This explains what Crack the Dial stores, what it counts, and what it does not do. It is deliberately short, because the honest answer is short.
Last updated: 21 September 2026
1. Your game stays on your device
There is no account, no login and no server holding your game. Your streak, your saga progress, your coins and your settings are stored by your browser, on your device, and we never see them. If you clear your browser data they are gone, and we cannot restore them for you, which is exactly why Settings has a Back up button.
The one thing that leaves your device is the anonymous count in section 3, and it never includes your game.
2. What is stored, in plain English
- Which puzzles you have played, whether you won, and how long you took.
- Your streak, and which days a streak freeze covered or you won back.
- Your saga progress, coins, lives and boosters.
- Your settings: sound, haptics, whether you have seen the rules, and whether usage stats are on.
- Counts of plays, wins and fails per level. These are used only to offer you a skip when a level is beating you, and they never leave your device.
- Which days you have opened the game, and the first day you did. That is how we work out whether people come back, which is the one number that tells us if the game is any good. It is a list of dates and nothing else: no times, no sessions, no device details.
Your browser also keeps a copy of the game itself so it works offline. That is a cache, not a record of you.
3. Anonymous usage stats
To know whether anyone is playing, and whether a change made the game better or worse, we count how it is used. This is on unless you switch it off.
What is counted:
- Which screens you open, such as today's code, the menu or the Boss Code.
- Eleven moments: opening today's code, starting it, winning or losing it, winning or losing the Hard Code or the Boss Code, sharing a result, opening the game on a day, and coming back to the game on a new day.
- Opening the game and coming back are each counted as a single yes, at most once a day. They never say which days you played, how many, or how long you were away.
- If you opened the game from a link we labelled for a particular post, such as one on Reddit, which post that was. That label is the only part of a web address that is ever sent, and it is counted once per visit.
- What any visit to a website carries: the site you came from, your screen size, your browser's language, your browser and type of device, and a rough location (country, region and city) worked out from your connection's IP address.
What is never counted: your guesses, the answers, your streak or progress, your backup, or anything that says who you are. The stats use no cookies and store nothing on your device apart from your choice in Settings.
Why: only to see how many people play and which parts of the game work, so we can improve it. Never for adverts, never to build a profile of anyone, and never sold.
Who handles it: Umami (Umami Software, Inc.) counts the visits for us and keeps the stats in the European Union. Umami may use them only to provide that service to us. Your IP address is used for the rough location and is not stored. Umami keeps a record of each visit, labelled with a code it generates rather than your name, IP address or any account, for six months. We only ever look at the totals.
How to switch it off: in the game, open Settings and turn off 📈 Anonymous usage stats. Nothing more is counted from this device from that moment, and it costs you nothing in the game. If your browser sends a Do Not Track signal, nothing is counted either.
There is no pop-up asking first because UK rules allow counting like this without one, as long as it is used only as totals to improve the game and is easy to switch off. Where the stats count as personal data, our lawful basis is legitimate interests: knowing whether the game works, in a way that does not identify you.
4. What we do not do
- No tracking across sites or apps. The per-level counts and the list of days in section 2 are worked out on your device and stay there.
- One third-party script, Umami's, for the stats in section 3, and nothing else. It sends nothing while the stats are switched off.
- No advertising cookies or identifiers.
- No selling of anything, and nothing shared beyond Umami counting the stats for us.
- No email address, name, or payment details, because we do not ask for any.
5. The backup file
Backing up writes a file to your own device. It contains your game data and nothing else. It is yours: we never receive it, and restoring reads it straight back into your browser.
6. Children
The game is for players aged 13 and over. The usage stats in section 3 are the same for every player and never say who anyone is. Beyond them, we collect nothing about anyone, of any age.
7. When accounts arrive
Not yet, and not without telling you. We plan to let you save your progress across devices, which will mean storing your game data on a server and, if you choose, an email address to sign back in. It will always be optional, today's puzzle will never sit behind it, and this page will be rewritten before any of it goes live.
8. When ads arrive
Not yet. This version of the game shows no ads, and no ad network is connected. If that changes, the ads will be served by a third party who will set their own cookies or identifiers and have their own privacy notice, and we will say who they are on this page before a single ad runs.
9. Your rights
UK data protection law gives you rights over personal data held about you: to see it, correct it, delete it, object to its use, or complain. Everything the game knows about your play is already in your hands, on your device, and you can erase all of it at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser, or from Settings.
The usage stats carry nothing that tells us which visits were yours, so we cannot pick yours out to show or delete them. The switch in Settings stops any more being counted. You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
10. Who we are, and how to reach us
Crack the Dial is run by a sole trader based in the United Kingdom. Contact: hello@crackthedial.com.
11. Changes
The date at the top always shows the current version. If we ever start collecting something new, we will change this page before we start, not after.