Privacy Policy

Last updated September 21, 2026

Yizzoo is run by Selfdefiant, who designs the escape games, scavenger hunts and puzzles on this site. It is a small operation, not a company with a data department, and this page is written to be read rather than to be complied with. If anything here is unclear, email [email protected] and you will get an answer from a person.

The short version

• Reading Yizzoo is anonymous. The site counts its own visits, without a cookie and without keeping your IP address. There is no tracking pixel and no advertising code, and no cookie is set unless you sign in.
• If you sign in with Google, Yizzoo learns your name, your email address and your Google profile picture. It never sees your Google password.
• If you buy something, Stripe handles the payment and Yizzoo never sees your card number. What Yizzoo keeps is your email address and what you bought, so you can download it again.
• If you ask for the free Starter Pack, Yizzoo keeps your email address to send it, and after that only writes when there is something new worth printing. Every one of those emails has a link that takes you off the list in one click.
• Nothing collected here is sold, rented or handed to a data broker. Ever. There is no version of this site where that becomes a revenue source.
• You can have your account and everything attached to it deleted by asking. One email is enough and it does not need a reason.

When you are only reading

Every website records requests, and this one is no exception. The web server writes an ordinary access log: the IP address the request came from, the time, the page asked for, the referring page if the browser sent one, and the browser's user-agent string. That log exists so the site can be kept working and so abuse and attacks can be spotted. It is rotated and discarded on the server's normal schedule and it is not combined with anything else, not profiled, and not shared.

How visits are counted

Yizzoo counts its own visits, so that Selfdefiant can see which adventures people read and how they found them. It is not Google Analytics or any other company's service. It is a small piece of code on this server, and what it learns stays here.

When a page has actually appeared on your screen, it sends one short note back to the site: which page it is, the page that sent you here if your browser says, what kind of device and browser you are using, and your screen width. When you leave the page or switch tabs, it sends one more: how long the page was on screen. If you press a buy button, it notes that too. Your country, and sometimes your region and city, come from Cloudflare, which already knows roughly where every request comes from.

Your IP address is not stored. For the moment a note arrives, your address and your browser's description are mixed with a secret that changes every day, to make a code. That is how one person reading five pages counts as one visitor rather than five. Only the code is kept, and the secret is deleted when the day ends, so tomorrow's code for you cannot be matched with today's, and nobody, this site included, can turn a code back into an address.

No cookie is set for this, and nothing is stored in your browser. There is nothing to agree to and nothing to clear. The counts are not sold, shared, combined with anything else, or used for advertising.

Cookies

Yizzoo sets exactly one cookie, named yzid, and only when you sign in, or open the sign-in page to do so. It holds a random session identifier and nothing else: no name, no email, nothing readable. It is marked HttpOnly so no script can read it, Secure so it is never sent over an unencrypted connection, and SameSite=Lax so another site cannot make your browser use it. It is deleted when you sign out, and it expires when you close your browser.

If you never sign in, Yizzoo sets no cookie at all, and that includes counting visits. There are no advertising cookies, no cross-site trackers and no third-party cookies on this site today, which is also why there is no cookie banner: there is nothing to ask you to consent to.

Other companies that see your visit

Two on an ordinary page, and both are unavoidable parts of serving it:

• Cloudflare sits in front of the site as a content delivery network and a shield against attacks. Your request reaches Cloudflare before it reaches Yizzoo, so Cloudflare sees your IP address and the page you asked for.
• Google Fonts serves the two typefaces the site is set in. Your browser fetches them from Google's servers, so Google receives your IP address and your browser's user-agent when a page loads. Self-hosting those font files would remove this, and it is on the list.

The sign-in page loads one more: Google's sign-in library, which draws the button and does the actual signing in. It is only on that page, and the next section says exactly what it hands over.

Some pages, like the DIY prop pages, have a video. Until you press play it is only a picture from this site, and nothing is fetched from YouTube. When you press play, the video plays from YouTube's privacy-enhanced player (youtube-nocookie.com), and from then on YouTube sees that visit under its own privacy policy.

Signing in with Google

Yizzoo lets you sign in with a Google account so you do not have to invent and remember another password. Here is exactly what that involves.

Yizzoo never sees your Google password. You sign in to Google, not to this site, and Google hands back a signed token proving who you are. That is the entire point of the mechanism.

From that token, Yizzoo receives and stores four things: your Google account identifier (a number that is unique to you and meaningless anywhere else), your email address, the display name on your Google account, and the URL of your profile picture. It receives nothing from your Google account beyond that: no contacts, no calendar, no documents, no access to anything in your Google account at all.

Those four things are used to recognize you when you come back, to show your name on your own account page, and to send you the things you ask for, such as a receipt or a file you have bought. Your email address is not added to any mailing list because you signed in.

You can disconnect Yizzoo from your Google account at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions. That stops future sign-ins. To also delete what Yizzoo already holds, email [email protected] and it will be deleted.

