Privacy and cookies

Who operates Helpful Sudoku?

Helpful Sudoku is operated by Chris McGowan through C & J McGowan Pty. Limited, published on Google Play as Develop137. Contact contact@helpful-sudoku.com about privacy or information you have sent us. No player account or sign-in is required.

Settings and games on your device

The website stores appearance, difficulty and assistance preferences in browser local storage. Local storage is different from cookies, but both store information on your device. Clear these preferences using your browser’s site-data controls. The browser game does not currently automatically save and resume an unfinished game.

The Android app stores preferences on your device and saves an unfinished game in its local app storage where available, so it can resume when reopened. This includes the puzzle, moves, notes and game statistics. These saves are not uploaded to a Helpful Sudoku player account or cloud service. You can remove local app data using Android Settings; this removes saved preferences and progress. Any device backup is governed by your Android backup settings.

Normal puzzle play and solving run on your device. The Android app does not include an advertising or analytics SDK in the current release.

Importing photos is optional

Text and CSV imports are processed locally in your browser or Android app. If you choose photo import, the selected image is uploaded over HTTPS to our Cloudflare-hosted service and forwarded to Nanonets to recognise the puzzle. The recognised puzzle is returned to your device for review and play. Cloudflare and Nanonets process this information to provide the import service.

You can use the game without sending a photo. Only upload a puzzle you want converted; crop out names, faces and other private information. We do not use puzzle photos for advertising.

Photo processing is not limited to temporary in-memory processing. Nanonets may retain uploads and conversion results under its customer-data retention policy; we do not currently configure automatic deletion after each import or promise deletion within 90 days. See Nanonets’ retention policy and privacy policy. Processing may occur outside Australia.

Website advertising and cookies

Our website’s introduction and guide pages include Google AdSense. Google and its advertising partners may use cookies, other storage and information about your visit to deliver and measure advertising, subject to applicable consent requirements. This is separate from remembering game preferences. The current Android app does not display these website ads during normal play.

Where an advertising consent message is shown, use its choices to accept, decline or manage advertising purposes. Declining advertising consent does not require you to give up Sudoku assistance settings. Browser controls that block all site storage may prevent settings from being remembered.

Read how Google uses information from sites that use its services. Opening website links from the app is subject to the website practices described here.

Hosting, security and contact

Cloudflare hosts the website and photo-import endpoint and processes network information such as IP addresses and request metadata needed to deliver and protect these services. Photo uploads and recognition results use encrypted HTTPS connections. Our app does not offer player accounts, public profiles or a shared leaderboard.

If you email us, we receive your email address and the information you include so we can respond. We retain correspondence while needed to address your enquiry and related follow-up, or meet applicable obligations. Please avoid sending unnecessary personal information.

Deleting information and asking questions

You can delete locally stored settings and progress using the browser or Android controls described above. The app does not currently provide a verified process for requesting deletion of individual OCR uploads from Nanonets. Contact us with privacy questions or concerns about information you sent us; we will investigate, but cannot promise immediate removal from service-provider systems or backups.

Changes to these practices will be reflected on this page. The same policy is linked from our website and the Android app’s Help screen.