ChessGrader / Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy
ChessGrader has no accounts, no database, no cookies, no analytics, and no advertising. We do not receive your games. This page explains exactly what that means, and what still leaves your browser.
The short version
- We do not ask you to sign up, and there is nothing to sign into.
- Your games are analysed on your own device. They are never uploaded to us, because we have no server that could receive them.
- We set no cookies, run no analytics or tracking scripts, serve no ads, and use no third-party AI service.
- The things ChessGrader remembers — your saved usernames, your settings, your coaching progress — are stored in your own browser and stay there.
- When you import games, your browser talks directly to Chess.com or Lichess. Those requests go to them, not through us.
1. Who this policy is from
ChessGrader is an independent website operated by a private developer based in Australia. Contact for any privacy question or request: contact@chessgrader.com.
2. How ChessGrader is built (and why that matters here)
ChessGrader is a static website. The pages, and a WebAssembly build of the Stockfish chess engine, are downloaded to your browser and everything runs locally from there. There is no application server, no user database, and no server-side logging of your activity by us. We could not read your games or your history if we wanted to.
3. What is stored on your device
ChessGrader uses your browser’s localStorage, sessionStorage, and IndexedDB. These are not cookies: they are never attached to network requests and are not readable by any other site. Nothing in them is transmitted to us.
Depending on which features you use, that can include:
- the Chess.com or Lichess usernames you have entered, and which one is currently selected (
clarity.username,clarity.accounts); - your review settings — engine profile, board theme, piece style (
chessgrader.review-preferences.v1); - if you use the coaching features: a locally generated profile of your play, the goal and session length you chose, your progress through drills, and a rolling performance baseline (
clarity.coach.profile.v1,clarity.coach.progress.v1,clarity.coach.baseline.v1); - a cache of your completed reviews, held in an IndexedDB database named
clarity. Each cached entry contains the game’s full PGN and header information — which includes both players’ usernames, ratings, and result — plus the computed analysis. The cache keeps roughly your 200 most recent games and discards the oldest beyond that; - short-lived details of the game you are currently reviewing, held only for the browser tab session (
clarity.game.*).
Because a review necessarily covers a game with two players in it, the cache on your device will contain your opponents’ public usernames and ratings. That information came from the platform’s public record of the game and is not shared onward by us.
One more thing worth knowing: the username you are reviewing is placed in the page’s URL (after the #) so that a review is linkable and survives a refresh. That means it can appear in your browser history, and in anything you paste the link into. It is not sent to our server — browsers do not transmit the part of a URL after the # — but treat a shared link as revealing which username you were looking at.
How to delete all of it: clear site data for chessgrader.com in your browser settings, or use your browser’s “clear browsing data” option. That removes everything above, immediately and permanently. There is no copy anywhere else. Using a private/incognito window means nothing is retained after you close it.
4. What leaves your browser
Requests to Chess.com and Lichess
When you enter a username to import games, your browser makes requests directly to Chess.com’s public data API (api.chess.com) or to Lichess (lichess.org). Those platforms will see your IP address, your browser’s user agent, and the username you requested, exactly as if you had visited their site. What they do with that is covered by their privacy policies, not ours. We do not proxy, log, or see these requests. Pasting a PGN instead makes no external request at all.
Requests to our host
Loading chessgrader.com downloads files (HTML, scripts, images, the engine) from our static hosting and content-delivery provider, currently Vercel. Like any web host, that provider processes technical connection data — IP address, timestamp, requested file, user agent — to deliver the files and protect against abuse. This is standard server-log processing, it is not something we query or retain ourselves, and we do not use it to identify you, build a profile, or track you across sites. Our host operates globally and may store such logs outside Australia, including in the United States and Europe.
Nothing else
We do not load third-party fonts, analytics, advertising, social widgets, session recording, heatmaps, error-reporting services, or AI/LLM APIs. The written commentary in a report is generated by code running on your own device from your own game, not by an external service.
5. Cookies
ChessGrader sets no cookies. There is no consent banner because there is nothing to consent to.
6. Personal information and your rights
We do not collect, hold, use, or disclose personal information in the ordinary course of running this site, and we do not sell or share any data with anyone for advertising. If you email us, we hold your email and its contents for as long as needed to deal with your message.
Because we hold nothing about you, requests to access, correct, export, or delete your data are usually answered by pointing you at Section 3 — the data is on your device and under your control. You can still write to us at contact@chessgrader.com and we will respond within 30 days.
We handle personal information consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). If you are in the EU, the UK, or California, the rights given to you by the GDPR, UK GDPR, or CCPA apply to any personal information we hold — which in practice means correspondence you send us. Where we do process such information, our basis is our legitimate interest in operating and securing the site and in replying to you.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled a privacy matter, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au), or to your local supervisory authority.
7. Children
ChessGrader is open to anyone and does not knowingly collect information from children, because it does not collect information from anyone. Parents of younger players should be aware that importing games sends a username to Chess.com or Lichess, as described in Section 4.
8. Security
The site is served over HTTPS. Because analysis happens locally and we store nothing, there is no central store of your chess data to be breached. Data kept in your browser is only as secure as the device and browser profile you use.
9. Changes
If ChessGrader ever adds a feature that changes any of this — accounts, server-side storage, analytics, or advertising — we will update this page and change the effective date before that feature ships. Related reading: our Terms of Use and licenses page.