Privacy policy

1 · No account, no sign-in

Wordlock has no sign-up screen. The first time the app needs the network it signs in anonymously with Firebase Authentication, which issues a random identifier for this installation. We never ask for and never receive your email address, phone number, or any social account. Reinstalling the app makes a new identifier, unconnected to the old one.

2 · What you give us

• Display name — the name you type on first launch, and can change at any time. It is stored on your device, and copied into any game you create or join so the other player can see who is playing. It need not be your real name.
• Category — the preset you choose when starting a game, or the custom one you type. The other player in that game sees it.
• Your play — every letter you add and the seat that added it, the rounds you settled between you, who gave up a round, who won each round, and the final score.
• Join codes — generated for you, not by you, but they pass through your device and, if you share one, through whichever app you share it with. We do not see where you sent it.

3 · What the app collects on its own

• The anonymous identifier described in section 1.
• Push token — if you allow notifications, the token issued to this device by Firebase Cloud Messaging is stored on your seat in the game, and is used only to tell you that it is your turn or that something changed in your game. It is deleted with the seat.
• Advertising identifier — the resettable advertising ID your device provides: Android’s Advertising ID, or Apple’s IDFA on iOS and only where you have allowed it. It is read by Google AdMob to choose and to measure the ads described in section 5, and by nothing else.
• Timestamps — when a seat was taken, and when a game started and closed.
• Usage analytics — screen views and in-app events, tied to the anonymous identifier, together with the app version, the device model and the operating-system version reported by the analytics SDK. Nothing here is used to track you across other apps or websites.
• Crash and error reports — when the app fails, a report containing the error, the stack trace, the app version and the device model. Join codes are masked before a report leaves the device; the game’s identifier is kept, because it is what lines a crash up with the game it happened in.

4 · What we never collect

No contacts, no photos, no precise location, no microphone, no browsing history, no payment details. We do not sell or rent anything we hold, and we do not use what you play — the words or the scores — to choose the ads you are shown.

5 · Advertising

Wordlock is free, and advertising is what pays for it. The ads are supplied by Google AdMob.

• What AdMob receives — your device’s advertising identifier, the device model and operating system, an approximate location derived from your IP address, and which of its ads it has already shown you. It does not receive your display name, your join codes, or anything you play: none of that is ever sent to it.
• Personalised or not — where the law requires your consent, you are asked before any personalised ad is shown, and refusing costs you nothing in the game. Refusing means the ads are chosen without an advertising profile, not that the ads stop.
• On iOS the advertising identifier is available only if you allow tracking when the system asks. Declining is respected, and the game is unchanged by it.
• What Google does with what it receives is its own to describe, and it does so at policies.google.com/technologies/ads.

6 · Who else sees it

The other player in your game sees your display name, the letters you play, and the score. That is the point of the game. Beyond them, your data is handled only by the services that run the app, each as our processor and under its own terms:

• Google Firebase — Authentication, Cloud Firestore, Cloud Messaging and Cloud Functions: stores the game and delivers the notifications.
• Google AdMob — the advertising described in section 5.
• PostHog — product analytics.
• Sentry — crash and error reporting.

We disclose nothing to anyone else, except where the law requires it of us.

7 · Where it is kept, and for how long

Games are stored on servers operated by Google in the United States; if you are elsewhere, your data is transferred there. Your display name, your sound preference, and a pointer to the game you are currently in are also held on your own device. Deleting the app removes everything held on the device. A finished game stays in our database so its result can be shown; write to us with a game identifier and we will delete that game.

8 · Notifications and sound

Notifications are optional. You are asked once, and you can withdraw permission at any time in your device’s settings; the game still works without them. Sound effects can be turned off in Settings inside the app — that choice is stored on your device and is sent nowhere.

9 · Children

Wordlock is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect anything from them. Advertising is requested on the footing that the audience is a general one rather than a children’s one; if you believe a child has given us something, write to us and we will remove it.

10 · Your choices

Turn sound off in Settings, turn notifications off in your device settings, change your display name on Home, or delete the app. The ads you cannot turn off — they are what pays for the game — but you can refuse personalised ones wherever you were asked, and you can reset or clear your advertising identifier at any time in your device’s own settings. To ask what is held for your installation, or to have it removed, write to us with a game identifier — that is what identifies you to us, since we hold no name, no email address and no account.

11 · Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and the new wording arrives with the next update of the app. The version you are reading it in is printed at the bottom of Settings.

12 · Contact

flashsoftgh@gmail.com