Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 1, 2026

Lofi Worlds is a free website that plays lofi music in animated pixel-art worlds. You can use it without an account, and nobody has to sign in to listen. Signing in is optional. Anyone can make a free account. Members pay for a monthly membership (or were given one) that adds favorites, playlists and more. This page explains, in plain language, the little we learn about visitors, what an account keeps, and who helps us run the site.

Who runs Lofi Worlds

Lofi Worlds is run by an independent creator. Questions about this policy or your information: [email protected].

What we measure

We use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used, so we know which worlds and songs people enjoy and what to make next. It records things like:

• the pages and worlds you view, the songs that start playing, and buttons such as the random world or the guided tour;
• your browser, device type and screen size, and the website that sent you here;
• your approximate location (country and city), which Google works out from your network address.

We have turned off Google's advertising features and Google signals. We do not use this information for advertising, and we do not try to find out who you are. Signing in does not change this: we never send your account, your email address or your callsign to Google Analytics.

In the European Union, the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, Google Analytics runs without cookies on our site. Elsewhere it sets two first-party cookies (named _ga and _ga_8C5BT0BQL3) so that a returning visit can be counted as the same visitor.

Google Analytics keeps the detailed records for 2 months and visitor-level data for 14 months, then deletes them; summary reports without personal details are kept longer. You can block Google Analytics with Google's opt-out browser add-on, by blocking cookies, or with a content blocker. Google's own use of this data is covered by Google's privacy policy.

We also keep our own simple counts on our server: for each day, how many times each world was opened and how long it stayed on screen, and how many times each song was played, how often it played for 30 seconds or more, and for how long. These are totals for the whole site, kept for about 13 months, with no cookie and nothing tied to you, your account or your network address (our server uses a scrambled form of the address in memory only, to stop any one address adding too much, and never writes it down).

The live listener count

When you press enter, your browser keeps a connection open to our server so it can show how many people are listening right now. While that connection is open, the server holds a scrambled (hashed) form of your network address in memory, only to count each person once. It is never written to disk, never shown to anyone, and it is gone when you leave.

What stays in your browser

Lofi Worlds saves a few small preferences in your own browser's storage (not cookies), such as where you dragged the play bar or the comms panel, the last blog post you opened (so a new one can be marked), and a randomly made-up callsign for the chat that is coming soon. They never leave your device unless you use the chat once it opens, and you can remove them at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser settings. If you sign in, your browser also keeps the sign-in cookie described below.

Accounts and signing in

An account is optional, and there are no passwords. You sign in in one of two ways, from the sign-in panel in the comms drawer:

• With Google. Google's own button and sign-in window are used. They come from Google (accounts.google.com), and your browser only loads them once you open the sign-in panel. When you pick your Google account, Google tells us your email address, your name and your profile picture, and whether Google has checked the address. We use the email address to find your account, or to make a free one if you have none, and nothing else: we do not keep your name or your picture. What happens on Google's side is covered by Google's privacy policy. For an address that Google does not run itself (anything other than Gmail or a Google Workspace address), we send a sign-in link to that address instead, to make sure the mailbox is really yours today.
• With a link we email you. You type your email address and we send a sign-in link to it. We send these emails through Brevo, an email delivery service, so Brevo handles your address and the message in order to deliver it. The link works once and stops working after 15 minutes. If the address has no account yet, the link we send makes a free one, but only when you press the button on the page it opens. Brevo's privacy policy.

What an account keeps

• Your email address, and whether you have proved it is yours by signing in with it. It is how we find your account and where sign-in links go. It is never shown to other visitors.
• Your callsign, the name that will appear next to your messages once the chat opens. We make one up for you and you can change it.
• Dates: when the account was made, when you last signed in, and roughly when you were last here (to the hour).
• Your membership: whether you are a member, and how (paid, or a free membership we gave you), with its renewal or end date and the ids that link your account to your Stripe customer and subscription. We never receive or keep your card number.
• Payment checks, if you paid: the code Stripe gives to your card (a card fingerprint, which cannot be turned back into the card number), a one-way code made from your billing address, and when you accepted the terms at checkout. They are used only to keep banned people from joining again and to show that the terms were accepted.
• Your favorites and playlists, if you are a member: the songs you mark and the playlists you make. Only you can see them.
• Sign-in records. Each signed-in browser and each sign-in link is stored only as a one-way code (a hash), never as the code your browser or your email holds. A link for a new account also holds the address it was sent to, locked so that only that link can read it, until it is used or expires.
• If an account is banned for breaking the rules, a one-way code made from its email address, so that the same address cannot simply come back.
• When the chat opens, every message you post, and every message the chat filter blocks, with your account, kept for 60 days so reports can be dealt with. The chat is not open yet.

