Privacy policy
Effective October 22, 2026
The short version. Genius Arcade is a set of learning games for kids aged 9 to 15. We collect as little as we can, keep it on our own server, and never sell it or use it for ads.
- No ads, no ad networks, no third-party trackers or cookies.
- Kids never give us their name, email, birthday, photo or location. Kids can't chat or message.
- Only parents (and, later, teachers) have accounts. A kid's profile is a nickname, a cartoon avatar and an age band, created by their parent.
- For each answer in a game we save the skill, whether it was right, and how long it took. That's it.
- Parents can see everything we hold about their kids and delete it at any time.
This policy explains what Genius Arcade (“we”) collects on geniusarcade.com and in our games, why, and the choices you have. We wrote it to follow the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Family accounts are not open yet; the sections about them describe exactly how they will work, so you can read this before you sign up.
1. Playing without an account
Anyone, including teachers playing on a classroom projector, can play our games without an account. When you do:
- We don't ask for any personal information and we don't set cookies.
- Scores and progress stay in the browser tab and are gone when you close it. Nothing about the game is sent to us.
- We count page visits to learn which pages are useful: just the page address and the day, added to a running total. We don't record IP addresses, device IDs or anything that identifies a visitor, and we don't use cookies for this.
- Our web server does not keep access logs of visitors.
2. The waitlist
Parents and teachers can join our waitlist. We store the email address you give us, whether you are a parent or a teacher, and the date. We use it only to email you about Genius Arcade launching and opening up family plans. To be removed, email privacy@geniusarcade.com and we'll delete your address. The waitlist is for adults: kids should not sign up.
3. Parent accounts
A parent account holds the following, and nothing else:
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your email address | To sign you in with a one-time link, and to send account and consent emails. |
| Your Google account ID, if you choose “Continue with Google” | To recognise you when you sign in with Google. We ask Google only for your email address. |
| Your consent record (date and policy version) | To show that you agreed to your kids' profiles, as COPPA requires. |
| An optional 4-digit parent PIN, stored only in scrambled (hashed) form | To keep kids out of the parent area. |
| A sign-in cookie | To keep you signed in on your device. It's our own cookie and is never shared. |
We don't use passwords. When you sign in by email, we send a link that works once and expires after 20 minutes.
4. Kids' profiles
Kids don't have accounts. A parent creates up to four profiles under their own account. Each profile holds:
- A nickname chosen by the parent (please don't use your kid's full real name).
- An avatar picked from our own cartoon characters. Photos can't be uploaded.
- An age band (9–10, 11–12 or 13–15) to suggest the right level. Never a birthday.
- An optional 4-digit PIN, stored only in hashed form, so brothers and sisters can't play on each other's profiles.
- Game progress: for each answer, the game, the skill (for example “Spanish verbs” or “multiply and divide”), whether it was right, how many seconds it took, and when.
We never collect a kid's real name, email, phone number, birthday, address, school, photo, voice, location, contacts or advertising ID. There is no chat, no messaging between players and no public leaderboard.
Parental consent
Before any kid profile can be created, the parent signs in, reads a short summary of the list above and gives consent. We then email the parent to confirm. If you get that email and didn't set up the account, tell us and we'll delete everything.
Your rights as a parent
- See everything we hold about each of your kids, at any time, in the parent area.
- Delete a kid's progress, or the whole profile, at any time. It is deleted right away.
- Withdraw consent and stop us collecting anything more, by deleting the profiles or your whole account.
- Ask us anything at privacy@geniusarcade.com.
We never make a kid share more information than a game needs as a condition of playing.
5. How we use information
- To run the games and save each kid's progress.
- To show parents how their kids are doing.
- To improve our games, using totals across many players (for example, which questions are hardest).
- To keep the service secure.
We do not sell or rent information, show ads, build advertising profiles, or let other companies track anyone on our site.
6. Who else sees it
Nobody, except the few service providers we need to run Genius Arcade, who may only use it to provide that service to us:
- Hetzner rents us the server our site and database run on, in Helsinki, Finland.
- An email delivery service sends sign-in and account emails to parents. It receives the parent's email address and the message, never kids' information. We'll name it here before accounts open.
- Google, only if a parent chooses “Continue with Google”. Google then knows you signed in to Genius Arcade.
- Stripe will handle payments when paid plans open. Card details go straight to Stripe and never touch our server.
We will share information if the law requires it, for example a valid court order.
7. How long we keep it
- Kids' profiles and progress: until the parent deletes them or the account.
- Parent accounts: until you delete your account.
- Waitlist emails: until you ask us to remove them, or once the waitlist is no longer needed.
- Nightly database backups are kept for 14 days and then deleted, so deleted data is gone from backups within 14 days.
- Unused sign-in links expire after 20 minutes.
8. Security
Everything travels over HTTPS. PINs and sign-in tokens are stored only in hashed form. The database is not reachable from the internet, and only the app can read it. No system is perfect, but we keep what we hold small, so there is little to lose.
9. Teachers
Teachers can play every game in class without any account, and students never sign up. Teacher accounts, when they come, will hold only the teacher's email, and we'll update this policy first.
10. Changes to this policy
If we change what we collect about kids, we'll email parents and ask for consent again before collecting it. For other changes we'll update the date at the top of this page.
11. Contact
Questions, requests or worries: privacy@geniusarcade.com. We reply within a few days.