Our Privacy Policy
(Spoiler: We Don't Collect Anything)
This might be the shortest privacy policy you've ever read, because there is genuinely almost nothing to say. We don't track you. We don't know who you are. We like it that way.
The Three-Bullet Summary
- The names you enter into the wheel are processed entirely in your browser. They are never sent to our servers. We don't see them. We don't store them. They disappear when you close the tab.
- We don't use cookies, tracking pixels, analytics platforms, or any other tool that follows you around the internet. You use the wheel, you leave, we know nothing.
- The only external request your browser makes is to Google Fonts to load a typeface. That's the complete list of third parties involved.
What Data We Collect
Nothing. That is a complete sentence and an accurate description of our data collection practices.
We do not ask for your name, email address, age, location, device type, IP address, or any other personally identifying information. There is no sign-up form. There is no account. There is no profile. You open the page, you use the wheel, you leave. We're left sitting here, alone, knowing absolutely nothing about you.
Standard web server logs may record basic technical information like your IP address and the pages you requested. This is normal behavior for any web server on the internet. We do not actively use these logs to track individuals, and they are not stored long-term or shared with third parties. Your ISP knows more about your browsing habits than we do. Your neighbor probably knows more about your browsing habits than we do.
We don't use fingerprinting techniques. We don't check your screen resolution, browser plugins, time zone, or installed fonts to build a profile. We don't create anonymous user IDs. We don't do cohort analysis. We don't do any of the clever tricks that companies use to track you without technically using cookies.
How Your Names Are Processed (Locally, In Your Browser)
This is the part most people care about, so let's be extremely detailed and clear.
When you type names into the NameWheel input field, those names live only in your browser's memory. The JavaScript running on your page reads the text from the input element, splits it into individual entries, and creates a visual representation on an HTML5 Canvas element. All of this happens locally, on your device, using your CPU.
Here's exactly what happens when you spin the wheel, step by step:
Step 1: You type names into the text input. These are stored in a JavaScript variable in your browser's memory. They exist only in RAM on your device.
Step 2: When you click "Spin," the JavaScript generates a random target angle using Math.random(). This random number is generated by your browser's pseudorandom number generator, not by our server.
Step 3: The spin animation begins. Each frame, the JavaScript calculates the wheel's current position using a physics-based easing function and redraws the Canvas element. This is purely a visual animation running in your browser.
Step 4: The wheel decelerates and stops at the predetermined random position. The winning name is read from the local array and displayed on screen.
Step 5: That's it. Nothing was sent anywhere. No server was contacted. No log was written. The only network activity during a spin is zero bytes.
When you close the tab or navigate away, the names are gone. We cannot recover them. We have no record that you entered them. If you want to save your name list for next time, you can bookmark the URL with the #names= hash parameter, which stores everything in the URL itself. That URL lives in your browser history, not on our servers.
If you use the embed feature to put the wheel on another website, the same rules apply. The names are processed in the visitor's browser on that site. They never reach namewheel.org's servers.
You don't have to take our word for any of this. Open your browser's developer tools, go to the Network tab, type some names, spin the wheel, and watch. You'll see exactly zero outgoing requests containing your names. The proof is right there in your own browser.
Cookies
We do not set any cookies. First-party cookies. Third-party cookies. Session cookies. Persistent cookies. Authentication cookies. Preference cookies. Analytics cookies. Marketing cookies. None of them. Zero. The number before one.
There is no cookie consent banner on this site because there is nothing to consent to. If you're used to clicking "Accept All" or "Reject All" on every website you visit, congratulations: you just found a site where that button doesn't exist because it doesn't need to.
Open your browser's developer tools right now. Go to Application (or Storage in Firefox), then Cookies. Click on namewheel.org. You'll see an empty list. That empty list is the most honest thing on this page.
We do not use local storage or session storage to track users either. If we store anything in local storage, it is strictly for the purpose of preserving your settings between visits, like a color theme preference. Nothing stored locally is ever transmitted to us. It stays on your device, controlled by your browser, deletable by you at any time.
Analytics
We do not use Google Analytics, Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, PostHog, Heap, Segment, Matomo, or any other analytics platform. We didn't forget to install one. We deliberately chose not to.
We do not track page views, sessions, bounce rates, scroll depth, click maps, heatmaps, session recordings, or any other behavioral metric on an individual or aggregate level via a third-party service.
We do not know how many people use NameWheel. We do not know which countries they come from. We do not know what browser they use. We do not know how long they stay. We do not know if they come back. And honestly, that's fine. The wheel works whether we know these things or not.
We may look at aggregate server log data occasionally to understand general traffic patterns, like which pages are most visited. This analysis does not involve individual tracking and does not use any external tool.
Third Parties
We use Google Fonts to load the typeface used on this site (Space Grotesk). When your browser loads a page on NameWheel.org, it makes a request to Google's servers at fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com to download the font files.
What this means practically: Google's servers will see that your IP address requested a font file that is associated with namewheel.org. Google's own privacy policy governs what they do with that information. Google Fonts does not set cookies and does not use font requests for ad targeting, but they do process the request on their end.
If you want to prevent this request entirely, you can use a browser extension that blocks Google Fonts requests. The site will fall back to a system sans-serif font and will remain fully functional.
That is the complete list of third parties. There are no others. No ad networks. No affiliate tracking. No social media widgets. No customer support chat tools. No A/B testing platforms. No session recording software. No CDNs serving tracking scripts. No payment processors (because there's nothing to pay for).
The list of external domains your browser contacts when using this site: namewheel.org (us) and fonts.googleapis.com / fonts.gstatic.com (Google Fonts). That's it. Two entries. You've probably never seen a shorter third-party list on any website. We're proud of that.
