Privacy

Mlinzi is a game and a small research project by James Mogoi, a software engineer in Nairobi. There are no accounts, nothing is sold, and nothing is used for ads.

What is kept

Your messages to Mlinzi and his replies, after phone numbers, emails, ID numbers, M-Pesa codes and card or account numbers are removed. Names can't be removed automatically, so please don't type yours.
The level you played, what happened, and the guard dog's score.
A random game ID in a cookie on your device, the country your connection comes from, and a keyed hash of your IP address, used only for rate limits.

Why

To run the game, to stop one person using up everyone's free AI quota, and to study which tricks fool AI assistants in English, Swahili and Sheng. Findings are published as totals and redacted examples.

Who handles it

Your messages are sent to Groq, which runs the AI models, and stored with Neon, a database in Frankfurt. The site runs on Vercel. All three are outside Kenya.

How long

Messages are deleted once they are 12 months old. Rate-limit counters are deleted after 2 days.

Your choices

Delete everything logged under this browser's game ID, right now. Your level progress stays on your device.

For anything else, contact James through mogoidev.vercel.app.