Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

This Privacy Policy explains how the developer of Block Puzzle Saga ("we", "us", "our") collects, uses, stores, shares and protects information in connection with the mobile and web game Block Puzzle Saga (the "Game"), and describes the choices and rights available to you.

We have written this policy to be read rather than skimmed. Where we say we do not collect something, we mean it literally, and it is a statement we can substantiate in the source code. Where information is limited to a small, specific list, we have listed every field.

By installing, accessing or playing the Game you acknowledge that you have read and understood this policy. If you do not agree with it, please do not use the Game.

2. Who we are

The Game is published by the developer of Block Puzzle Saga. For the purposes of the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"), we are the data controller in respect of the limited information described in this policy.

Privacy enquiries, requests and complaints may be sent to sagablockpuzzle@gmail.com. We aim to respond to every request within 30 days.

The Game is distributed through Google Play under the application identifier com.blockpuzzlesaga. Google's own handling of your information as a store operator is governed by Google's privacy policy and is outside our control.

3. Scope

This policy applies to the Game itself and to the leaderboard service that supports it. It does not apply to any third-party service you may reach from the Game, including the Google Play store, Google's advertising services, or any external website linked from our store listing.

This policy applies regardless of the platform on which you play, including the Android application and any web build of the Game.

4. Information we do not collect

We want to be specific, because most privacy policies are not. We do not collect, request, access, store or have the technical ability to obtain any of the following:

• Your name, postal address, email address or telephone number
• Any password, passcode or account credential. The Game has no registration, no sign-in and no social login
• Your contacts, address book, calendar or call log
• Your photographs, camera, microphone or any file on your device
• Your precise or approximate geographic location. The country shown beside a leaderboard entry is a flag you select yourself from a list we provide, and is not derived from your device or your network
• Your device's advertising identifier, except as described in section 9
• Your biometric data, health data, racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, political opinions, trade union membership, genetic data, or data concerning your sex life or sexual orientation
• Any information about you from data brokers, advertising networks or other third-party sources
• Your gameplay telemetry, session recordings, heatmaps or behavioural analytics. The Game contains no analytics software development kit of any kind

We also do not use automated decision-making or profiling that produces legal effects or similarly significant effects concerning you.

5. Information stored on your device

The Game is designed to work fully offline, and almost everything about your play session stays on your device. The following is written to your device's local application storage and is never transmitted to us:

• Your game progress, including which levels you have unlocked and the star rating you achieved on each
• Your in-game gem balance, daily challenge streak, login streak and quest progress
• Your settings, including sound, music, haptics, reduced-motion and colourblind preferences, your selected theme and your board colour palette
• Your chosen display name, country flag and avatar selection
• A local record of games you have played and your best scores
• A local identifier used as a fallback if the Game cannot reach the network

We cannot read, access, retrieve or recover any of this information. It exists only on your device. It is deleted when you uninstall the Game or clear the Game's data through your device settings, and we have no ability to restore it for you afterwards.

Because this information never reaches us, it is not subject to any retention period we control, and it is not included in any response to a data access request — we simply do not hold it.

6. Information sent to our leaderboard service

The Game has two public leaderboards: a Daily Challenge board that resets each day, and an Endless board that ranks each calendar year's best scores. When you finish a Daily Challenge or an Endless run with leaderboard submission enabled, the Game may submit your result so that other players can see it. When it does, it transmits exactly the following fields, and nothing else:

• The display name shown on your player card. It is picked from the Game's own built-in name set — the Game has no free-text nickname field, so nothing you might type can ever reach the board
• Your score for that run
• For a Daily Challenge entry, the number of moves the run took and how long the run lasted, which is how the Daily board is ranked
• The two-letter country code corresponding to the flag you selected, or a default value if you selected none
• A short reference identifying which built-in avatar you selected, in a form such as "set3_07". This is a label pointing at artwork already inside the Game. No image is uploaded, and no photograph is ever requested
• The date and time of the submission, used to order the board

This information is stored using Google Cloud Firestore, a database service operated by Google, on Google's servers. Access is controlled by security rules that permit public reading of leaderboard entries and restrict writing to the authenticated author of each entry.

Each installation of the Game is assigned an anonymous identifier by Google Firebase Authentication. This identifier is a randomly generated string. It is not your Google account, it is not your email address, it is not your advertising identifier, and it cannot be used by us to determine who you are. It exists so that the leaderboard can tell your entry apart from another player's, and so that your own score can be updated rather than duplicated.

Leaderboards are public by their nature. Your display name, flag and avatar will be visible to other players.

Your results in the other modes are not transmitted anywhere. Adventure and the remaining modes are played entirely on your device, and the personal records they show exist only in the Game's local storage. Nothing about those runs leaves your device, and we cannot see them.

You are not required to appear on a leaderboard in order to play the Game. If you prefer not to submit scores, you may turn off leaderboard submission in Settings or simply not play the competitive modes.

