privacy

what we store

• a player record. a random id and a friend code. if you make an account, also your chosen username, and either a salted, one-way hash of your password (never the password itself) or your google account id.
• your rounds. for each day you play: when the round started, how many clues you revealed, where you put your pin (and the place name if you picked one from search), the distance, the time taken and your score.
• friend links between you and anyone you swapped friend codes with.
• a sign-in session. we store a fingerprint of your session token, never the token itself.

we don’t collect your email address, real name, photo, contacts or location. we don’t sell or share data.

what other players can see

leaderboards show your username (or “guest” plus four characters), and for each day your score, distance from the answer, clues used and time taken. they never show where you put your pin.

signing in with google

if you choose “continue with google”, we ask google only for basic profile access. we keep your google account id so we can recognise you next time. we read your first name once, to suggest a username, and don’t store it separately. that suggested username starts with your first name (like “alex-4821”) and shows on leaderboards, so change it on your page if you’d rather it didn’t. we never see your google password or email.

cookies and browser storage

• ew_session: keeps you signed in (as a guest or an account). essential; lasts up to 400 days.
• ew_google: a single-use security cookie during google sign-in. deleted when sign-in finishes, or after 10 minutes.
• ew_admin: only for site editors.
• your browser’s local storage keeps today’s unsubmitted pin so a reload doesn’t lose it. it never leaves your device.

there are no advertising, analytics or third-party tracking cookies.

we count visits with cloudflare web analytics, which uses no cookies and doesn’t identify you: it records things like which page was loaded and how fast, not who loaded it.

services we rely on

• openstreetmap serves the map tiles straight to your browser, so their servers see your ip address, as with any website. place search goes through our server to openstreetmap’s nominatim service; they see the words you search for, not who you are.
• google, only if you choose to sign in with it.
• cloudflare hosts the site and its visit counts, and neon hosts the database; both store the data above on our behalf.
• fonts are served from our own site, so no font service sees your visit. questions are prepared in advance; no player data is ever sent to an ai service.

how long we keep it

your rounds and account stay until you delete them, so your history and streaks keep working. a guest who never comes back still has a record; it’s anonymous unless you added a username.

your choices

• delete everything yourself at the bottom of your page. it removes your player record, rounds, friend links and sessions immediately, and your rows disappear from every leaderboard.
• sign out, or clear this site’s cookies, at any time.
• to ask what we hold about you, or anything else: hello@elsewhere.day.

children

elsewhere is a general-audience game and doesn’t knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. guests can play without giving any.

last updated 10 october 2026. if this changes in a meaningful way, we’ll update this page and the date.