These are the terms for using spunt.mt, including the games and anything you sign in to. They also say what we hold about you and what you can make us do with it. Last updated 8 September 2026.

Using the site

Everything on Spunt is free to read and free to play. You may link to it, quote it with attribution, and use it in a classroom without asking us. You may not republish whole articles, sell access to them, or present them as somebody else's work. The words, the artwork and the games are ours unless a page says otherwise.

We write carefully and correct ourselves in public when we get something wrong, but the site is offered as it stands. Our games are works of history and, where one departs from the record, it says so on the screen where it matters. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice.

Accounts

Reading Spunt needs no account and never will. Our games are different: the Great Siege game and the Fantasy Election League both ask you to sign in before you can play. That is so a score or a squad can follow you between devices, sit on a shared table against everybody else, and still be there when you come back.

If you would rather not have an account, the honest answer is that you cannot play those two. Everything else on the site is open.

You create one by signing in with Google or with Facebook. We never see or store your password for either. What we receive and keep is your email address, the display name on that account, a link to its profile picture, and, in the case of Facebook, the account id so we can recognise you next time. If you sign in with both on the same email address, you get one account rather than two.

We also store what you do in the games while signed in: your scores, when you played, and for the Fantasy Election League the squad you picked. Nothing else. We do not ask for your date of birth, your address or your phone number, and we would rather not have them.

Emails from us

On the screen where you sign in there is a box, ticked by default, that subscribes you to Spunt's emails. Untick it before you sign in and we will not email you. Whether it is ticked or not makes no difference to the account, the game or the leaderboard.

Those emails cover whatever we are publishing at the time. Today that is likely to be a monthly letter on Maltese history and the pieces we have put out; over time it may also include writing on politics and the economy, our fact checks, new games, and anything else Spunt makes. We would rather tell you that plainly now than pretend we know exactly what we will be sending in two years.

Every email has an unsubscribe link, one click, no reason needed. You can also write to us at the address below and we will take you off the list. Unsubscribing does not close your account and does not touch your scores.

What else we measure

We use Google Analytics to count how many people read a page and roughly where in the world they are, in aggregate. It is how we know whether a piece landed. It is not tied to your account and we do not use it to build a profile of you.

A signed-in session is kept in a cookie so the site knows it is still you. Some of our games also keep a leaderboard in your own browser, on your own machine, which never reaches us and disappears when you clear your browser data.

Who else sees it

Nobody buys this data from us, because we do not sell it. It sits with the companies that run the site for us: Cloudflare, which hosts spunt.mt and stores the accounts database, and Google Analytics for the counting above. When we start sending emails we will use an email provider to send them, and your address will sit there too. Sign-in itself goes through Google and Facebook, who have their own terms and see that you signed in.

Your rights

Spunt is based in Malta, so the GDPR applies. You can ask us for a copy of everything we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete your account and everything on it, or object to us holding it at all. Ask and we will do it, normally within a few days and at most within a month. You can also complain to the Office of the Information and Data Protection Commissioner in Malta if you think we have handled you badly.

We keep account data for as long as the account exists. Ask for deletion and it goes, including the scores attached to it. Analytics data expires on Google's own schedule.

Children

The Great Siege game is built to be played by schoolchildren, and on this site it asks for an account like everybody else. That account holds an email address, a name and the scores, and nothing more. The newsletter box is the only part that is about marketing, and unticking it costs the player nothing.

If your child has signed in and you would rather they had not, write to us and we will delete the account and everything attached to it. Schools that would rather no child signed in at all can write to us as well: the game runs as a plain folder of files with no account and no network behind it, and we will send it to you to put on your own machines.

Changes, and how to reach us

If we change these terms in a way that matters we will say so on this page and move the date at the top. This is version 2026-09-08.

Everything above runs through one address: [email protected]. Deletion requests, unsubscribes, corrections, or a question about any of this.