Privacy
Last updated 22 September 2026
Germ Busters never asks for a child's name, email, age, school, photo or location. Players sign in with a made-up username and a password. To create an account they also type a class key from their teacher. That is all.
What we store
- A username and password. The password is scrambled (hashed) before it is saved, so nobody, including us, can read it.
- Which class key was used to create the account. Teachers get a class key from the research team, so we can group results by class. Only the research team sees which class a key belongs to.
- How the game was played: level times and stars, germs busted, which hero was picked (Joe or Mina), steps in the handwashing puzzle, choices on the detective board, and answers to the short in-game quizzes, each with the time it happened.
What we never collect
- Real names, email addresses or phone numbers
- Age, school, class or address
- Photos, voice recordings or location
There are no adverts, no tracking and no analytics services in the game or on this website.
Report card and leaderboards
Players can sign in to a player dashboard with their game username and password to see their own report card. Only they see their own results. The leaderboards show other players a username, stars, total time and, if the teacher chose one, a school name. Quiz answers are never shown on the leaderboards, and a school can ask for its class to be left off them.
Please don't use a real name
Because the username is the only thing that identifies a player, pick a nickname rather than a real name. Teachers and parents, please help younger children choose one.
Why we collect it
Germ Busters is part of a research project on whether games can help young children learn to prevent Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease. The gameplay and quiz data show us what children learned and where the game can teach better. Results are reported as group totals, never by individual username.
Who can see it and where it is kept
The data is stored on the university's own server and can only be viewed by the research team through a password-protected dashboard. It is not sold, and it is not shared with anyone outside the research team.
On your device
To keep players signed in and remember their progress, the game saves a sign-in key and game progress in the web browser's own storage. The sign-in key expires after 30 days. Clearing the browser's site data removes it.
This website sets no cookies. It loads its fonts from Google Fonts and its icons from jsDelivr, which, like any website, receive the visitor's IP address when those files are downloaded.
Removing a player's data
To have a player's data deleted, send us the player's username through our contact form (or ask your teacher to), and we will remove everything stored under it.
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