Privacy Policy

1.Who we are

The Great Otter Dam is a small, free, browser-based spelling game at otterdam.app, built by an individual. There is no company collecting your data behind the scenes.

2.What we do not collect

• Names, email addresses, phone numbers, or any other contact information.
• Your child's age, school, location, or photo.
• Account credentials (we don't have accounts).
• Tracking cookies, advertising IDs, or cross-site identifiers.
• Microphone, camera, or location permissions.

3.What we do store on your device

The game saves your child's progress to the browser's local storage on your device. This includes which chapter and level they're on, the words they've practiced, their best streak, and their player card name (an auto-generated nickname like "Brave Otter 042", never their real name).

This local storage is invisible to us — it never leaves your device. Clearing your browser data will erase it, and re-installing the game means starting fresh.

4.Analytics

We use Plausible Analytics — a privacy-respecting, cookie-free analytics service. Plausible counts anonymous, aggregate pageviews and a small set of in-game events (which chapters get played, which features kids use) so we can make the game better. Plausible does not set cookies, does not collect personal data, and does not profile individual users. It is GDPR-compliant by default. We never see who your child is or what they spelled — just how the game gets used, in aggregate.

The full list of in-game events we track: chapter starts and completions · level completions · which settings get changed · hint and reveal usage · friend-card share, import, and decrypt outcomes · which badges get unlocked · which companion (Pebble or Axel) kids pick · frustration-modal appearances · "Hear it" button taps · whether the experimental Web Audio API path is enabled. Each event carries at most an aggregate prop like a chapter number. Never word text, never identifying information.

For Plausible's own data-handling commitments, see their privacy policy and data policy.

5.Friend cards

When your child shares a player card with a friend, the card data — auto-generated nickname, chapter, streak, companion choice — is encrypted on your device with a 6-digit code, then travels entirely inside the share URL. Nothing about it touches our server. The friend types in the code (delivered separately, by text/voice/note) and the friend's device decrypts the card locally.

The encryption uses AES-GCM with a key derived from the 6-digit code via PBKDF2 (standard browser crypto, no third-party libraries). The 6-digit code is casual privacy — it stops accidental forwarding and casual interception, not a determined offline attacker. We think that's the right ceiling for "a child's word stats," and we'd rather tell you exactly what it is than oversell it.

If your child receives a friend card, the friend's data sits in your child's local roster (max 12 friends). It's stored only on your device. We never see it.

6.Audio files

The game loads audio (narration, word pronunciation, music) from our content server as needed. Like every website, our server keeps standard access logs. We use them only in aggregate — to keep things running and to publish anonymous totals such as the most-practiced words or how many chapters have been explored. Anything we publish is a combined total with no IP addresses and nothing that identifies your child; we don't build per-user profiles and we don't share the logs.

7.Children & COPPA

The Great Otter Dam is designed for children. We don't collect personal information from children — no names, no accounts, no contact details — and progress stays on your child's own device. The only data we use is anonymous and aggregate (see sections 4 and 6), used to keep the game running and improving. Because we don't collect personal information from children, COPPA's parental-consent requirements don't apply here.

If you believe we've inadvertently collected personal information from your child, please reach out and we'll delete it. (See "Contact" below.)

8.Third-party services

Apart from Plausible Analytics — the privacy-respecting, cookie-free analytics described in §4 above — the game loads no other third-party scripts. No ad networks, no social-media trackers, no third-party widgets, no profiling SDKs.

9.Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top of this page. Since we don't have email addresses on file, we can't send notifications — material changes will be flagged on the home page for at least 30 days.

10.Contact

We don't currently publish a contact email (no email = no email collection). If you need to reach us, we'll add a contact channel here as soon as one exists. Until then, please assume the answer to "is The Great Otter Dam collecting my child's data?" is no.