Privacy
X-WOW keeps nothing about who you are, unless you write to us
No accounts, no cookies, no analytics, no trackers, and no forms that send anything. Nothing you type on this site is sent anywhere or shown to anyone. Here is every place a visit touches, and what each may keep.
Who serves the pages
Every page and file of x-wow.com comes from GitHub Pages, a service of GitHub, Inc. To send you a page, a web server has to receive your device's IP address. GitHub's documentation says: “When a GitHub Pages site is visited, the visitor's IP address is logged and stored for security purposes, regardless of whether the visitor has signed into GitHub or not.” (What is GitHub Pages?, read 10 October 2026). It doesn't say for how long; GitHub's privacy statement says retention “depends on the purpose of data collection and any legal obligations”. GitHub sends the pages through a content delivery network: the site's replies name Fastly, which GitHub lists among its subprocessors for content delivery. X-WOW can't see GitHub's logs. When we checked on 12 October 2026, the site set no cookie.
The pages ask for nothing from anywhere else: no fonts, scripts, images or videos from other hosts. The slide game SHRINK loads its slide pictures from x-wow.com too. A link to another site (a publisher, a supplier, GitHub, X) takes you to that site, under its own privacy rules.
Before a page loads, your device looks up x-wow.com's address. That lookup normally goes through your internet provider's resolver to the domain's name servers (ace.ns.cloudflare.com and erin.ns.cloudflare.com since 11 October 2026, run by Cloudflare, Inc., not by X-WOW), not to X-WOW.
What your browser keeps
A few small notes at most, kept only in your browser and never sent to anyone:
xwow-lang(local storage): only from earlier visits, when the site had an EN / 中文 button; the site no longer writes or reads it, and clearing the site's data removes it.xwow-board-sort(local storage): only from earlier visits, when the site had an Inventions board you could sort; the site no longer writes or reads it, and clearing the site's data removes it.xwow-booted(session storage): that the opening animation has already played in this tab, so it doesn't play again. It disappears when you close the tab, and is never written if your device asks for reduced motion.xwow-model-motion(session storage): written only if you press Pause or Play under SWELL's 3D model, so the model stays the way you left it on this tab. It disappears when you close the tab.shrink-v1(local storage, written the first time you open SHRINK): your progress in the game, including the names you typed for your finds. “Start over” in the field guide empties it; clearing the site's data removes it.xwow-duck(local storage): written only if you press “Hide the duck”, so it stays away; pressing “Bring the duck back” removes it.
The site works without any of them. To clear them, delete this site's data in your browser's settings, or use a private window.
The duck
A small cartoon duck in a lab coat, drawn in code by an AI, lives in the page margin (or in the footer on narrow screens). It never speaks and never covers the page. The duck is asleep until you tap it (or press “Wake the duck” in the footer). Awake, it reacts to how you scroll, move the pointer and pause on this page, and to long paragraphs and pictures in the middle of the screen, using only what's in your browser: it walks when you scroll, looks toward your pointer, lowers its goggles, wobbles when you tap it, and naps when nothing happens for a while. It keeps no record and works out nothing about you; nothing is sent anywhere. Everything is forgotten when you leave the page, and it is asleep again on the next one. If you send it away with the footer button, your browser remembers that in one setting (xwow-duck); “Bring the duck back” removes it.
Read aloud
The LOUPE read-aloud button, and SHRINK's “Read it to me”, use only a voice that runs on your own device. If your device has none for the language, the button says so and stays silent, rather than use an online voice, which would send the text to another company.
What the site collects from you
Nothing, apart from an email you choose to send us (below). You can type in two places: SHRINK's box for naming your finds (those names stay in your browser) and the number boxes of the calculator on SWELL's Start here page (nothing typed there is kept or sent). There is no comment box, no upload, no sign-up and no wish box. If the site ever collects anything, this page will say what, why and for how long before it starts.
If you write to info@x-wow.com, your message, with your email address, stays in X-WOW's mailbox, which Google Workspace runs for us, so that we can read it and reply. We keep a message only as long as we need it to reply and to follow the conversation, and delete it sooner if you ask. We never publish private emails and never add anyone to a list. To see or delete what we hold from you, write to the same address. If you think we've got it wrong, you can complain to the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
Children
The same rules hold for everyone. Nothing on this site lets one visitor reach another, and pages made for children don't link to GitHub.
Last updated 12 October 2026, from the site's own code. Questions: info@x-wow.com.