Privacy
Almost nothing, and this page says exactly what. It is written so a parent can read it in five minutes and a school technology director can answer their own questions from it.
Last updated: [PUBLICATION DATE] · Applies to nolooktyping.com and the app at /play/
1 · The short version
No Look Typing is a web page that teaches typing. Everything it learns about you — your speed, your accuracy, which keys you miss, which finger is slow — is written to your own browser's storage on your own computer. By default none of it is sent anywhere, and there is no account to make.
There is one optional feature that changes that: if you want your progress on a second computer, you can make an account. Then a copy of your progress is stored on our server so it can follow you. What that account holds is listed in full in section 4.
/play/ loads no code, fonts, images or data from anyone
else's servers. The marketing pages, including this one, do load a
web font from Google — see section 5, because that is a real
exception and we are not going to hide it.2 · On your computer
The app uses your browser's localStorage. That is a small
box of text that belongs to this website and lives on your machine. It is
not a cookie, it is not sent with requests, and no other website can read
it. These are the entries the app creates:
| Entry | What is in it |
|---|---|
keyquest.save.v1 |
All of it: every player on this computer and their whole record — speed, accuracy, per-key and per-finger statistics, day-by-day history, levels passed, badges, the coach's notes, and any settings. (The name is historical; the app used to be called something else, and renaming the entry would erase everybody's progress.) |
keyquest.save.v1.broken |
Only appears if a saved file could not be read back. The unreadable copy is kept rather than thrown away, in case it can be rescued. |
keyquest.save.v1.probe |
A single character written and immediately deleted, to find out whether storage works at all (it does not, in some private windows). |
tbf.user, tbf.token,
tbf.profile |
Only if you sign in. Your username, the session token that keeps you signed in, and which player on this computer the account belongs to. Signing out removes the token. |
nolook.handoff |
If you took the typing test on the front page, the two results are left here so the app can pick them up instead of asking you to guess your speed. The app deletes it as soon as it reads it. |
The app installs a service worker, which keeps a copy of the app's own files (the page, the stylesheet, the scripts) in your browser's cache so it opens with no internet at all — on a school Chromebook on bad wifi, for instance. That cache holds program files, not your data, and it never contacts the accounts server.
Clearing site data for nolooktyping.com in your browser removes everything above, permanently, with no involvement from us. Inside the app, Settings has a DELETE button for each player, which states the hours and best speed about to be destroyed before it does it.
The other side of this promise: because your progress lives only in that browser, clearing your browsing data, reimaging a school laptop, or switching browsers loses it. The app periodically offers you a progress code to copy somewhere safe. That is not a formality — it is the backup.
3 · Text you type in
All three are stored exactly like the rest of your progress: on your computer. If you sign in for an account, they are part of the backup that is uploaded, because the backup is the whole record. So do not paste anything into the app that you would mind having stored.
The app also asks your age band and how you type now, to
pick a starting plan. That answer is a category (for example
10to14), not a birthday, and it is stored with the rest of
your progress.
4 · The optional account
An account exists for one reason: so a child who practises at school and at home does not have two half-records. It is optional, the app works completely without it, and signing out never deletes anything.
| Held | What it is |
|---|---|
| Username | Whatever you chose. Three to sixteen
characters, letters, numbers, - and _.
Nothing requires it to be your name and nothing checks. |
| Password hash | Your password put through scrypt with a random salt. The password itself is never stored and cannot be read back out. |
| Recovery code hash | The same treatment for the recovery code shown to you once at sign-up. |
| Session tokens | Random values that keep you signed in, so your password is not sent on every sync. They expire after 60 days, a maximum of ten are kept, and changing your password invalidates all of them. |
| One save blob | A copy of your progress, exactly as described in section 2 — including anything you typed into the boxes in section 3. The server stores it and never looks inside it. |
| Two timestamps | When the account was made, and when it was last saved. |
No email address. No real name. No age. No school, class or district. No phone number. No payment details, because there is nothing to pay for. No analytics of any kind. No log of your requests — the accounts service is written not to log them.
The first name you typed when you started is a label on your own machine and is not part of what is uploaded when you sync.
The cost of holding no email address: if you forget your password we cannot mail it to you, and we cannot warn you about anything by email either. That is why you are shown a recovery code once at sign-up and told to keep it. It is a genuine trade and we would rather state it than pretend it away.
