.
Sponsorship
The game may be supported by a single named sponsor, shown at the end of a round. A sponsor is a static link written into the site: no third-party advertising script runs on this site, so no advertising network can profile you here. A sponsor receives aggregate figures only, such as how many rounds were played. They never receive anything about an individual player, because we do not have it.
Following a sponsor's link takes you to their site, where their own privacy policy applies.
Hosting and logs
The site is hosted on Netlify, which keeps standard server logs including IP address and user agent for security and abuse prevention. That is ordinary web-server operation and is governed by Netlify's own privacy policy. The stats tallies are held in a Postgres database containing nothing beyond the counts described above.
Where the data comes from
Pageview figures are published by the Wikimedia Foundation through its public API and are about Wikipedia articles, not about you. Article text and descriptions come from Wikipedia, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence. Every topic links back to its source.
Children
TopicTap is not directed at children under 13 and knowingly collects no personal information from anyone, of any age.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a change ever means more data leaving your device, it will be announced on the site before it takes effect.
Contact
Questions can go to privacy@topictap.com.