Turtle TagPrivacy Policy
The short version, for players and parents:
- No accounts, ads, trackers or cookies. We don't know who you are.
- Your progress is saved only in this browser, on this device.
- The game can send three optional things: a star rating, daily play totals and a crash report. Each is sent only after a grown-up answers a times-table question, and none of them has a name or any typed text in it.
Who we are
Turtle Tag is made by Cameron, based in Australia ("we"). Questions about this policy go to Hello@tidal-robotics.com.
What stays on your device
The game saves your progress in your browser's local storage on this device. It holds your coins, hats, pets, trophies, unlocked arenas, settings, best scores and Daily Challenge results. It never leaves the device, and we can't see it. If you use Back up in Settings, the game saves a copy as a file wherever you choose, so you can restore it on another device. That file stays with you; we never receive it.
The save also holds a skill rating, a number for how well you play. The game uses it for one thing, called Fair games: it picks how good the bots are, so each round is neither too easy nor too hard. The rating:
- stays on the device and is never sent to us
- is never shown as a rank or used for anything else
- can be switched off or wiped in the game under Settings, "Fair games" (Reset skill)
It's on by default because it's part of how the game plays. To delete everything, clear this site's data in your browser settings.
What can be sent, and only after a grown-up says yes
Each of these goes through an "Ask a grown-up" check, a times-table question, before anything is sent. They are sent to our own server on this website's address, with no cookies attached.
| What | Exactly what's sent | What we keep, and for how long |
|---|---|---|
| Star rating (offered after a few rounds, once per save) | 1 to 5 stars and the game version | A running total for each number of stars. There is no record per person. The website shows the totals. |
| Play counts (off unless a grown-up turns them on; the game asks once, after a few rounds) | Once a day: how many rounds were played, won and left early in each mode, how many in each arena, the total time played, how many Daily Challenges, which items were used, whether rounds were played by touch, keyboard or gamepad, and the game version | Running totals per day, plus a count of how many devices sent totals that day. Nothing links one day's totals to another. Turning it off clears anything not yet sent. |
| Crash report (only if the game breaks, sent from Settings) | The error message and the place in the code where it happened (with the page address removed), the game version, the browser family (for example "Chrome"), where in the game it happened, and a replay of that round (the turtles' colours, hats and moves) | One record, deleted automatically after 30 days |
None of these includes a name, an account, an email, typed text, a device id or a location. Unsent items wait on the device, at most 10 of them, until there's a connection.
IP addresses
Like any website, our server sees the IP address of the device that connects to it. We never store it. To stop abuse, we turn it into a one-way code that only counts how often requests arrive, and that code is never stored either. We've turned off request logging on our server.
Children
Turtle Tag is made for all ages, including children under 13. It's designed so that we don't collect personal information from children:
- there's no chat and no typed text
- there are no names, accounts or profiles
- anything sent needs a grown-up's check first
We follow the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the UK Age Appropriate Design Code: privacy is set high by default, there's no tracking, and nothing is designed to keep children playing longer.
Who else is involved
- Hosting: the website, the game and our small server all run on Cloudflare. It handles connections for us and may see IP addresses as part of delivering the page. It doesn't receive any of the data above for its own use.
- Website visits: this website (not the game) uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits: which pages are viewed, roughly which country, and the type of device. It uses no cookies, doesn't follow you to other sites and builds no profile of you.
- Fonts and images: everything is served from this site. Nothing else loads from other companies.
- We never sell or share data, and there's no advertising of any kind.
Turtle Tag Plus (when it's available)
Plus is an optional one-time purchase, made by a grown-up behind the same check. Payment is handled by Stripe, which receives the buyer's payment details and email address under its own privacy policy. We receive only:
- the buyer's email address, to send the receipt and help with refunds
- a record that the purchase happened
We never ask a child for an email. To have the email deleted, write to Hello@tidal-robotics.com. Payment records are kept only for as long as the law requires (for example, Australian tax law), then deleted.
Your rights
You can ask what we hold about you, or ask us to correct or delete it, by emailing Hello@tidal-robotics.com. For most people the answer is "nothing", because ratings and play counts are only totals and can't be traced back to anyone. You can also complain to a privacy regulator: in Australia, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC); in the UK, the ICO; in the EU, your country's data protection authority.
Changes to this policy
If we change what the game collects, we'll update this page and its date first. Anything new will be off until a grown-up turns it on.