Privacy policy.

The short version

• There are no accounts. You never give us your name, email or phone number to play.
• Your progress lives on your phone.
• We collect anonymous gameplay statistics to see which levels are too hard. You can switch them off.
• The game shows ads from Google. They’re non-personalized, we never ask to track you, and players under 13 don’t get ads.
• If you play with others (Open Stage, Choirs, Echoes), our game server keeps a random ID, a made-up nickname and your contributions. You can delete all of it from Settings.
• We don’t sell your data, and we don’t share it with data brokers.
• This website has no cookies, no analytics and no trackers.

This website

smallestcirclesoftware.com sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and loads nothing from other companies. The fonts and pictures all come from this site. It’s hosted on Amazon Web Services (Amazon S3 and CloudFront). To send you a page, their servers have to handle technical details like your IP address. We haven’t switched on visitor logging, and we don’t use that information to identify anyone.

If you email us, we get whatever you put in the email, plus your address. We use it to reply, and we delete it when you ask.

Kept on your phone

Your levels, stars, scores, coins, Daily Puzzle streak, cosmetics, settings and the ad limits that stop you seeing too many ads are all stored in the game’s own storage on your iPhone. None of that is uploaded to us. If you back up your phone with iCloud or a computer, it goes into that backup, which you and Apple control.

The age question

The game asks which age group you’re in: under 13, 13 to 17, or 18 or older. Only the group is saved, and only on your phone. We never send it to our server or to anyone else. It decides what the game does:

• Under 13: no ads, no ad software started, and no Open Stage, Choirs or Echoes.
• 13 to 17: ads are limited further, as described under Ads.
• Not answered yet: no ads and no shared play.

Gameplay statistics

The game sends a small number of anonymous signals through TelemetryDeck, an analytics service that handles them for us. We only ever look at totals, to answer questions like “is level 6 too hard?” or “does anyone find the Daily Puzzle?”

A signal contains:

• Game events, such as a level starting or ending, the score, the number of words made, the longest word’s length, a tip being shown, a booster being used, a chest opened, coins earned (in rough ranges), or a setting changed. They’re counts, numbers and yes-or-no answers.
• Purchase events: which item was offered or bought (for example “coins_400”), and whether a purchase was cancelled, failed, restored or refunded. Never the price paid, your payment details or the receipt.
• Technical details the analytics software adds: app version, iOS version, device model, language and region setting, and session counts.
• An anonymous ID. Your phone makes it by scrambling (one-way hashing) the identifier Apple gives this app on this device. It lets us count returning players without knowing who they are. It isn’t your Apple Account or the advertising identifier.

Never sent: your name, email, phone number, contacts, photos, precise location, the words you play, your board, anything you type, your Game Center identity, your purchase receipts or the advertising identifier.

To switch it off: on the game’s Home screen, tap the gear, then turn off Share anonymous usage data. From then on nothing is sent, including the analytics software’s own automatic signals. You can turn it back on whenever you like.

Ads

The game is free, and ads help pay for it. They come from Google’s AdMob. Google’s consent tool, the User Messaging Platform, asks for your consent where the law requires it. You see an ad between some games, and you can choose to watch one for a reward. Buying Plus removes the in-between ones.

What we set:

• Non-personalized ads only. We ask Google not to pick ads based on your interests or history.
• No tracking prompt. The game never shows Apple’s “Allow tracking?” prompt, so Google can’t see your phone’s advertising identifier.
• General-audience ads only, rated suitable for everyone.
• No ads under 13, and none until you’ve answered the age question. If you’re 13 to 17, we tell Google you’re a minor, so the ad requests are treated with extra limits.

What Google collects when an ad is shown: your IP address, which Google uses to work out a rough location such as your country or city; an identifier for this app on this device; which ads you saw and tapped; and crash and performance details from the ad software. Google uses this to show and measure ads, to count clicks honestly, to stop fraud, and to improve its services. That use falls under Google’s own policies, and more is in Google’s privacy policy.

Your choices:

• In the EEA, the UK or Switzerland: you’re asked before any ad is requested, and you can change your answer later in the game’s Settings, under Privacy.
• In US states with privacy laws: use Do not sell or share my info in the same place. The game then tells Google to limit how it uses your data.

Playing with others: Open Stage, Choirs and Echoes

These features are optional. They’re only open to players who are 13 or older. Nothing is sent until you first open one of them.

How it works: The game makes a random ID and a secret for this installation. The secret is kept in your iPhone’s Keychain and on our game server, so we can check that requests really come from your copy of the game. Nothing about you is used to create the ID: not your Apple Account, not your device or advertising identifier, not your contacts, and not a name you type.

What our server stores:

• A made-up nickname, and the letter and hat you picked.
• The notes you add to songs and when you added them, plus your daily totals.
• Which Choirs you’re in, and when you were last active.
• A Choir’s weekly songs, and the time zone of the phone that created the Choir (it decides when the week starts).
• Echoes: the Daily Puzzle date, up to six letter placements, your best word and its points.
• Song letters and reward receipts, so a song that finishes while you’re away can still pay you, and only once.

What other players see: your nickname, letter and hat, when you contributed, a recently cleared word from a reviewed list, and your Echoes. They never see your ID or secret. There’s no chat, and you can’t type a public name.

