Chaotic Tails › Privacy
Privacy
Chaotic Tails has no accounts and sells nothing about you. It is paid for by ads from Google, which are explained below. To play, you only type a name. A room, with its chat and drawings, deletes itself a day after it was last used; beyond that the site keeps counts tied to random ids for 13 months, and any feedback you choose to send.
Last updated 8 November 2026.
In short
- No sign-up. We never ask for your email, phone number, age or real name. The name you play under can be anything.
- Rooms are temporary. A room, with everything said and drawn in it, is deleted 24 hours after it was last used.
- Counts use random ids, not names. We count visits and games with a random id your browser makes. That id is not your name, but it is the same each visit (pseudonymous, not anonymous), so you can ask us to delete what is kept under it. Records tied to it are deleted after 13 months.
- No cookies of our own. Chaotic Tails stores a few small values in your browser instead (listed below), which you can clear at any time.
- Ads come from Google. Google uses cookies to choose and count its ads. You can turn off ads based on your interests, and Google never gets your name, your chat or anything from a room. More on ads.
What is kept in your browser
These live in your browser's storage for chaotictails.com. Clearing the site's data removes all of them. The site used to be at games.amittal.dev: the first time you came here from an old link, your browser brought these along with you, inside the link itself, so they never passed through our server.
| Key | What it is for |
|---|---|
wr.id, wr.secret | A random player id and secret, so a refresh or a dropped connection puts you back in your seat. |
wr.name | The name you last played under, so you do not type it every time. |
gn.vid | A random id for this browser, used only for the anonymous counts below. |
gn.sid, gn.sidAt | This visit's random id (kept only until the tab closes; a new one after 30 idle minutes). |
gn.theme | Light or dark. |
gn.fb | Which games you have already rated, so you are not asked twice. |
lc.mute, lc.sort | Last Card's sound and card-sorting settings. |
gn.me | Set only if you open the site with ?me=1 (see "Leaving the counts"). |
gn.buzz | Whether your phone buzzes when a round goes your way. |
gn.daily | Your daily puzzle progress, streak and best, on this phone only. |
gn.nights | How many game nights you have played and won on this phone. |
gn.words | If you host and type "Our words", the list, so it is there next time. |
gn.report | When you tap Report a problem in a room: the room's last 20 chat lines, so the contact page can offer to attach them. It is removed as soon as that page opens. |
gn.tags | Which of the small first-time tips you have already seen, so each shows only once. |
gn.hosted | When this browser first ran a room, so a first room is kept free of ads. |
gn.planned | Whether this browser has hosted a game night before, so a first-time host gets the one big Play now button. |
gn.face | The critter you play as. |
gn.sound | Whether the game sounds are on. |
gn.known | Which games you have played, so their rules open folded to one line. |
gn.reload, gn.build | Kept until the tab closes: the page reloads itself at most once after the site is updated. |
What a room keeps
Each room is held on Cloudflare's servers while it is in use. It keeps:
- the name, colour and critter face of everyone in it, their random player id, and when they joined;
- the games played: moves, answers, drawings, scores and the room's leaderboard;
- the room chat (the last 80 messages).
Everyone in the room can see your name, your chat messages and whatever the game shows them, such as your drawings and answers. A room and everything in it is deleted automatically 24 hours after it was last used, once nobody is connected to it. Room codes are reused after that, but nothing from the old room carries over.
The counts
To know whether the games work and what people enjoy, the site counts:
- Page views: the page, the website you came from (its domain only, such as google.com), a
utm_sourcetag if the link had one, your country (two letters, worked out by Cloudflare from your connection; your IP address is not stored), whether you are on a phone, tablet or computer, the time, and your browser and visit ids. - Rooms and games: a random room id and its code, which games were played, how many players, when they started and ended, how many moves and errors there were, and whether dropped connections came back. Players are recorded by their random ids.
- Who is in a room right now, by browser id, for a live count.
- Which questions, prompts and words your browser has been shown, by browser id, so your group does not get the same ones again until it has played through the rest. Only a number for each item and when it was shown; deleted a year after it was shown.
- Taps on Share (whether by your phone's share sheet, copying the link or the QR code) and script errors (the first 120 characters of the error message).
- Feedback you choose to send after a game: the stars, whether you would play again, and up to 300 characters of text. Please do not put personal details in it.
- Room safety counts, with no ids: how often a host removes or bans someone, a name is turned away, a join is turned away (a full or locked room), or a TV screen is opened.
Totals per room and per player id are deleted after 30 days. Everything above that carries a browser, visit, room or player id is deleted after 13 months; what is left are daily totals with no ids. None of it holds names, email addresses or IP addresses. IP addresses are used only, for a moment, to stop one connection flooding the site (a limit on how many rooms, joins or messages it can make a minute), and are never stored.
Chat and typed answers are checked against a list of abusive words, and a match is shown as stars. That check happens in the room and nothing about it is kept.
Pages on the site also send a separate page-view count to api.amittal.dev, the dashboard for all of Armaan Mittal's sites: the site name, the page and the page you came from. It carries no ids.
Other services involved
- Cloudflare hosts the site and runs the rooms. Like any web host it handles your IP address to deliver the pages. See Cloudflare's privacy policy.
- Apple: Music Guess plays 30-second song previews straight from Apple's servers, so Apple receives that request (including your IP address) when a clip plays. The "Listen on Apple Music" link opens Apple's site. See Apple's privacy policy.
- Google shows the ads (Google AdSense). Its script loads only on pages and screens that have an ad box, and it handles your IP address and its own cookies to choose, show and count the ad. See Ads below and Google's privacy policy.
- Sharing a room uses your own device's share sheet or clipboard, and the QR code is drawn in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere until you choose where to share it.
Apart from Google's ads, there are no social media or third-party analytics scripts on Chaotic Tails.
Ads
Running the rooms costs money, so Chaotic Tails shows a few ads from Google AdSense. They sit on the home page and the guide pages, and inside a room only between games: in the lobby, while waiting for everyone to be ready, on the results, on a paused game, on a TV screen between games, and for someone watching a game they are not playing in. An ad never shows during a round you are playing, never covers a game, and never shows in a host's first room. This is what the ads mean for your data:
- Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on Chaotic Tails. Google's advertising cookies let it and its partners serve ads based on your visits to this site and other sites on the internet.
- Other ad companies (third-party vendors and ad networks) approved by Google may also use cookies, web beacons or similar technology to show ads and to measure them. Google lists them under its ad technology providers.
- You can turn off personalised ads in Google's My Ad Center, and turn off other vendors' personalised ads at aboutads.info or youronlinechoices.eu. You will still see ads, but they will not be based on your interests.
- Visitors from the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland are asked for consent before personalised ads are shown, and can change that choice at any time.
- How Google uses information from sites that show its ads: policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
- Chaotic Tails counts how often ad boxes are shown, filled, seen or tapped, as totals. It never gives Google your name, chat or anything said or drawn in a room.
Leaving the counts
Open chaotictails.com/?me=1 once in a browser and everything that browser does is marked and left out of every count from then on. Clearing the site's data from your browser removes your ids; a new random id is made next time you visit.
Questions or deletion
Chaotic Tails is made by Armaan Mittal in India. To ask what is kept about a room or about your browser's id (you will find it in your browser's site data as gn.vid), or to have it deleted, use the contact form. Messages sent through it, with any way to reply you leave and any room chat lines you choose to attach, are kept for 30 days.