LadderWords is a daily word puzzle made by a small team in the
United Kingdom. We design our games to collect as little personal information as possible.
Local device storage: your current game state, streaks, settings,
and a random identifier are stored directly on your device. We do not use
third-party tracking or advertising cookies.
Gameplay and diagnostics: when you play, we receive pseudonymous
gameplay metrics, tagged with that random identifier: the words you play,
puzzle progress, completion times and results, and how a puzzle felt if
you tell us. We also receive technical
diagnostics: error reports, device type, country-level location, and the
site that linked you here. We use this to balance puzzle difficulty,
troubleshoot issues and build aggregate community statistics.
Account information (optional): if you choose to sign in to sync
your stats across devices, we collect your email address (or Apple relay
address) and your daily results: the date and time you finished, your steps
and solve time. Sign-in is available for users aged 13 and older. To prevent
sign-in abuse, we keep a scrambled form of your IP address for about a
day.
Direct communications: if you contact us for support, we receive
your email address, your message, and any diagnostic identifiers you choose
to include.
2. Legal basis for processing
We process your data under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK
GDPR), relying on:
Contractual necessity: to provide account synchronisation when you
choose to sign in.
Legitimate interests: to keep the game stable, balance puzzle
difficulty, analyse aggregate community performance, prevent sign-in abuse,
and respond to player enquiries.
3. Data sharing and storage
We do not sell, rent or share personal data with advertisers or data
brokers.
We share data only with essential service providers (such as cloud
hosting, database management and transactional email) solely to operate the
game. Where service providers process data outside the UK, appropriate
safeguards are in place.
4. Data retention
Telemetry and logs: pseudonymous gameplay events and diagnostic
logs are retained for up to 18 months, after which they are deleted or
anonymised into permanent aggregate puzzle statistics.
Account data: account details and sync history are kept until you
delete your account. You can do that at any time: on the web under Your stats
▸ Delete account, in the app under Settings ▸ Account ▸ Delete account. Copies
in our backups expire 30 days later.
Support emails: kept in our inbox only for as long as needed to
resolve your issue.
5. Your choices and rights
Turn off usage data: you can turn off gameplay metrics, error
reports and web analytics for this browser at any time using the control
below. Your choice is stored on this device, and account sync keeps working
if you are signed in.
Your rights: under UK data protection law, you have the right to
request access to, correction of, deletion of, restriction of and a portable
copy of your personal data, and the right to object to processing.
Contact and complaints: to exercise your rights, email
[email protected].
Changes
If what we collect ever changes, this page changes first, and the date at
the top moves.