When you buy something

Payments are handled by Stripe, which is a payment processor used by a very large number of businesses. When you press the buy button you leave Yizzoo and land on a page hosted by Stripe. You type your card details there, on their page, not here.

That is not a detail, it is the whole arrangement: your card number never arrives at this server. It is not stored here, not written to a log here, and not something an attacker could take from here, because it was never here. Stripe has their own privacy policy covering what they do with it.

When a payment succeeds, Stripe tells Yizzoo, and Yizzoo records:

• Your email address, which Stripe collected on the payment page.
• Your name, if you gave one to Stripe.
• What you bought, what you paid, and when.
• A reference number for the payment, so a refund can be matched back to the right purchase.

An account is made for you, whether or not you asked for one. It is what your purchase is attached to, so that "download it again any time" is a thing this site can actually do. It has no password and you are never asked to make one. If you later sign in with Google using the same address, it becomes that account and everything you bought is already in it.

The receipt email contains a link that signs you in. It works once, it stops working after thirty days, and only a fingerprint of it is stored here, so nobody reading this database could use it.

Purchase records are kept rather than deleted on request, and that is the one exception to the deletion promise further down. Selling something creates a tax record, and a business is required to be able to show what it sold and to whom. Asking for deletion removes the account and the access; it leaves the order.

Your card statement will show Selfdefiant Studios, which is the business behind Yizzoo.

If you ask for the Starter Pack

The form at the bottom of every page, and the one on the Freebies page, ask for an email address to send the free Adventure Starter Pack. When you fill one in, Yizzoo keeps:

• Your email address.
• Which of the two forms you used.
• When you asked, when you confirmed, and when each email was sent.

Nothing counts until you confirm. The first email only asks you to click a link to show the address is yours. If you never click it, nothing else is ever sent, because anybody can type anybody's address into a form. Once you confirm, the pack is yours and a second email brings its link.

After that, Yizzoo only writes when there is something new worth printing, and every one of those emails has an unsubscribe link that works in one click, without signing in. Unsubscribing stops the emails; the pack stays yours. To have your address deleted outright, email [email protected].

The emails are sent from this site's own server. No mailing list company is involved, so your address is not handed to one.

If you email Yizzoo

Mail to [email protected] arrives at a mailbox on the same server as the site and is forwarded to a Gmail account, which means Google handles it in transit. Your message and your address are kept for as long as the conversation is useful and are not added to a mailing list.

Where all of this lives

Yizzoo runs on a single virtual server rented from Contabo Inc., located in St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States. Cloudflare's network is global, so the request that reaches that server may pass through a Cloudflare location closer to you first. Backups of the site and its database are stored on the same provider.

How it is protected

The site is served only over HTTPS. Passwords, where they exist at all, are stored as one-way hashes and cannot be read back, by anyone, including the person who runs the site. Password reset links are stored hashed as well, are usable once, and expire after an hour.

That said: no server is perfectly safe, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something. If data on this site is ever exposed, affected people will be told what happened and what was in it.

Children

Yizzoo is written for the adult doing the setting up, not for the children playing. Accounts are for adults and the site does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If a child has created an account here, email [email protected] and it will be removed.

Your rights over your own data

Wherever you live, you can ask Yizzoo to show you what it holds about you, to correct it if it is wrong, to delete it, or to send you a copy. Email [email protected]. You do not need to give a reason and you will not be talked out of it.

Two honest caveats, because a promise with unstated exceptions is not a promise. A record of a purchase is kept even after an account is deleted: selling something creates a tax record and a business has to be able to show what it sold. And deleting your account does end your access to anything you bought, since the account is what the purchase is attached to. Neither is a way to talk you out of it. They are the two things worth knowing first, and you will be told both again before anything is deleted.

If you are in California, that includes the rights under the CCPA to know what is collected and to have it deleted, and the right not to be discriminated against for asking. Yizzoo does not sell or share personal information as those laws define it, so there is no opt-out to offer.

If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area, the lawful bases are the ordinary ones: a contract, where you have bought something and the data is needed to give it to you; consent, where you have signed in or asked for something; and legitimate interests, for keeping the server running and secure and for counting visits in the anonymous way described above. You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.

What Yizzoo does not do

• It does not sell, rent or trade personal information.
• It does not build advertising profiles or share data with ad networks.
• It does not track you across other websites.
• It does not add your email address to a mailing list because you bought something or signed in. A list you did not ask to be on is spam, whatever the footer says.

Things that are not here yet

Selling printable adventures used to be in this section. It is live now, and the section above describes it, which is what was promised here.

One thing is still planned: display advertising, which brings cookies of its own. It is not live today and is not described above, because a privacy policy that describes a site as it might one day be is not a privacy policy. When it lands, this page is updated in the same change that ships it, and the date at the top moves.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes. If a change actually affects what happens to information already collected, rather than just tidying the wording, anyone with an account will be told by email before it takes effect.

Contact

[email protected], for anything on this page, including the request to delete everything.

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