7. Information collected by third-party services

The Game uses a small number of services operated by Google. These services may collect information independently of us, under their own privacy policies, and we do not receive that information in a form that identifies you.

• Google Play — processes any purchase you make, and separately collects installation and device information as the store operator
• Google Firebase Authentication — assigns the anonymous identifier described in section 6
• Google Cloud Firestore — stores leaderboard entries
• Google AdMob — serves the advertisements described in section 9

Google's handling of information in connection with these services is governed by Google's Privacy Policy, available at https://policies.google.com/privacy, and by the Google Play Terms of Service. We encourage you to read them.

8. How and why we use information

We use the limited information described in this policy for the following purposes, and for no others:

• To display the leaderboard you have chosen to appear on, and to rank entries correctly
• To update your existing leaderboard entry when you beat your own score, rather than creating a duplicate
• To display advertising that allows the Game to be offered free of charge
• To detect and prevent abuse of the leaderboard, including fabricated scores and offensive nicknames
• To maintain and improve the reliability and security of the Game
• To respond to your enquiries, requests and complaints
• To comply with legal obligations that apply to us

Where the GDPR applies, our legal bases for processing are as follows. Performance of a contract (Article 6(1)(b)) for submitting and displaying leaderboard entries, which is a function of the service you have chosen to use. Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) for preventing abuse and maintaining the security of the service, balanced against your rights and interests. Consent (Article 6(1)(a)) where required for the use of your advertising identifier, which you may withdraw at any time as described in section 9. Legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)) where we are required to retain or disclose information by law.

We do not use any information for automated profiling, for the purpose of making decisions with legal effects about you, or for any purpose beyond operating the Game.

9. Advertising

The Game is offered free of charge and is supported by advertising. It displays a single full-screen advertisement after you complete a level successfully. It does not display advertising while you are playing, it does not display advertising when you lose, it does not use banner advertising, and it never requires you to watch an advertisement in order to continue playing.

Advertisements are provided by Google AdMob. To select, deliver, measure and limit the frequency of advertisements, Google and its advertising partners may collect and process your device's advertising identifier, coarse device and operating system information, your general region derived from your IP address, and information about your interaction with an advertisement. This collection is performed by Google under its own privacy policy. We do not receive your advertising identifier, and we do not receive any information that identifies you.

You can control this collection in several ways. You may reset or delete your advertising identifier at any time in your Android device settings, under Privacy and then Ads. You may also opt out of personalised advertising in the same settings screen. Where required by law, the Game will ask for your consent before any personalised advertising takes place, and you may withdraw that consent at any time with no effect on your ability to play.

You may also purchase the one-time "Remove ads" option within the Game, which permanently disables advertising for the purchasing account. If you do so, the collection described in this section stops entirely, because no advertisement is ever requested.

10. Cookies and similar technologies

The Game is a mobile application and does not use HTTP tracking cookies, web beacons, pixel tags or fingerprinting techniques to track you across websites or applications.

The Game does use your device's local storage and the embedded browser's local database to remember your settings, your progress and your anonymous sign-in state, as described in section 5. These are strictly functional: they exist to make the Game work, they are not shared with advertisers, and they are not used to build a profile of you. You can clear them at any time by clearing the Game's data in your device settings, although doing so will erase your progress.

11. Analytics

The Game contains no analytics service, no crash reporting service, no attribution service, no heatmap or session-recording service, and no software development kit whose purpose is to measure your behaviour.

We do not measure how long you play, which levels you find difficult, which screens you visit, or where you tap. We do not receive reports of crashes or errors from your device. If we ever introduce such a service, this policy will be updated and your consent will be requested where required before it takes effect.

12. Sharing and disclosure

We do not sell your personal information. We do not rent it, trade it, license it, or share it with any party for that party's own marketing purposes. We do not share it with data brokers.

We disclose information only in the limited circumstances set out below.

• Service providers — Google, acting as our processor, provides the Firebase Authentication, Cloud Firestore and AdMob services described in this policy. Google processes this information on our behalf and under our instructions, save for the advertising data it processes for its own purposes as an advertising provider
• Leaderboard visibility — the nickname, score, country flag and avatar reference you submit are visible to anyone who views the leaderboard, by design
• Legal requirements — where we are required to disclose information by law, regulation, court order or other valid legal process, or where disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of any person
• Business transfers — if the Game or the business that operates it is acquired, merged or sold, information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you of any such change and of any resulting change to this policy
• With your direction — where you specifically ask us to share information, or consent to our doing so

We do not disclose information to any third party for the purpose of cross-context behavioural advertising, other than through the Google AdMob service described in section 9.

13. International transfers

We are based in Israel. Google's Firebase and AdMob services process and store information in data centres located in the United States and other countries, which means information described in this policy may be transferred to, stored in, and processed in a country other than the one in which you live.

Where information subject to the GDPR is transferred outside the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, the transfer is protected by appropriate safeguards, being the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and, where applicable, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, entered into with Google. Where the European Commission has issued an adequacy decision in respect of a destination country, the transfer relies on that decision.

