Privacy Policy

NerdCircle is operated by Cozmic Ltd, a company registered in England. For anything privacy-related you can reach us at info@nerdcircle.co. For UK GDPR purposes, Cozmic Ltd is the data controller for NerdCircle.

• •Account details — your email address, and (if you sign in with Google) the name and profile picture Google shares with us. If you sign up with a password, we never see the password itself; it's stored hashed by our authentication provider.
• •Game activity — the games you create or join, the word circles you upload, the words you submit, timestamps, and your scores.
• •Leaderboard stats — totals derived from finished games (games won, words found, pangrams, longest word).
• •Technical data — standard server and security logs from our hosting provider, such as IP address and browser type, used to keep the service running and to prevent abuse.

• •To create your account and sign you in (necessary to provide the service you asked for).
• •To run games: rebuild the circle, check words, count scores and crown a winner.
• •To send you service emails — invite notifications, sign-in links, email confirmations and password resets. These come from our own sending domain, notify.nerdcircle.co.
• •To show all-time leaderboards, which is part of how the game works (our legitimate interest in providing a competitive game).
• •To keep the service secure and prevent cheating or abuse.

We do not sell your data, and we do not use it for advertising or profiling.

NerdCircle is a social game, so some things are visible to others by design:

• •Your display name and avatar are visible to other signed-in players.
• •While a game is running, other players see only your score — never your words. When the game ends, everyone in that game sees all the words that were found.
• •Your display name, avatar and totals can appear on the public all-time leaderboards.

Your email address is never shown to other players. If you'd rather not be identifiable, change your display name to something anonymous.

We don't run advertising or analytics cookies. We store a sign-in token so you stay logged in, and a small preference in your browser's local storage for your chosen sound effect. Clearing your browser storage signs you out and resets that preference.

We use a small number of service providers to run NerdCircle, and they only process data on our instructions:

• •Our hosting, database and authentication provider, which stores your account and game data.
• •Our email delivery provider, which sends invites and account emails on our behalf.
• •Dictionary and language services used to check whether a submitted word is real. Only the individual word is sent — never your identity.
• •Google, if you choose to sign in with Google.

Some of these providers may process data outside the UK/EEA. Where that happens, transfers are covered by the safeguards those providers offer, such as standard contractual clauses. We may also disclose data where we're legally required to.

We keep your account and game history for as long as your account exists, because past games feed the leaderboards. Delete your account and we'll delete your profile, your games' player records and the words attached to you. Backups and security logs age out on our providers' normal schedules.

Under UK GDPR you can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict how we use it, or object to our use of it. You can also withdraw consent to marketing-style emails at any time using the unsubscribe link — service emails such as password resets will still be sent while you have an account.

Email info@nerdcircle.co and we'll deal with it within one month. If you're not happy with how we've handled it, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

NerdCircle isn't intended for children under 13. If you believe a child has created an account, email us and we'll remove it.

If we change this policy we'll update the date at the top of this page, and tell you in the app if the change is significant.