Privacy

Last updated October 21, 2026. Applies to ducklark.com and the Ducklark Games phone apps: Stepword, Garden Solitaire and Rewind.

The short version: our games have no accounts, we don't ask who you are, and your progress stays on your own device. On the website we count visits and a few anonymous daily totals, never who you are. If you choose to put a score on a day's board, the only thing we keep about you is the name you type for it.

What the games keep

Each game saves its own small record on your device: today's puzzle progress, your streak, the days you've played and your best scores (for your stats), and settings such as the theme, the table colour or relaxed mode. On the web this lives in your browser's storage; in the phone apps it lives in the app's own storage. That record is never sent to us. Clearing the browser's site data, or uninstalling the app, deletes it.

What we collect

Nothing that identifies you. We don't run accounts, and we don't collect your name, email address, contacts, location, or anything else from your device. The one exception is a name you choose to type onto a daily board, described below, which can be any word you like.

Our website is served by Cloudflare, which keeps ordinary server logs (such as your IP address and the pages requested) for a short time to run the site and keep it secure. We don't use tracking cookies. One game still in private preview asks for a name and password to get in; that cookie only remembers that you signed in.

To see how many people visit, the website uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which Cloudflare adds to its pages. It sets no cookies and doesn't fingerprint you or follow you from site to site. What it reports to us is totals: page views, which pages, the site that sent you, the kind of browser and device, the country, and how quickly pages loaded. It doesn't run on the sign-in page, and it isn't in the phone apps.

The website's own pages and a couple of the games load their typefaces from Google Fonts, so your browser asks Google for the font files, as it does on any site that uses them. The phone apps carry their own copies.

Anonymous daily totals

To tell how many people visit the website, which games they play and for how long, and whether a change to a game helps, we keep daily totals. Your browser sends a bare tally such as "one more visit to the Pondful page on October 19", and we add one to that day's total. We count: a visit to a part of the website (the home page, the how-to-play pages, the policy pages, or one game), at most once a day from your browser; each time a game's page is opened; how long a game's page was on screen and visible, in rounded tens of seconds (time while the tab is hidden is not counted, and a page is capped at three hours); and, in the games that send them, how many devices opened that day's game, finished its daily, tapped Share, started or finished a round, and had also opened it the day before.

A tally carries no ID, no cookie of its own, no address and nothing about you or your device, and nothing ties one tally to another, so we can't tell whose it was or follow anyone from page to page or day to day. We keep only the daily totals, and we read them on a private page that only we can sign in to. No analytics company, advertiser or other third party receives them. The only cookie-like thing involved is the note described below, and it stays on your device.

A tally reaches us like any other request to the site, through the Cloudflare logs described above. The counter keeps none of that: it adds to the day's total and records nothing else.

So that it sends each tally only once, and can tell whether you opened a game yesterday, your browser keeps a short note of the days it has counted, beside your progress. The note never leaves your device, and notes older than yesterday are deleted. The phone apps count nothing and send nothing about your play.

You can switch all of this off. In Stepword, open the menu and turn off "Help us count players". On any page, you can also open your browser's developer console and enter:

localStorage.setItem('ducklark:counting', 'off')

Counting stays off on that browser until you enter:

localStorage.removeItem('ducklark:counting')

The website works exactly the same either way. Browsers that send "automation" signals, and browsers that are offline, are not counted.

Daily boards

After today's daily in Stepword, Flock Step, Shellduck, Billable Hours, Rewind, Garden Solitaire, Theme Minis, Billable & Associates, one game in private preview, Duckling Crossing, Ducks Up!, Splash Landing, Pond Parade, Puffduck, Hatch Day, Pond Thaw, Quackvine, Puddle Ferry, Pond Pairs, Pondful, Pond Sort, Duckling Ferry Jam or Nest Blocks, or a forage round in Ducklove, on the website, you can put your score on that day's board under a name you type. Posting is optional, and the games play the same whether you post or not. The board keeps only what you see on it: the name you typed, your score and the day. No account, no ID, no cookie and nothing about your device goes with it, and it isn't linked to the daily totals above. Names on a board are public: everyone who opens that day's board sees them, so pick a name you're happy to show. Your browser remembers the name you used, beside your progress, so you type it once; that stays on your device. The phone apps have no boards.

Sharing your result

"Share result" hands a few lines of text (the puzzle number and your score, never the answers, and in Stepword a link to the game) to your device's share sheet or clipboard. Where it goes from there is up to you.

Ads

Ads are coming to the website's games soon; there are none yet. When they start, the date at the top of this page changes, and this is how they will work.

The ads come from Google (AdSense). You'll see one only when you choose it, such as watching a short ad for a reward, or between rounds, at most once a visit. Never while you're playing. The phone apps don't show these ads.

Google and its partners use cookies and similar technology to show ads and to measure them, and may use your visits to this and other sites to choose ads you're likely to find interesting. That data goes to Google, not to us: we see only totals, such as how many ads were shown. Google explains how it uses information from sites like ours at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

In the UK, the European Economic Area and Switzerland, and in US states with their own privacy laws, Google's consent message asks you first and lets you refuse personalised ads. Anywhere, you can turn personalised ads off in Google's My Ad Center, or opt out of many companies' personalised ads at aboutads.info. The games work the same whatever you choose; you may simply see less relevant ads.

Purchases

"Remove ads" is sold through Paddle.com, our reseller and the Merchant of Record for our orders. When you buy, Paddle collects your name, email address, payment details and country to take the payment, charge the right tax and send your receipt, under Paddle's privacy policy. We never see your card number.

We keep only what we need to honour the purchase: the email address you bought with and the fact that you bought, so the games can turn the ads off when you sign in with that email. We don't use it for anything else and don't send marketing. Ask us at support@ducklark.com and we'll delete it, which also ends the purchase.

Children

Our games are made for adults and teens, not for children under 13. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children, because we don't collect personal information from anyone.

Changes and questions

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. Questions: write to support@ducklark.com.