Privacy

The short version

CrossConnect keeps what it needs to let you scan crosswords and solve them with friends, and nothing more. There are no ads, no tracking across other sites, and we don't sell your information. We handle it in line with the Australian Privacy Principles.

What we collect

• Your account: your name, email address and, if you sign in with Google, your profile photo. Guests give only the name they type.
• Your sign-in sessions: the IP address and browser each session started from, to keep your account secure.
• Photos you scan: the photo of the crossword page, and the details and clues read from it.
• Your solving: your letters and times on each puzzle, the answers you give in games, your appeals, and the messages and reactions you send in a game.
• Your friends: who you're friends with, and requests you've sent or received.
• Help requests: what you write on the help page, any screenshots, your email, the page you came from and your browser. These are emailed to us rather than stored in the app. To limit spam, we keep when each request was sent and a scrambled form of the IP address it came from, for one day.
• Error reports: when something breaks, a report of what went wrong, on which page and in which browser.

Who can see it

• Your friends can see your name and photo, and people in your games see your answers, messages and times.
• Each puzzle is seen only by people who scanned it, joined a game of it or took up a challenge on it.
• Nobody can browse everyone's puzzles, and puzzle pages need signing in, so search engines can't find them.

Services we use

These services process information for us, only to run CrossConnect. Some are based overseas, including in the United States.

• Vercel hosts the app, which runs in Sydney.
• Neon stores our database, in Sydney.
• Google Gemini reads the photos you scan, solves the puzzles and judges appeals. It sees the photo, the clues and the answers involved, not your account.
• Google signs you in, if you choose it.
• Resend sends sign-in codes, and delivers help requests to us.
• Ably tells players' browsers when a game changes. It sees which player is listening, not what happens in the game.
• Sentry receives error reports.

Cookies and storage

We use one cookie, to keep you signed in. Your browser also remembers a few things for convenience, like a puzzle's clock and which game messages you've seen. We don't use advertising or analytics cookies.

How long we keep it

We keep your account and what you've done for as long as you have the account. The photo of a crossword you scan is deleted 30 days after you add it to your puzzles; until then it's there to correct the puzzle against. Photos of scans you haven't finished are kept until you finish or delete them. Guest accounts may be deleted after a while without use. Help requests stay in our email for as long as we need them to help you.

Your choices

• You can delete scans you haven't finished.
• You can delete your account on your account page. Everything personal and private goes: your details, friends, scans, progress and messages. Your answers in games stay, credited to a "Deleted player", so the games still make sense to the other players.
• To see what we hold about you, or correct it, ask on the help page. We'll reply within 30 days.
• If you're not happy with how we've handled your information, tell us first. You can also complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Changes

If we change how we handle your information, we'll update this page and its date, and say so in what's new.