You may request further information about the safeguards applied to a specific transfer by contacting us at the address in section 18.

14. Data retention

We retain information only for as long as it serves the purpose for which it was collected, or as long as the law requires.

• Leaderboard entries — retained while the Game is available so that past results remain visible
• Your anonymous identifier — retained for as long as the anonymous account exists. If you are inactive for an extended period, it may be removed as part of routine maintenance, in which case a future session begins as a new anonymous player
• Local game data on your device — retained until you uninstall the Game or clear its data. We hold no copy and cannot delete it on your behalf
• Correspondence — if you contact us, we retain the correspondence for as long as necessary to resolve your enquiry and to demonstrate compliance, and then delete it
• Advertising data held by Google — retained according to Google's own retention schedule, over which we have no control

15. Security

Information transmitted between the Game and Google's services is sent over encrypted connections using industry-standard transport security. Access to the leaderboard database is governed by security rules that permit public reading of leaderboard entries and restrict writing to the authenticated author of each entry, so that one player cannot alter another player's result.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. We do, however, limit our exposure by design: the less information a service holds, the less there is to lose. The Game deliberately collects almost nothing.

If we become aware of a breach affecting information we hold, we will notify affected users and any relevant supervisory authority without undue delay, as required by applicable law.

16. Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of the following rights in relation to information we hold about you.

• The right to be informed about how your information is used — this policy exists to satisfy it
• The right of access, to receive a copy of the information we hold about you
• The right to rectification, to have inaccurate information corrected
• The right to erasure, to have your information deleted
• The right to restriction, to limit how your information is used while a concern is investigated
• The right to data portability, to receive information you provided in a structured, machine-readable format
• The right to object to processing carried out on the basis of legitimate interests
• The right to withdraw consent at any time, where processing is based on consent
• The right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing that produces legal or similarly significant effects
• The right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority in your country of residence, place of work or place of the alleged infringement

If you are a California resident, you additionally have the right to know the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected, the categories of sources, the business purposes for collection and the categories of third parties with whom we share it; the right to delete; the right to correct; the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information; the right to limit the use of sensitive personal information; and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising outside the AdMob service described in section 9.

If you are resident in Brazil, you have rights under the Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados equivalent to those set out above, including the right to confirmation of processing, access, correction, anonymisation, portability and deletion.

Because the information we hold is limited to a display name, a score, a country code, an avatar reference and an anonymous identifier that is never displayed to you, we have no reliable way to verify that a particular record belongs to a particular person. We therefore cannot act on requests that concern a single record, because we cannot establish that the requester is the player who made it. This is a consequence of our having designed the Game to collect as little as possible, and we consider that a feature rather than a limitation.

17. How your information is removed

We do not operate a request-based deletion service. All information the Game stores on your device — your progress, your settings and your sign-in state — is deleted when you uninstall the Game or clear its data in your device settings. We hold no copy of it, so there is nothing further for us to erase.

Leaderboard entries are stored under an anonymous identifier that is never displayed to you. Because we cannot verify that any particular entry belongs to any particular player — anyone could name an entry and claim it as their own — we do not alter or delete individual entries in response to requests, save for the child-safety case described in section 18. If you contact us about a right described in section 16, this same inability to identify your records may limit what we can do, and we will tell you honestly where that limit lies.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to complain to your local data protection authority. We would ask that you contact us first, so that we have the opportunity to put things right.

18. Children's privacy

The Game is not directed at children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. Where local law sets a higher age of digital consent — for example 16 in some European countries — that higher age applies.

We do not knowingly permit children under the applicable age to submit leaderboard entries, and we do not knowingly serve personalised advertising to them. If you are a parent or guardian and you believe your child has submitted a leaderboard entry, contact us and we will remove it promptly.

If you are a parent or guardian and you would prefer that your child not appear on a public leaderboard, the simplest safeguard is to direct the child not to play the competitive modes. No feature of the Game requires a public profile.

19. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

The Game is a mobile application and does not operate a website, so browser-based Do Not Track signals are not applicable to it. Because we do not track you across websites or applications and do not sell personal information, there is no cross-site tracking activity for such a signal to disable.

Where a Global Privacy Control signal is available to us through a web build of the Game, we honour it as a request to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information. As stated above, we do not sell personal information.

20. Third-party links and services

The Game and its store listing may contain links to third-party websites or services, including Google Play and Google's privacy resources. We are not responsible for the privacy practices, content or security of any third party. We encourage you to read the privacy policy of every service you use.

21. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Where a change materially affects what is collected or how it is used, we will present the updated policy within the Game before the change takes effect, and the version number shown at the top of this document will be incremented. Continued use of the Game after that point constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Where the law requires it, we will seek your fresh consent rather than relying on continued use. The version you accepted, and the date on which you accepted it, are recorded on your device so that we can demonstrate compliance.

22. Contact

Questions, requests and complaints should be sent to sagablockpuzzle@gmail.com. We read every message.