We collect the least we can.

Cognivo keeps a small amount of data in your browser's local storage, and nothing more: your preferred learning level, the lessons you've marked as read on the Explore page, and the lesson steps you've completed; your Spy Games best scores and play counts; your display preferences — the Spy Games helper toggle, the chess favourability meter, and which board and piece theme you chose; whether you've dismissed the site announcement; and the ID of a live game you are in, so refreshing the page doesn't lose your seat; and the tournament room you are in, so finishing a match brings you back to its bracket; your best times in the arcade games, your best Endless run and your Daily results for the last 30 days, and whether their sound is on; and the levels you are making in Level Lab and the art you are drawing in Sprite Lab and Animation Lab, with the game you last opened in each and whether a game plays your art, all kept in your browser until you download them. While you wait for a friend to join a live game, its invite link is also kept for that one browser tab, so a reload doesn't lose it; it is gone when the tab closes. This data never leaves your device, and you can clear it at any time through your browser settings.

Chess, checkers, reversi, Connect Four, Nine Men's Morris, and the Spy Games are run by the Cognivo game server while you play: it holds the position, decides which moves are legal, and plays the opponent. A game against the computer lives in server memory for the duration of your session and is not linked to your identity. For chess only, so that you can close the tab and pick a game back up, your browser also keeps that game's ID and mode locally for up to four hours, after which it is discarded automatically.

A game against another person is different from one against the computer, and the difference is worth stating: it is stored on the server rather than held in memory, because both players have to reach the same game and it has to survive one of you closing a tab. It is linked to the anonymous player record described below, so the server knows which seat may move which pieces. That is the whole reason it is linked to anything.

You start a game by sending someone a private link. The invite code in that link is held only in the part of the URL your browser never sends to a server, so it stays out of our logs; the code works once, and once both seats are taken nobody else can join or watch. Your opponent sees the moves you make and nothing else — no name, no location, and never your IP address, because you are never connected to each other directly.

A tournament works the same way for a group. The room is stored on the server: which game it is, who has joined, who played whom, and who won each match. If you give a name when you join, the other people in that room see it, only in that room, and it is not attached to anything else. Nobody in a tournament is shown another player's record or identifier, and each match is an ordinary two-player game, private to the two people in it. A room is private unless its host chooses to list it, and a listed room shows only the game and how many people have joined.

Finished and abandoned games are deleted 30 days after their last move, and a finished or abandoned tournament room 30 days after it ends. An invite code that has been used, or has expired unused after a day, is deleted a day later. There is no chat, so there is nothing you can type for another player to read.

Voice control and narration are optional. When you enable voice input, your speech is processed by your browser's built-in speech recognition service (for example, Chrome's speech service); depending on your browser, audio may be sent to the browser vendor for transcription under their privacy policy. Cognivo itself never records, stores, or transmits your audio. Narration uses your device's built-in text-to-speech and works entirely offline.

Cognivo keeps a player record on its own server so your games and your progress survive closing the tab or coming back tomorrow. It holds no name, no email address, and no password — it is a random value stored in a cookie, and nothing in it identifies you as a person. There is no login, because there is nothing to log in to.

To use the same record on another device, you generate a transfer code and enter it there. We deliberately collect nothing that could be used to recover it for you, so the trade is a real one: lose the code and the record is gone. Codes work once and expire after fifteen minutes.

The record is stored on Cognivo's own server, not a third party's, and is deleted after a year in which it is not used to play anyone, unless you are still in a game or tournament with it. Clearing your browser's cookies also detaches your device from it.

Cognivo uses Google Analytics 4 to count page views and see which games and lessons people actually reach. Google sets cookies in your browser (their names begin with _ga) and receives your IP address, which Analytics 4 uses to derive an approximate location and then discards rather than logging or storing it. What comes back to us is aggregate: how many people opened the chess board this week, not who they were.

We never send Google your name or email address — Cognivo never collects them — nor your moves, your Spy Games answers, your voice, or anything else you type or say. Analytics runs only on cognivo.digital and its Labs site, labs.cognivo.digital: the staging site, local development builds, and anyone running Cognivo from source load no Google script at all and make no request to Google.

In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, Analytics stores nothing until you have answered Google's consent message, and stores nothing at all if you decline. Elsewhere, to opt out, any tracker-blocking extension will stop the script loading, as will Google's own Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. Nothing on Cognivo needs analytics to work, so blocking it costs you no functionality.

Cognivo is free because it shows ads. They are served by Google AdSense: Google chooses them, and Google and its partners set cookies in your browser to show them, measure them, limit how often you see the same one, and prevent fraud. Google receives your IP address and information about your browser and the page you are on.

Ads may be personalised: chosen using information about your activity on this and other sites that use Google's ad services. Cognivo sends Google nothing about you beyond what loading the ad itself reveals; your moves, answers, voice, and player record never go to Google, and Cognivo does not sell data. In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, Google asks for your consent before storing anything for ads, and shows only non-personalised ads if you decline. Anywhere, you can turn personalisation off in Google's My Ad Center, and block ads entirely with a blocker; every game keeps working.

The full list of cookies, how long each lasts, and how to change your choices are on the Cookies & tracking page. How Google uses this information is set out in Google's own policy.

The consent choices are Google's own tools. In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, a Google-certified consent management platform asks before anything is stored for ads or analytics. In US states with privacy laws, Google offers a “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” opt-out. You can reopen either at any time from Your US privacy choices at the foot of every page, or from the Cookies & tracking page.

We don't require registration, collect names or email addresses, or sell data. Nothing you type, say, or play is sent to an AI service: Spy Games mission text is drafted on Cognivo's own server by a small local model that receives only a difficulty setting, never your input.

The help page has an assistant you can type questions to. It is a small AI model that runs on Cognivo's own server, not a third-party service: what you type is sent to that server to produce an answer, and it is not stored or linked to your player record. The conversation stays in your browser tab and is gone when you leave the page.

If you choose to send a report, what you write is filed in Cognivo's private issue tracker on GitHub, which only the people who maintain Cognivo can read: the title, the description and the part of the site you pick; your conversation with the assistant, only if you tick that box; and, for a report of something broken, your browser's version string. A report is not linked to your player record. Please don't include personal details.

To keep the page from being flooded, the server counts requests per network address for a short time, in memory only. That count is never written down.

Privacy questions? Email support@cognivo.digital.