Privacy at NewsWords

What the app stores while you play, and what happens when you follow a source story.

Playing on your device.

Puzzle progress, preferences, saved stories and completed results are stored in your browser’s local storage. Clearing that storage removes those records. There is no payment or account requirement to play, and automatic cross-device sync is not part of this launch.

Site delivery.

Cloudflare hosts the site and processes requests to deliver its pages and puzzles. Service logs may include request metadata needed to operate and troubleshoot the site. Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which receives the associated font requests. We have not added advertising or third-party marketing analytics to this release.

Reviewer access.

The reviewer area uses a secure, HttpOnly session cookie that expires after eight hours. Submitted reviewer names, review decisions and approvals are retained with the edition as editorial records. Reviewer access keys are not saved in browser local storage.

Other websites.

Source-story links take you to the publisher’s site, whose own privacy and subscription policies apply. The issue-reporting link opens GitHub. No puzzle progress is attached to those links.

Removing local data.

Use your browser’s site-data settings to clear NewsWords data on that device. This does not delete a published edition or its editorial record.