We do not keep passwords (there are none), your name or picture from Google, or your network address: addresses are used in memory only, to limit abuse such as someone asking for thousands of sign-in links, and are never written to the account records. Our server logs name accounts by a random id, never by email address.

Paying for a membership

Memberships are sold through Link, Stripe's merchant of record, on Stripe's secure checkout page. When you join, Stripe and Link receive your payment details, your email address, and your name and billing address (needed to work out sales tax or VAT), and they handle the payment, the tax, receipts and billing support under their own privacy policies: Stripe's privacy policy and Link's privacy policy. From Stripe we receive your email address, whether the payment worked, your subscription's status and dates, a customer id, and the card and billing address details used for the payment checks described above. Your card number never reaches our server. You can manage or cancel the membership from "Manage membership" in the sign-in panel, which opens Stripe's billing page, or through your Link account.

Our cookies

Our own server sets only two cookies; the Google Analytics cookies described above come from Google's script, not from our server. While you pay for a membership, a short-lived cookie named __Host-lw_hold recognises your browser so the callsign you picked stays yours during checkout; it expires after 35 minutes.

Signing in sets the cookie named __Host-lw_session. It holds a random code that keeps you signed in on this browser. It is sent only to lofiworlds.com, only over a secure connection, and the page's scripts cannot read it. It lasts 90 days from your last visit, signing out removes it, and it is never used for tracking or advertising. If you never sign in or start a checkout, our server sets no cookie at all.

Deleting your account, and how long things are kept

• You can delete your account yourself: sign in, open My Profile from the sign-in panel in the comms drawer, press "Delete account" and type your callsign to confirm. Or write to [email protected] and we will do it for you.
• Deleting erases your email address, your favorites and playlists and your sign-in records at once. Your callsign is held back for 30 days so nobody can take it straight away. Copies can remain in our backups for up to 7 days, until they roll over.
• Your account otherwise stays until you delete it.
• A signed-in browser stays signed in until 90 days after its last visit, or until you sign out.
• Sign-in links stop working after 15 minutes, and unused ones are removed within about an hour.
• If a membership ends, your favorites and playlists are hidden and kept for 180 days in case you come back, then erased.
• The one-way code of a banned email address is kept for as long as it is needed to keep that person out, even if the account is deleted.

Services that help run the site

• Cloudflare delivers and protects the site. Like any network in front of a website, it handles your network address and the details of each request to send you the pages. It also forwards email you send to [email protected] to our inbox. We have turned off Cloudflare's own visitor analytics. Cloudflare's privacy policy.
• DigitalOcean hosts our server in the United States, including the account records. Our web server does not keep a log of visits.
• Google Fonts supplies the fonts, so your browser fetches it from Google's servers, which see your network address. Google's privacy policy.
• Google Analytics, described above.
• Google sign-in, only if you choose to sign in with Google, described above.
• Stripe and Link take membership payments, described above.
• Brevo delivers the sign-in emails, described above.

We do not sell or rent information about you, and we do not show ads.

Our YouTube channel

We publish our own videos on our YouTube channel, LoFi Worlds. To upload them we use a small tool of our own, Lofi Worlds Uploader, which uses YouTube API Services. Only we sign in to it, with our own Google account, and it only uploads our videos to our channel. It does not access, collect, store or share any information about you or any other YouTube user.

When you watch our videos on YouTube, YouTube's own terms apply: by using our YouTube content you agree to the YouTube Terms of Service, and Google handles your information under the Google Privacy Policy. You can see and remove the apps that have access to a Google account in Google's security settings. Because the uploader keeps nothing about anyone, there is nothing of yours for us to delete. Questions go to [email protected].

Your choices and rights

Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR in Europe or privacy laws in California and other US states), you may have the right to ask what information about you we hold, to have it corrected or deleted, and to object to its use. If you have an account you can delete it yourself at any time, as described above. For anything else, or if you do not have an account (we usually cannot link anything back to a visitor who never signed in), write to [email protected] and we will help as far as we can. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

Children

Lofi Worlds is not aimed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Accounts and memberships are for people aged 16 or over; if you think a child has an account, tell us and we will delete it.

The chat, and changes

The chat is coming soon. When it opens, messages are kept as described above. When this policy changes, the date at the top changes too.

See also the terms of use, the about page, the blog, the credits and the contact page.