Privacy policy
What Free Games stores in your browser, what advertising partners can see, what server requests record, and how to clear your data.
Free Games stores as little as possible itself. Games run in your browser, and guest records such as favorites and personal bests never leave your device. An account is optional. The site is funded by third-party advertising, which is being introduced, so this page covers both what Free Games stores and what advertising partners can see.
What is stored, where it lives and how to remove it
Every record this site keeps falls into one of two places: your browser’s local storage, or the account database. The table lists them all.
The storage table
| What is stored | Where it lives | How to remove it |
|---|---|---|
| Favorite games | Browser local storage | Unsave the game, use Clear list on your favorites page, or clear this site’s browser data |
| Recently played games | Browser local storage | Use Clear list on your recently played page, or clear this site’s browser data |
| Arcade personal best per game | Browser local storage | Clear this site’s browser data |
| Sound on or off | Browser local storage | Toggle the sound button, or clear this site’s browser data |
| Advertising and measurement identifiers | Cookies and similar storage set by advertising partners, not by Free Games | Clear this site’s browser data, block third-party cookies, or use the controls in Advertising |
| Google account identifier, email address, display name | Account database | Delete your account from your dashboard |
| Play history: game, date, score or progress, active play time | Account database | Clear play history or delete your account from your dashboard |
| Sign-in session | Secure cookie, valid up to 30 days | Sign out, or clear this site’s cookies |
What is never collected
We do not collect your Google password. We do not keep Google access or refresh tokens. Free Games does not build an advertising profile about you and does not sell your information. Advertising partners set their own identifiers, which is covered in Advertising; that is separate from the records in the table above, and no account data or play history is passed to them.
Guest play without an account
Favorites, recent games, the sound preference and arcade personal bests use local storage on your device. They do not require a registered account. They stay on the device and are not imported into an account automatically.
What a personal best actually is
A personal best is a number your own browser wrote down. Playing Tetris on a phone and on a laptop gives you two separate records, because each browser keeps its own. There is no global leaderboard to compare them with. The guide to browser game controls and local storage covers this in more detail.
Optional Google sign-in
If you choose Google sign-in, Google shares your account identifier, verified email address and display name with Free Games. We use them to create and recognize your account. A secure session cookie keeps you signed in for up to 30 days.
What playing records while you are signed in
While you are signed in, interacting with a game saves its name, the play date, the available score or progress, and an estimate of active play time to your private dashboard. Hidden and idle periods are excluded where they can be detected. Scores are supplied by your browser and are not verified competition results. Guest favorites stay on the device, and older guest history is not uploaded.
Public game activity
New game interactions also appear in the homepage scorecard for up to seven days, showing the game, available score and time. Signed-in players appear with a masked email such as he*****@g****.***, hiding at least 70% of each part of the address; guests appear with a masked IP such as 192.168.*.* (IPv6 addresses are masked after the first two groups). Full emails and full IP addresses are not included in this public feed. The activity table stores only the masked label, with an account reference for deletion or a hashed guest session token for updating a play. Clearing account history or deleting your account also removes its public activity. Existing private play history is not added to the feed.
Advertising
Free Games is free to play because advertising pays for it. Ad space is filled by third-party advertising networks, not by Free Games directly. Those networks decide which advert to show and they set their own cookies or similar identifiers in your browser to do it.
What advertising partners receive
When an advert loads, the network serving it can see your IP address, your browser and device type, the address of the page you are on, and an approximate location derived from the IP address. It may also read or write an identifier it has previously stored in your browser. Free Games does not send it your email address, your account identifier or your play history, and signed-in and signed-out visitors are treated the same way.
Personalised and non-personalised adverts
A personalised advert is chosen using an identifier that reflects what you have done on other sites. A non-personalised advert is chosen from the page you are on and coarse information such as country. Where the law requires your consent before advertising cookies are set, you are asked first, and until you agree the adverts you see are non-personalised. You can change or withdraw that choice at any time.
Who is allowed to sell this space
The authorised sellers for this domain are published at ads.txt, which is the industry file that lets buyers confirm an advert really came from us. Google is one of those partners; Google explains what it collects and how to control it in how Google uses information from sites that use its services.
Your choices
Blocking third-party cookies in your browser stops most advertising identifiers. Clearing this site’s browser data removes them along with your favorites and personal bests. Advert blocking software prevents the adverts loading at all, and the games keep working. Signing in is never required to play, so you can use the whole library without giving us an account at all.
What advertising does not change
Adverts sit around the games, never inside them, and no game asks you to watch one to keep playing. Play a round of Tetris or Snake and the rules, controls and scoring are the same whether the advert loaded or not. Nothing in the playbook is written or ordered to suit an advertiser, which is set out in our editorial policy.
Server requests
Serving any page necessarily sends your IP address, the requested address and your browser headers to the hosting infrastructure. This happens whether or not you have an account.
What the logs are for
Server access logs may record those details for operation and troubleshooting. Free Games does not use its own logs to profile you or to target advertising. Loading a page from the arcade classics collection produces the same kind of log entry as any other page.
Messages and external links
Anything you send us by email, and anything you open by following a link away from this site, sits outside the storage table above.
Email and outbound links
If you email us, your email provider and ours process that correspondence. Do not send sensitive personal information. A link to another website is subject to that site’s own policies, not this one.
How to remove your data
Clearing this site’s browser storage removes local game records and favorites in one step. Your dashboard lets you clear account play history, delete your Free Games account, or sign out.
What deletion does
Account deletion removes the stored profile and play history from the application. Operational backups, where used, may retain earlier records until they expire. Signing out stops account history recording on new pages. For questions about information you sent us directly, use the contact page.
Changes to this policy
This page is kept in step with the application it describes.
How an update is shown
This policy describes the features in the current application. If we change those features, or introduce advertising or analytics, this page will be updated to say so.