To stop somebody guessing passwords or filling the disk with junk accounts, the accounts service counts recent failures and requests in memory. Those counters are keyed partly by IP address: six wrong passwords for the same account from the same address locks that pair out for five minutes, more than forty requests a minute from one address is refused, and one address can create six accounts a day. These counters are held in memory only, are pruned as they age, and are gone when the service restarts. They are never written to disk.
A wrong username and a wrong password produce exactly the same error, and the server does the same work either way, so nobody can use it to find out whether a particular child has an account.
5 · Over the network
/play/, now loads only from us, and the site uses whichever
typefaces your computer already has.The account records sit on a single server operated by us, hosted with [HOSTING PROVIDER] in [COUNTRY / REGION]. They are stored as ordinary files, one per account, readable only by the account holder's own credentials through the API. There is no third-party database, no cloud analytics platform and no processor other than the hosting company that runs the machine.
6 · Sound and speech
Every sound the app makes is synthesised in the browser with WebAudio as it plays. There are no audio files, so nothing is downloaded and nothing is streamed.
The spelling practice says a word out loud. It does that by asking your
browser to speak, using the browser's own built-in speech feature
(speechSynthesis) — the same one that reads pages aloud.
We send it a word and a sentence and it speaks them. Be aware that
on some devices and browsers the built-in voices are provided by the
operating system and may be processed by the device maker's service rather
than entirely on the machine. That is outside our control and
outside our code; if it matters to you, the practice works without sound,
and your operating system's voice settings control which voice is used.
Nothing about that word or sentence goes to us.
8 · Your controls
Both of the first two need your password as well as an open session, so that somebody walking past an unlocked laptop cannot delete a child's year of work.
If a button will not work for you, write to [CONTACT EMAIL] and we will do it by hand. We will need to be satisfied you are the account holder or their parent or guardian; since we hold no other identifying information, in practice that means knowing the username and answering from a position only its owner could hold.
9 · Children and parents
No Look Typing is made by a father and his son, and the son is the first user. Children use it, so it is built to hold as little about a child as it possibly can while still doing its job.
You can see everything held about your child and have it erased using the two buttons in section 8, from your child's own device, or by writing to [CONTACT EMAIL]. You do not need to give a reason and we will not ask for more information about your child in order to delete what little we have.
If you would rather your child never sends anything anywhere at all, simply do not make an account. That is the default, and the app is complete without it.
This section describes what the software does. It is not a legal opinion about any particular law.
10 · For schools and districts
With no account (the default): nothing reaches us. The
app is a static web page. All student work product — keystroke
statistics, per-key accuracy, session history — is written to
localStorage in the browser profile on the device and stays
there.
With an optional account: a self-chosen username, a scrypt password hash, a recovery-code hash, session tokens, one opaque save blob of typing statistics, and two timestamps. No email, no name, no age field, no student ID, no school or district identifier, no IP address stored with the record.
On the device, in the browser profile, unless a student creates an account. Account records are files on a single server operated by us at [HOSTING PROVIDER] in [COUNTRY / REGION], transferred over HTTPS. There are no sub-processors other than that hosting company.
The app is one HTML page plus scripts and works offline after first load
via a service worker. It needs no plugins, no extensions and no installed
software. If your network blocks everything except an allowlist, the app
needs nolooktyping.com; the account sync uses
nolooktyping.com/tbf/ on the same host. It uses no
WebSockets and no other ports.
If your district requires a signed data privacy agreement, a state student-data-privacy addendum, a security questionnaire or an entry in a registry, write to [CONTACT EMAIL]. [STATUS OF DPA / SDPC PARTICIPATION — TO BE COMPLETED]
11 · Outside the United States
The site is reachable from anywhere, so people outside the United States use it. What that means in practice:
[LAWFUL BASIS, DATA CONTROLLER IDENTITY, EU/UK REPRESENTATIVE AND TRANSFER MECHANISM — FOR LEGAL REVIEW]
12 · Retention
Written out in full, with the numbers and the reasoning, on its own page: how long we keep things. The short answer is that data on your computer stays until you clear it, and an account that nobody uses is deleted automatically.
13 · Changes and contact
If what the software does changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the top changes. If a change ever means something new is collected or something is sent somewhere new, the app will say so on screen rather than leaving it to a page nobody opens.
Questions, requests, or anything that looks wrong here: [CONTACT EMAIL].
No Look Typing is made by [NAME OF THE PERSON OR ENTITY RESPONSIBLE], contactable at [POSTAL ADDRESS IF REQUIRED].