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by tonymet 133 days ago
There are both, every user has their own sandbox. But this one is there to encourage first time visitors and the uninitiated to make changes , so they know that anyone can contribute uninhibited.
1 comments

Though, just to be clear, the per-user ones are also public. They're just a convention where if you make a subpage of your user page and call it "Sandbox", nobody is going to complain about the encyclopedic value of your edits.
If you really want something private, there is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ExpandTemplates (or of course just hit preview and dont save)
True , though I just discovered category scans still hit your user sandbox. Kind of silly