Privacy And Security

This privacy policy sets out how “Magus Technologies Ltd” (who owns PiccyPuzzle.com) uses and protects any information that you give us when you use this website.

“Magus Technologies Ltd” is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.

“Magus Technologies Ltd” may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes. This policy is effective from 3rd December 2007.

What we collect, and how we use it

Puzzle Counters

As part of the Puzzle gameplay, we gather statistics on how often PiccyPuzzles are viewed, played and solved, regardless of whether your have enabled Counters or not. This is described on the Counters help page. This information is transfered to the PiccyPuzzle servers as the puzzle is being played.

These statistics are very useful in helping us understand how popular the puzzles are, to plan new features, understand which puzzle types are played the most (8, 15, 24), understand when 'peak' play times are.

Codes, Links, Cookies and Data Storage

The Embed Link for the PiccyPuzzle itself is a 'standard' object embed link that is no risk to your computer. It doesn't access cookies, or try to do anything clever. It never attempts (and the Flash Player specifically prohibits) it accessing files your computer directly.

If you are embedding your puzzle into a MySpace profile, MySpace protects you further by examining the embed code you Paste in, ripping out any suspect settings, and adding in Flash parameters to ensure your security is maintained. It does this when you save your settings in your profile, after pasting in the Embed code.

When the puzzle is loading, it talks to PiccyPuzzle.com get get your Puzzle definition, and then occasionally to update your Counters, send submitted Messages and Leaderboard scores, but apart from that, no surprises.

ALL puzzle definitions, pictures, messages, leaderboards are stored on the PiccyPuzzle.com servers. Nothing relating to the gameplay is stored on your PC, Mac etc.

The only thing we do ask you to store on your PC is a link to your PiccyPuzzle Admin page, so that you can update your PiccyPuzzle whenever you want. Given that this site does not require explicit registration to use it, we recognise that you will want to password protect your Admin page, and so provide this facility on the Password Protect section of the Admin page.

Finally, we do not currently use persistent cookies (ie cookies that hang around after your have closed your browser). If we use them in the future, we will update this section to describe what the cookies contain, and how they are used.

We do use what are called session cookies which are needed to keep information from one wizard page to the next. But these disappear when you close the browser. So you can disable persistent cookies in your browser, and PiccyPuzzle will work fine, both in creating and updating your PiccyPuzzle, and playing the PiccyPuzzle itself.

Server Logging

We log all requests that are made to the PiccyPuzzle.com site to create, update and administer your PiccyPuzzle.

This includes your web request, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request, and the URL that you came from.

We gather the same information whenever a PiccyPuzzle is viewed and played, including the URL of the web page into which you have embeded the PiccyPuzzle.

We use the Server logging information to:

Public Vs Private Puzzles

PiccyPuzzle has a cool feature which allows people who solve your PiccyPuzzle to submit their Name/Nickname, a Player Message and high scores to your PiccyPuzzle.

If you want to ensure that people you don't know cannot do this, you should keep your PiccyPuzzle in a private page on the internet eg. a private MySpace profile, and do not add your PiccyPuzzle to the public gallery.

If you do choose to make your PiccyPuzzle public, you can use your PiccyPuzzle admin page to delete any unwanted Messages and Leaderboard entries.