Privacy Policy
Last Updated: July 26, 2026 • Independent Student Project
UFGuessr is committed to protecting player privacy. We collect minimal technical data necessary to prevent game abuse and run analytics, and we strictly anonymize and hash network identifiers.
IP Anonymization
IP addresses are masked and hashed using SHA-256 before storage. We never store raw IP addresses.
Zero Tracking Cookies
We do not use advertising, cross-site, or third-party tracking cookies.
Anti-Abuse Only
Data is strictly used for rate-limiting submissions and single daily game validation.
1. IP Address Anonymization & Cryptographic Hashing Policy
When you interact with UFGuessr (such as completing a Daily Challenge or submitting a landmark photo for community review), your network request transmits a standard HTTP header containing your IP address.
1. Octet Masking: IPv4 addresses are truncated (e.g., 192.168.1.150 becomes 192.168.1.0) and IPv6 addresses are masked to host prefixes.
2. Salted SHA-256 Hashing: The masked address is concatenated with a secret server salt (PRIVACY_SALT) maintained exclusively in secure environment variables.
3. Storage Output: Only an irreversible, truncated hash format (e.g., anon_a1b2c3d4e5f67890) is written to database logs.
Because the secret salt is kept strictly isolated in server-side environment variables and is never exposed in client bundles, hashes cannot be reverse-mapped, brute-forced, or correlated using rainbow tables against public IP address ranges. This guarantees that raw IP addresses cannot be recovered from our server records.
2. Information We Collect
UFGuessr collects the absolute minimum dataset required to operate the application safely and reliably:
- Anonymized Identifier: Salted SHA-256 hash of your anonymized IP address.
- User-Agent String: Basic browser type and operating system version (used for responsive design diagnostics).
- Gameplay Performance Data: Guesses, target coordinates, score (out of 5,000 pts), distance off (in meters), and completion timestamps.
- Submitted Content: Landmark titles, geographic coordinates, difficulty, uploader alias, and photo media submitted voluntarily through the Community Submission feature.
3. Local Storage & Client Cookies
UFGuessr does not use tracking cookies. We utilize standard browser localStorage to maintain your session state locally on your device:
Stores your daily challenge score and attempt status locally to prevent re-attempts within 24 hours.
Remembers your dark/light mode preference and animation performance settings.
4. Infrastructure & Third-Party Services
UFGuessr is hosted on serverless architecture and uses select third-party service providers:
- Vercel Analytics: Privacy-focused web analytics that collects aggregated metric trends without using cookies or persistent user tracking.
- Supabase / PostgreSQL: Secure database storage for landmark locations, daily queues, and daily stats.
5. Operator & Institutional Non-Affiliation Disclaimer
UFGuessr is an independent, non-profit student geographic exploration project developed and maintained by University of Florida students. UFGuessr is not officially affiliated with, endorsed by, operated by, or sponsored by the University of Florida or any official university department. This application is maintained independently for educational and community exploration purposes.
6. Contact Us & Data Requests
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, wish to report a privacy concern, or request deletion of a landmark submission you uploaded, please contact us at: