Privacy

What we count

To see how the game is doing and fix it on slow phones, each visit is counted anonymously:

• how far you got (started, diyas lit, finale, whether you shared something), and how long you played;
• the kind of device, browser and graphics chip, and the frame rate;
• the site or app that sent you (like WhatsApp or Instagram), and the language of your browser;
• your approximate city, region and country, from Cloudflare's network (not GPS);
• error messages, if the game breaks.

These are kept as anonymous rows in Cloudflare Workers Analytics Engine for 3 months. We also use Cloudflare Web Analytics, a cookieless page-view counter.

What we don't

• No IP addresses stored, no IDs that follow you around, no fingerprinting. No cookies, except Meta's for visitors from our ads (below).
• No ads in the game, no selling data. Outside scripts: Cloudflare's cookieless page counter, and Meta's pixel only if you came from one of our ads.
• The names in sparkler greetings and lantern links live only in the link you share. We don't store them.

If you came from one of our ads

We advertise on Facebook and Instagram. If you open Virtual Diwali from one of those ads, this browser loads Meta's pixel for the next 7 days, so we can tell which ads bring people who actually play, and Meta can show the ads to people likely to enjoy them.

• It tells Meta that the page opened, and when you start playing, light your first diya, play for 2 minutes, light all 108, watch the finale or share something.
• Meta's script sets its own cookies (_fbp, and _fbc from the ad's link) and may connect these moments to your Facebook or Instagram account, under Meta's privacy policy. Names and wishes from greetings and lanterns are never sent.
• It's never loaded if you didn't come from an ad, for browsers sending Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, after ?analytics=0, or in Europe and the UK.

On your device

Your browser remembers a few things locally: your lanterns, the name you used for greetings, your graphics setting, and which days you visited (so a returning visitor can be told from a new one without any ID). Clearing your browser's site data removes them.

The shared sky

Lanterns you release appear in everyone's sky, anonymously: just the wish you picked. The Diwali Census shows totals and the busiest cities (only cities with several players).

Don't count me

Browsers that send Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track are never counted, and their location isn't used anywhere, not even for the census's city totals. Or open virtualdiwali.com/?analytics=0 once and this device is treated the same way from then on, Meta's pixel included (?analytics=1 undoes it).

Either way, the diyas you light and lanterns you release still add to everyone's shared totals: that's the game.