Privacy policy

Last updated: October 11, 2026

Who we are

NameYear (nameyear.com) is an independent daily puzzle game run by the independent developer of NameYear, based in South Korea, who is responsible for the data described here. In this policy, “we” and “us” mean the people who run it. You can reach us at hello@nameyear.com. The site is hosted on GitHub Pages (GitHub, Inc.).

What stays on your device

There are no accounts. To remember your progress, the game saves a few items in your browser’s local storage: your guesses, hint use and scores for each puzzle you play (including each answer once you’ve locked in a round), the date you first played, a setting for whether you’ve seen the instructions, your guesses on the last few challenge links you played, and your language choice (if you used the EN | 한국어 switch at the top). This is how streaks and stats work. It is never sent to us. You can erase it any time by clearing this site’s data in your browser settings.

Guess my group and challenge links

Guess my group runs entirely in your browser. To do the math, your browser downloads public files of name counts, grouped by the first two letters of a name (for example, every name that starts with “Ja”). The names you type are never sent to us.

When you make a challenge link, the names and year are stored in the part of the link after the “#”. Browsers don’t send that part to websites, so it never reaches our servers or our analytics. Anyone you share the link with can read the names in it, so only share links you’re comfortable passing around.

Analytics

When analytics is turned on, we use one or both of these services to understand how the site is used:

• Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts page views and performance without cookies and without tracking you across sites.
• Google Analytics 4, which uses cookies and a random identifier to measure visits and a few game events: finishing a round (how many years off, whether you used the hint), finishing a puzzle and your score, starting an archive puzzle, sharing a result, using Guess my group or making a challenge (how many names, never the names themselves), playing a friend’s challenge (how many years off), and which language version (English or Korean) the event came from. Google’s How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services explains how Google handles this data.

We use these numbers to see which puzzles are too hard or too easy. We don’t use them to identify you.

Advertising

We show ads through Google AdSense to keep NameYear free. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites. Google’s use of advertising cookies lets it and its partners serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the internet.

You can opt out of personalized advertising from Google at Google Ads Settings, and opt out of many other vendors’ cookies for personalized advertising at www.aboutads.info. To learn more, see How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services.

Visitors in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland

If you visit from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, we ask for your consent before ads or analytics use cookies or similar storage, through a consent message from a Google-certified consent management platform. You can change your choice at any time with the “Privacy choices” link at the bottom of every page, which opens that message again (see Your privacy choices). Saving your game progress in local storage is part of the game you asked to play and doesn’t depend on that choice.

Your rights (EEA and UK)

If you’re in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, the GDPR or UK GDPR gives you rights over personal data about you. Here is how they apply to NameYear:

• Legal bases. Advertising and analytics cookies, and the data Google collects through them, rely on your consent. Delivering pages, keeping the site secure and answering your emails rely on our legitimate interest in running the site. Your game progress is stored only in your browser, to provide the game you asked for.
• How long we keep data. Data in your browser stays until you clear it. Emails you send us are kept for 12 months after we reply, then deleted. Google keeps analytics and advertising data according to its own retention settings and policies.
• Your rights. You can ask to access, correct or delete personal data we hold about you, object to or restrict how we use it, and withdraw consent at any time (this doesn’t affect anything done before you withdrew). You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

To use any of these rights, email hello@nameyear.com.

U.S. state privacy rights

Depending on where you live (for example California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and other states with privacy laws), you may have the right to know what personal information is collected about you, to ask for it to be deleted or corrected, and to opt out of targeted advertising or the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information. We don’t sell personal information for money. Advertising cookies set by Google may count as “sharing” under some of these laws. Where the law requires it, we offer an opt-out through Google’s privacy messaging, we treat a Global Privacy Control signal as an opt-out, and you can always use the choices in Your privacy choices. Since we don’t keep accounts or player data on our servers, most requests can be handled by clearing your browser data, but you’re welcome to email us and we’ll help.

Your privacy choices

• Privacy choices link. The link at the bottom of every page reopens Google’s consent message (EEA, UK, Switzerland) or its opt-out for U.S. states with privacy laws, so you can change your choice.
• Global Privacy Control. We don’t respond to Do Not Track signals; we honor Global Privacy Control. When your browser sends GPC, we ask Google for non-personalized ads only and tell Google not to use your data for ad personalization.
• Personalized ads. You can turn off personalized ads from Google at Google Ads Settings, and from many other companies at www.aboutads.info.
• Your game data. Clear this site’s data in your browser settings to erase your progress, streak and stats.

Children

NameYear is a general-audience game and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has sent us personal information, email us and we’ll delete it.

Server logs

Like any website, our hosting provider (GitHub Pages (GitHub, Inc.)) processes basic request data, such as IP address, browser type and the page requested, to deliver pages and protect the site from abuse. We don’t use it to build profiles of visitors.

Email

If you email us, we use your message and address only to reply, and we delete them 12 months after replying. We don’t add you to a mailing list.

Changes to this policy

If we change how the site handles data, we’ll update this page and the date at the top.

Contact

Questions about privacy: hello@nameyear.com.