Legal

Last updated September 2026.

Who this is for

Moles is a study game. You need to be 13 or older to create an account — signing up asks for your date of birth, and accounts are not created for anyone under 13. Hosting your own game, or joining one with a room code, never requires an account. Public games are the one exception: they put you in a room with strangers, so they require an account in order that players can be reported and blocked.

Children under 13

Moles is not directed to children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Account creation asks for a date of birth and refuses anyone under 13.

If we learn that we hold information from a child under 13, we delete the account and everything attached to it. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has created an account here, email us at [email protected] and we will remove it. You do not need an account to ask, and we will not ask you for anything beyond what is needed to find the account.

Anyone with an account can delete it themselves at any time, from Settings. Deleting an account removes the profile, its game history, and everything tied to it.

Playing without an account

Hosting or joining a game with a code never requires an account. The things stored are the display name you type, the randomly generated room code, the analytics events described below, and — for 24 hours — a note of the XP you earned, so it is still there if you decide to make an account the same day. No email, no age, nothing that identifies you outside that game. The room itself is deleted shortly after everyone leaves it.

There is one exception. When a big room splits into smaller ones — Class Mode and Party Mode both do this — each small room reports its display names and win counts back to the main room, so whoever is running it can see how the games are going without joining each one. That is kept for 30 days and then deleted automatically. Anyone holding the main room's code can see it during that time, the same way anyone holding it could walk into the room and read the same names off the lobby. It is never attached to an account, and it never includes anything anyone said, answered, or got wrong.

Schools and classrooms

Class Mode is built so that a whole class can play without a single student needing an account.

Students join with a room code and a display name. No account is needed, and we never ask a student for an email address, a date of birth, or a photo. If the room was split into smaller ones, that display name and a win count go to the host's board, along with which player started each small room, and are deleted after 30 days. Anyone holding the main room's code can read that board while it exists.

A student who already has a Moles account and is signed in when they join is not a guest. Their name is filled in from their account, and the match counts towards their own XP, achievements and game history, exactly like any other game they play here.

Free-text chat is off by default and stays off unless someone turns it on. When it is on, messages pass an automatic word filter — a filter, not a person reading them. In a class, that decision is made once in the main room and every small room inherits it: the student who ends up running a breakout room cannot turn chat on for their group, and cannot switch the filter off. One thing worth knowing before a lesson: adding practice players to a room turns chat on automatically and keeps it on, because they need somewhere to post their clue.

What we deliberately do not build: no per-student profile a teacher can open, no record of what anyone answered or got wrong, no report carried from one lesson to the next, and nothing tied to a real name, an email address, or a school. That is a deliberate limit, not a feature we haven't got to.

Schools often ask about COPPA and FERPA. We are not going to tell you what those rules mean for your district — but what is written above is the complete list of what a class session leaves behind, and a student without an account can play a whole lesson without giving us a name we could match to them outside that room.

What we don't have: no signed data protection agreement with any district, and no third-party privacy certification. If yours requires one before a tool can be used, we aren't there yet — email us at [email protected] and tell us what you need.

If you create an account

Creating an account stores your name, email, and (optionally) a profile photo with our authentication provider, plus anything you build with it — lessons, friends, achievements, game history. Nothing is sold to third parties, and nothing is used for advertising.

Analytics

Moles records what happens in a game — a room was created, a match started, a round ended — to understand how the game is actually used and to fix what's broken. These events are recorded by our servers and happen whether or not you accept analytics cookies, because they describe the game rather than you. If you're signed in, they're tied to your account; if you're a guest, they're tied to a random ID that isn't linked to anything identifying.

If you turn Analytics on in the cookie banner, we also record which pages you visit, using an analytics script that runs in your browser (PostHog) and stores an ID on your device. This is what tells us where people get stuck before a game ever starts. Turning Analytics off in the banner means the script is never loaded at all — not loaded and then told to stay quiet. You can change your mind any time from Settings.

We also use a privacy-preserving traffic counter (Cloudflare Web Analytics) that measures page loads without cookies and without building any profile of you, and an error-reporting service (Sentry) that receives a diagnostic report when something crashes.

None of this data is ever sold, and none of it is used for advertising.

Cookies

Moles uses one necessary cookie to keep you signed in, plus our authentication provider's own client-side storage for the same purpose — the site can't function without these. Two things are optional, and you control both from the cookie banner's Customize option (or later, from Settings). Preferences remembers your lights on/off choice on your device. Analytics stores an ID used to count page visits, as described above, and is never switched on unless you say so. Nothing here is used for advertising, and we don't use advertising cookies at all.

Deleting your account

You can permanently delete your account at any time from Settings. This removes your account row and everything tied to it — your profile, friendships, saved/created lessons, ratings, chat reports, and game history — from our database, not just your ability to sign in. Deletion can't be undone. Games you hosted or joined as a guest (no account) were never tied to an account and aren't affected either way.

Your privacy rights

If you're in the EU/UK or California, you have specific rights over your data — to access, correct, export, or delete what we hold about you. Account deletion (above) already covers full erasure; for access, correction, export, or anything else, email [email protected] and we'll handle it — you don't need to know which specific law applies to you.

Copyright & DMCA

If you believe a lesson published on Moles infringes your copyright, email [email protected] with: a description of the copyrighted work; the exact lesson/location on Moles; your contact information; a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use isn't authorized by the copyright owner; and a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that you're the copyright owner or authorized to act on their behalf, with your signature. We'll remove or disable access to the material and notify whoever published it, who may submit a counter-notice if they believe it was removed in error. An account that repeatedly publishes infringing content will be terminated. Moles' designated agent is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office (DMCA-1078934).

Your content

You keep ownership of any lesson you create and publish on Moles. Publishing it grants us a license to host, display, and distribute it to other players through the app — that's what lets people find and play it. Unpublishing or deleting it ends that license going forward. You're responsible for making sure you actually have the right to publish what you upload (see Copyright & DMCA above).

Trademarks

AP® and Advanced Placement® are registered trademarks of the College Board. Moles is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the College Board. Course names on Moles describe the exam a set of study material is aimed at — they don't indicate any official relationship, approval, or review.

AI

Some features use AI. When you publish a lesson, or use an AI feature such as Proof with AI or an import, its text is sent to a third-party AI provider to be checked or improved. Private drafts aren't sent. We don't train AI models on your content.

Acceptable use

Don't use Moles to harass, impersonate, or target another person; don't attempt to disrupt the service (scraping, automated abuse, exploiting bugs to cheat or to affect other players' games); don't publish lesson content that's illegal, hateful, or sexually explicit. We can remove content, suspend, or terminate accounts that violate this — or for any other reason, at our discretion — and lesson publishing already goes through an automated review pass before it's visible to others.

No warranty

Moles is provided "as is," without warranty of any kind. We don't guarantee it will be available, error-free, or fit for any particular purpose — it's a small, actively-developed project, and things occasionally break. To the extent the law allows, we're not liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from your use of it, and our total liability for any claim is capped at what you've paid us — Moles is free to use, so that cap is $0.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-law principles.

If part of this doesn't hold up

If a court finds any part of these terms unenforceable, that part is cut out and everything else still applies.

Changes to these terms

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we'll update the date at the top of this page. Continuing to use Moles after a change means you accept the update.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or a request about your account or data — email [email protected].