Test your vocab: Privacy

Privacy

The short version: TestYourVocab.net has no accounts, no ads, no analytics services and no third-party cookies. It keeps your test result, the survey answers you choose to give, and a little technical information, and uses them only to run the test, to see how it spreads, and to study vocabulary in aggregate.

When you take the test

While you go through the steps, your progress travels inside the page itself, encrypted, so nothing is stored until you finish step 2. Then we save:

your result: the estimated vocabulary size, how it compares with other results, and how many items you checked in each part of the test;
the date and time, and whether you used the English or Portuguese pages;
your IP address, and the country it belongs to. The country is looked up in a table on our own server, not by an outside service;
your browser's preferred-language setting;
if you came through someone else's result link or shared link, which result that was (see below).

We don't keep a list of which words you checked. Some items in the test are made-up words, and for those we count, across everyone, how often each one is shown and checked, which tells us whether it is doing its job.

The survey

The questions after the test are optional, and nothing is saved from them unless you submit the form. If you do, your answers (such as birth year, schooling, reading habits, nationality, or a ZIP code or SAT score if you give one) are stored with your result. We never ask for your name or e-mail address, so please don't put them in any field.

Your result link

Each result gets an address of its own (/result?user=…). Anyone who has the link can see the number and how it compares, but not your survey answers or anything else about you. Share it only where you want it seen.

Sharing, and arriving through a shared link

When you use the Share button or the Facebook and Twitter links on a result page, we record that it was used, which one, and whether sharing went through (for example, shared or cancelled). We don't learn where or with whom you shared: your device doesn't tell us.

Shared links carry the result's code (?ref=…). When someone opens a shared link or a result link, we note which result it belonged to, the site they came from if their browser says, and whether they are on the same network as the person who took that test. If they then take the test themselves, their result is linked to that one. This is how we see whether the test spreads; we don't keep the visitor's IP address for it.

Cookies

The site sets at most two cookies, both its own:

tyv_ref, when you arrive through someone's result link or shared link: it remembers which result for one day, or until you finish the test, so that your result can be linked to it;
tyv_loc, only if you click “English interface” on the Portuguese pages: it remembers that choice for one day.

Server logs

Like almost every web server, ours writes a line for each request: the IP address, the time, the address asked for, the browser's identification and the page you came from. These logs are used to keep the site working and safe, and are deleted after 14 days.

Other websites

The charts in the blog are drawn by Google Charts, loaded from gstatic.com. Opening a blog page with charts lets Google see your IP address and browser details, as with any file it serves. No other page loads anything from another site.
The Facebook and Twitter/X share buttons are ordinary links: those sites learn nothing from this one until you click.
Links to other sites lead to their own privacy rules.

Who sees the data

Only the people who run this site. Nothing is sold, rented or handed to advertisers. We may publish statistics drawn from many results, never in a form that points to one person.

How long it is kept

Results and survey answers are kept for as long as the site runs, since the statistics depend on them. Server logs are kept for 14 days.

Removing your result

Send us your result link through the contact page, and we will delete that result together with any survey answers saved with it. If you no longer have the link, tell us roughly when you took the test and we will do what we can. You can also write to ask what we hold about you.

Last updated: 23 October 2026.