🔒 Nobody Is Tracking You Here

What this site remembers (and where)

When you play the mission, your browser saves three small notes on your own device using something called localStorage:

• Your decisions — so the site remembers which choices you locked in
• Which slides you've visited — so your progress survives closing the browser
• Your best score — for bragging rights

That data lives in your phone the way a bookmark lives in your book. It is never uploaded — there's no server to upload it to. This site has no database and no login. If you want it gone, tap the 🔄 button at the bottom of the home page and it's erased instantly.

What about the share-your-score QR code? When you finish the mission, you can share a link with your first name, troop number, and score. Here's the neat part: that information is stored in the part of the link after the # symbol — called the fragment — and browsers never send the fragment to any server. It travels from your phone to your friend's phone inside the link itself. We couldn't collect it if we wanted to.

🕵️ Check it yourself (really — we insist)

Every decision slide on this site has a "Sources for Skeptics" section, because checking claims is what real engineers do. Same rule applies to this page. On a computer, open this site in Chrome or Firefox and press F12 (or right-click → "Inspect") to open the developer tools — the same tools professionals use. Then look:

1. Application → Cookies — empty. This site sets zero cookies.
2. Application → Local Storage — there are your decisions, sitting on your device. That's all of it.
3. Network tab (refresh the page) — every request goes to this site's own address, and only to fetch its own pages and pictures. No ad networks, no analytics companies, no social media buttons phoning home. The site doesn't talk to anyone else.
4. The code itself — this whole site is open source on GitHub. Anyone on Earth can read every line and verify what it does. Secrets don't survive that.

🍪 So how do other sites track people?

Great question — and knowing the answer makes you safer everywhere. The big three techniques:

1. Cookies. A cookie is a tiny note a website asks your browser to keep and show back on every visit. Cookies have honest jobs — keeping you logged in, remembering your shopping cart. The trouble is third-party cookies: when an ad company's code is embedded on thousands of different sites, its cookie lets it recognize you on all of them. Visit a shoe store, then a news site, then a game — the same ad network saw you in all three places, and now it has a diary of your day.

2. Tracking scripts and pixels. Those "Like" buttons, comment boxes, and invisible one-pixel images on many pages? Each one is code loaded from another company's server, which means that company learns you were there — even if you never click it. Free analytics tools work the same way: the site owner gets charts, and the analytics company gets to watch the site's visitors.

3. Fingerprinting. The sneakiest one. Your browser reveals little facts about itself — screen size, fonts, time zone, graphics hardware. Any one fact is common; the combination is nearly unique, like how no two scouts have the same height, shoe size, hometown, and favorite merit badge all at once. Sites can recognize the combination — no cookie required. That's why "clearing cookies" doesn't always mean starting fresh.

Why do they do it? Mostly advertising: a profile of what you read, watch, and shop for is worth money, because ads aimed at you specifically sell more. That's the deal behind most "free" websites and apps — you pay with information about yourself. It's not necessarily evil, but it's a trade, and you deserve to know you're making it.

🛡️ How to protect yourself out there

• Look for the padlock (HTTPS) in the address bar — it means your connection is encrypted so others on the network can't read it. (This site is HTTPS-only.)
• Question every account. When an app demands a sign-up, ask: why does it need to know who I am? Often it doesn't — it wants to build a profile.
• Give away less. Real name, birthday, school, location — the less you post, the less can be collected, leaked, or misused. You can't un-share.
• Use your browser's defenses. Modern browsers can block third-party cookies and known trackers — it's usually one switch in Settings → Privacy.
• Ask an adult before sharing personal info. Not because you're not smart — because a second opinion is how NASA catches problems too. Every decision in this mission was double-checked by somebody.
• Be a skeptic. "This app is free!" — then how does it pay its engineers? Following the money is a superpower.