Where it runs: the server runs on Cloudflare, which handles network details such as your IP address in order to deliver and protect the connection. Our game server doesn’t store IP addresses, and request logging is turned off. We never use any of this for advertising.

Deleting it: see Switching things off and deleting.

Game Center, purchases, reminders and sharing

• Game Center is optional. If you sign in, your scores and achievements go to Apple’s Game Center, under your Game Center account. Other players may see your Game Center nickname and scores, as in any Game Center game. We don’t copy your Game Center name or friends list into our server. Apple runs Game Center under its own privacy policy.
• Purchases go through the App Store, and Apple processes them. We never see your name, payment card or billing address. Apple tells the game what you own so it can unlock it.
• Daily Puzzle reminders are optional. If you turn them on, iOS asks to allow notifications, and the reminders are scheduled on your phone. Nothing goes to a server.
• Sharing a Daily result opens the iOS share sheet with a short, spoiler-free message. You choose whether and where to send it. We don’t see it.

Pip’s Post

Every few hours, the game checks our game website for short news letters. The request carries no player ID, gameplay, account details or advertising identifier, and no cookies. The website host sees your IP address, as with any web request; we don’t use it to identify anyone. Which letters you’ve read is saved on your phone.

Who else handles data

Each of these companies is bound by its own privacy terms. We only work with services that protect your data at least as well as this policy does. TelemetryDeck and Cloudflare only handle our data to provide their service to us. Google also uses ad data under its own policies, as described in Ads. We don’t sell personal information. We don’t share it with data brokers. We don’t use it to track you across other companies’ apps or websites. If we’re ever legally required to hand something over, we’ll only share what the law requires.

How long we keep it

• On your phone: until you delete the app, or restore an older backup.
• Gameplay statistics: kept by TelemetryDeck for us, and used only in totals. We keep them only while they’re useful for improving the game.
• Echoes: deleted 72 hours after the start of their Daily Puzzle’s date (UTC).
• Choirs: an inactive member’s seat opens up after 14 days. Notes made offline can be sent for up to 7 days. The small flags that stop the same daily or weekly reward being paid twice are cleared after 16 days.
• Open Stage, Choir letters and reward receipts: kept until you delete your shared game data, so rewards from songs that finish while you’re away still reach you.
• Ads data: kept by Google under its own retention policy.
• Emails to us: kept as long as we need them to help you, then deleted. You can ask us to delete them sooner.

Switching things off and deleting

All of these are in the game’s Settings (tap the gear on the Home screen) unless it says otherwise.

• Gameplay statistics: turn off Share anonymous usage data. Because the statistics can’t be tied to you, there’s nothing we can look up and delete for one person. Switching them off stops any more being sent.
• Ad consent (EEA, UK, Switzerland): change your answer under Privacy.
• Do not sell or share my info (US): under Privacy.
• Choirs and Echoes: Delete my Choirs and Echoes data removes your memberships, your name on contributions, your Echoes and the related letters and receipts. Your Open Stage data stays.
• Everything shared: Delete my shared game data erases Open Stage, Choirs and Echoes, including your random ID and secret.
• Turning off Echoes stops new ones being sent or shown. It doesn’t delete ones already sent. Use the delete options for that.
• Reminders: turn them off in the game, or in iOS Settings under Notifications.
• Game Center: sign out or change what’s shared in iOS Settings under Game Center.
• Everything on your phone: delete the app.

A few limits, so nothing surprises you:

• Deletion needs an internet connection. If you’re offline, it waits and retries while the app is open.
• Song totals keep your notes. They stay in the totals, but without your nickname or ID attached.
• Other players may keep a snapshot. Songs already downloaded to another player’s phone may stay there until it refreshes.
• Coins you’ve earned stay in your wallet.
• A tiny deletion marker remains. It holds no profile and no secret, and it stops a delayed request from bringing your old ID back.
• Delete before you uninstall. Reinstalling the app starts a new ID, so if you want your old server records gone, use the delete option first.

If you’re stuck, email us and we’ll help.

Children

Our game is for a general audience, not made for children. It’s rated for everyone, but we don’t aim it at under-13s or knowingly collect their personal information. Players who say they’re under 13 get no ads and can’t use the shared features. The anonymous gameplay statistics described above can be switched off in Settings. If you think a child has sent us personal information, for example in an email, tell us and we’ll delete it.

Your rights

Depending on where you live (for example the UK, the EU, or a US state such as California), you may have the right to ask what personal information we hold about you, to correct or delete it, to object to how it’s used, or to opt out of its sale or sharing. Most of it can be done straight from the game’s Settings, as described above. For anything else, email us. We won’t treat you differently for asking. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

For the UK and EU:

• Shared play relies on providing the features you choose to use.
• Gameplay statistics rely on our legitimate interest in making the game better, and you can switch them off at any time.
• Ads rely on your consent where the law requires it.

Our service providers may process data in the United States and other countries, using the safeguards the law requires, such as standard contractual clauses.

Changes and contact

If our games or this website start handling data differently, we’ll update this page and the date at the top before the change happens. Big changes will also be in the App Store release notes.

Smallest Circle Software · contact@smallestcirclesoftware.com