Privacy & cookies

SandStorm is a free browser game supported by advertising. This page sets out what is stored, what third parties are involved, and how to control it.

Last updated: August 2026.

What we collect ourselves

No account, and no personal data collected by us. There is no sign-up, no login and no form anywhere on this site.

We run our own analytics so we can tell whether anyone is playing. It records page visits (which page, what sent you here, window size, phone or desktop), your two-letter country code, how long a visit lasted, and basic game events such as a run starting or ending.

It also records faults — when the game hits an error, loses its connection to the multiplayer server, or fails to load part of the world. A fault report says what went wrong, the error message, whether you were in a multiplayer room, and how long the page had been open. It carries no more about you than any other event, each kind is reported at most once per visit, and it is there so we can find and fix things that break during real games rather than only the ones we happen to reproduce ourselves.

Your IP address is not stored — only an irreversible, daily-salted form of it, so we can count visitors without keeping anything that identifies you. There is no advertising ID, no cross-site tracking, no profile, and none of it is sold or shared.

What is stored in your browser

Your game settings, so the game opens the way you left it; session preferences such as whether you dismissed an advert; and a random identifier that groups one visit's events together and is discarded when you close the tab. None of it is a cookie, and settings never leave your device.

You can clear this at any time through your browser's "clear site data" controls. Doing so resets the game's settings to their defaults and nothing else.

Advertising

This site uses Google AdSense to serve advertising. Google is a third-party vendor, and its use of data is governed by Google's own policies rather than ours.

Ads appear on the pages around the game, and — on phones and tablets only — as a single dismissible panel before the game starts. Nothing is ever shown over a run in progress.

• Google uses cookies and similar technologies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites.
• Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this and/or other sites on the Internet.
• Third-party vendors and ad networks may also serve ads on this site and may use cookies to do so.

Ads in the game itself

The game page can instead be served by GameDistribution (Azerion), the network that also places SandStorm on other game portals. Where it is in use, Google AdSense is not loaded on that page — only one ad network runs at a time — and advertising takes two forms: a short break before a run starts or between runs, and a rewarded video you may choose to watch in exchange for an extra life. Rewarded ads are never forced: declining one costs you nothing but the extra life, and the game is fully playable without ever watching one. The game is silenced and paused for the duration of any ad.

GameDistribution and its advertising partners set their own cookies and process data under their own policies, including their own consent notice where the law requires one. Their privacy statement is at gamedistribution.com/privacy. When you play SandStorm embedded on another site, that site's terms and privacy policy apply to your visit there in addition to this one.

How to control this

• You may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings.
• You can opt out of some third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info/choices or youronlinechoices.com.
• You can read how Google uses information from sites that use its services at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
• Your browser's own settings can block or delete cookies entirely. The game itself will continue to work.

If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland

Where required by law, a consent notice is shown before any non-essential cookies are set, and you can accept, reject or configure your choices there. You can reopen that notice at any time to change your mind, and rejecting personalised advertising does not restrict any part of the game.

Where the data lives

The analytics above go to a service we run ourselves, hosted in the United States. Nobody else has access to it, and old data is deleted once it is no longer useful.

This site is hosted by Vercel, which processes standard server request logs (IP address, user-agent, requested URL) to deliver the site and protect it from abuse. See Vercel's privacy policy.

Children

This site is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the revised version will be posted on this page with an updated date at the top.

Contact

For any question about this policy or about data on this site, email hello@sandstorm.ink.