Data Storage and Retention
Because we don't collect personal data, there is no personal data to store. This section exists purely so you can feel reassured reading it.
We do not have a database with user records. We do not have a CRM with customer profiles. We do not have a data warehouse. We do not have a user table. There is literally no place on our servers where your personal information could live, even hypothetically.
There is no user data to request, export, or delete under GDPR, CCPA, PIPEDA, LGPD, or any other privacy regulation, because we never collected any to begin with. If you send us a data deletion request, we'll respond honestly: there's nothing to delete.
If you contact us by email, we will have your email address and the contents of your message. We use that only to respond to you. We don't add you to a mailing list. We don't store your message in a CRM. We don't share it with anyone. We reply, and that's the end of it.
Children's Privacy (COPPA Compliance)
NameWheel is a general-purpose tool that teachers frequently use with students of all ages, including children under 13. We take children's privacy seriously, which is exactly why we designed the tool to collect nothing from anyone.
Because we collect no personal information from any user, we are compliant with COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) by design, not by effort. A child using this site provides no data that we can collect, store, or process. There are no accounts, no sign-ups, no forms, and no data collection for users of any age.
If your school has a data privacy review process for educational technology tools, NameWheel should pass with flying colors. We collect no student data. We have no student records. We process no personally identifiable information. The tool runs entirely client-side. You're welcome to share this page with your IT department.
Technical Architecture (For the Nerds)
If you want the technical explanation of why we can confidently say your data never leaves your browser, here it is.
NameWheel is a static website. The server sends you HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. After that initial page load, the server's job is done. There are no ongoing connections, no API endpoints that receive user data, no server-side processing of wheel spins.
The wheel is built using the HTML5 Canvas API. When you type names, JavaScript creates an array of strings in memory. When you spin, a random angle is generated using Math.random(), and the Canvas is redrawn at ~60 frames per second using requestAnimationFrame() until the animation completes. The entire computation happens in the browser's JavaScript runtime.
There is no backend application server. There is no database. There is no API layer. The server is a static file host. It serves files and does nothing else. It couldn't process your names even if we wrote code to try, because there's no application running on the server to receive them.
The #names= URL hash parameter (used for bookmarking name lists) is also purely client-side. Hash fragments in URLs are never sent to the server per the HTTP specification. Your browser processes them locally. So even the bookmark feature keeps your data off our servers by design.
Your Rights
Under various privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA, and others), you have rights regarding your personal data. Here's how those rights apply to NameWheel:
Right to access your data: We have no data about you. There's nothing to access.
Right to delete your data: We have no data about you. There's nothing to delete.
Right to data portability: We have no data about you. There's nothing to port.
Right to opt out of data sales: We don't sell data. We don't have data. We don't have buyers. There's nothing to opt out of.
Right to correct your data: We have no data about you. There's nothing to correct.
See the pattern? When you don't collect data, all the privacy rights are automatically satisfied. It's a pretty elegant solution, if we do say so ourselves.
If you feel that your privacy rights have been violated by our use of the site (which would be impressive given that we collect nothing), you can contact us through our contact page or file a complaint with your local data protection authority.
Do Not Track Signals
Some browsers send a "Do Not Track" (DNT) header with web requests. We respect this signal, but honestly, it doesn't change our behavior because we don't track anyone regardless. Your DNT setting is effectively always honored on NameWheel, whether it's turned on or not.
Similarly, we respect the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal. Again, it doesn't change anything because there's nothing to turn off. But we respect it on principle.
Changes to This Policy
If we change this privacy policy in a meaningful way, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. We will also add a note to the blog if the change is significant.
Because our policy is essentially "we collect nothing," there is not much to change. If we ever start collecting data, we would need to completely rewrite this page, which would be a very obvious change. You'd notice. The page would go from being refreshingly short to depressingly long.
Privacy FAQ
No. The names exist only in your browser's memory. They are never sent to our servers. We have no way to see them, access them, or know they exist. When you close the tab, they're gone forever.
No cookies of any kind. Not first-party, not third-party, not session, not persistent. Zero cookies. You can verify this in your browser's developer tools right now.
Yes. Since no data is collected or transmitted, student names are never exposed to anyone. The names stay in the browser on the device being used. NameWheel is COPPA compliant by design. Many schools and districts already use it in classrooms.
When your browser loads NameWheel, it downloads font files from Google's servers. This means Google sees that your IP address requested fonts associated with our site. Google Fonts doesn't set cookies or track you for ads. If this still concerns you, a browser extension can block the request, and the site will use a fallback system font.
No. We don't use any analytics tool. We don't know if you've visited once or a thousand times. We don't know if you're a new visitor or a returning one. We don't know if you're reading this right now. (Well, clearly you are, but we don't know that technically.)
Open your browser's developer tools. Check the Network tab during a spin and confirm no requests carry your names. Check the Application tab and confirm no cookies are set. Check the Console for any suspicious scripts. Everything we claim is verifiable by you, right now, with tools already built into your browser.
The bookmark feature stores names in the URL hash (the part after the # symbol). Per the HTTP specification, hash fragments are never sent to the server. They're processed entirely by your browser. The names live in your browser's address bar and bookmark, not on our servers.
We have no plans to. NameWheel is a passion project with minimal hosting costs. There is no business pressure to monetize. If this ever changes (which we don't expect), we would update this policy and announce it on the blog well in advance.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or anything else? You can reach us through the contact page at namewheel.org/contact.
We are a small team and we read every message. If you have a concern about privacy, we will take it seriously and get back to you promptly. If you have a compliment about our privacy practices, we will also take that seriously and probably frame it.