Privacy policy
Last updated 1 July 2026
SyphonGames collects as little as it can get away with. There are no accounts, no advertising network, and no third-party trackers on this site.
SyphonGames collects as little as it can get away with. There are no accounts, and we do not build profiles about you. We do show advertising, supplied by Google, and that is the one part of this site that involves a third party — it is set out in full below.
What we collect
Three things, and that is the lot:
- Play and view counts. When you open or start a game we add one to a counter. The counter is a number attached to the game, not to you.
- Search terms. We count how often each term is searched so we know what to add next. Terms are stored on their own, with nothing attached.
- Server logs. Our web server records the usual: IP address, timestamp, requested URL, browser user-agent. These rotate out on a short cycle.
How we stop double-counting
To keep one person refreshing a page from inflating a play count, we make a short-lived fingerprint by hashing your IP address and browser user-agent together with a random value that changes every time the server restarts. It lives in memory for thirty minutes and is then gone. It is never written to disk, never sent anywhere, and cannot be reversed into an IP address.
Cookies and local storage
The public site sets no tracking cookies. Two things are stored in your own browser, on your own device:
- Your ratings. Saved in local storage so a game does not ask you to rate it twice.
- Game saves. A game may store its own progress or high scores in local storage. That data belongs to the game, stays in your browser, and never reaches us.
Clearing your browser storage wipes both. The admin panel sets a session cookie, but only staff ever see it.
Games are third-party code
Games are made by other people. Each one runs inside a sandboxed iframe that cannot read the rest of the site, but a game is still someone else's software. We check every upload for structure and file types and reject anything with obvious tracking or mining code, though we cannot audit every line of every bundle. If you find a game doing something it should not, tell us and we will pull it.
What we do not do
- No advertising and no ad networks
- No selling, renting or sharing of data
- No analytics services, no pixels, no fingerprinting scripts
- No analytics services of our own, and no fingerprinting scripts
- No accounts, so no email lists and no passwords to leak
- No profiles built about you
Advertising
The site carries advertising supplied by Google AdSense. It pays for the hosting and it is why the games are free. Ads sit above and beside games; they never cover a game or interrupt one you are playing.
To show them, Google receives your IP address, your browser user-agent, and the page you are on, and it may set or read cookies on your device. Google may use that to show you ads based on your interests or your earlier browsing on other sites. This is Google's processing, not ours: we never see who you are, and we get nothing back but a count of how many ads were shown.
What you can do about it:
- Turn off personalised ads for your Google account at My Ad Center. Ads continue; they stop being tailored.
- If you are in the EU, UK or Switzerland, you will be asked for consent before any personalised ads are shown, and you can change that answer at any time from the link in the footer.
- Use an ad blocker. We do not attempt to detect or defeat them.
- Read what Google does with the data at how Google uses information from sites that use its services.
Children
The site is open to anyone and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children, because we do not collect personal information from anyone. Games are labelled by category. Parents who want a closer look at what a particular game does are welcome to ask.
The site is open to anyone and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children: there are no accounts, so there is nothing to fill in. Advertising on this site is not personalised to anyone we have reason to believe is a child, and the site is marked as directed at a general audience rather than at children. Games are labelled by category. Parents who want a closer look at what a particular game does, or who want advertising discussed, are welcome to write to us.
Your rights
Under the Australian Privacy Principles you can ask what personal information we hold about you and ask us to correct or delete it. In practice the honest answer is almost always "nothing beyond a few days of server logs", but ask and we will check properly and tell you.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. Material changes get a notice on the home page.
Contact
Privacy questions and requests go to our contact form. If we cannot sort it out between us, you can take a complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.