Privacy Policy

What the game stores on your phone

In a small database in the app’s private storage on the device, and nowhere else:

• Your journey: the levels you have cleared, the stars and best time for each, and the board you are partway through.
• The Daily Trail: the days you finished, with your stars and time, and your day streak.
• Your settings: music, sound, gentle vibration and whether the timer is shown.

Sharing a result

After a win you can share a result card: the level or the day’s trail, your stars, time and sparks, your streak and, for the Daily Trail, a block of coloured squares showing where you found the words. Share hands that text to your phone’s share sheet, and it goes only where you send it. Nothing is sent to us.

Advertising

Wordbound is free and is paid for by advertising. Ads are served by Google AdMob, which is part of Google, in three places only: a small banner (320×50) on the journey map, one ad (300×250) on the level-complete screen, and a video you can choose to watch to remove ads for 24 hours. No ad is ever shown while you are playing a board. Whether ads appear at all, and in which of those places, is controlled by the game’s remote settings.

To select and measure an ad, AdMob receives your device’s advertising identifier, your IP address and coarse information about the device and app — for example the model, the operating system version and the app version — along with whether an ad was shown, viewed or tapped. The game caps ad content at Google’s Teen rating, so ads rated for mature audiences are not shown. Google acts as an independent controller of that information under its own privacy policy, at policies.google.com/privacy. Your progress and results are never part of an ad request.

If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, Google’s consent form asks for your choice before any ad is requested, and no ad is requested if consent is needed and not given. You can change that choice at any time in Settings → Privacy choices.

You can reset or delete your advertising identifier, or turn off ad personalisation for every app, in your phone’s settings at any time.

How the game reports on itself

Wordbound uses three Google Firebase services to keep the game working. None of them receives your boards, the words you found or anything that identifies you by name.

• Remote Config fetches a small settings file, so switches such as whether ads are on, and which of the placements above are used, can be changed without publishing an update. Without a connection the game uses its built-in defaults.
• Analytics records Firebase’s automatic events — for example that the game was opened for the first time and that it was played, and for how long — which is what tells us how many people play Wordbound. It also records a few game events with no personal content, such as that a level was completed, with the level’s number and the stars earned.
• Crashlytics sends a report when the game crashes or hits an error: what went wrong, where in the code it happened, and the state of the device at the time.

What those reports contain

A Firebase installation identifier, your IP address, and basic information about the device and the app — the model, the operating system version, the app version, the language and the country worked out from the IP address. The identifier is specific to this installation of Wordbound; it is not your Google account, and uninstalling the game ends it. Analytics does not collect the advertising identifier; only AdMob, above, may use it.

If you are in the EEA or the UK, Analytics starts in Google’s Consent Mode with consent denied, and follows your answer once you have given it on the consent form.

Google processes this on our behalf as a data processor, under its own terms at firebase.google.com/terms/data-processing-terms.

Feedback you send us

The feedback form on this website sends what you type — the topic, your message, and your name and email if you give them — to a private Google Sheet that only we can open, so we can read it and reply. The game itself sends us nothing.

What we do not do

• We do not ask you to create an account or sign in, and we do not know who you are.
• We do not upload, store or see your progress, results or daily history.
• We do not use your location, contacts, camera, microphone or photos.
• We do not run analytics, crash reporting or advertising of our own — only the Google services described above.
• We do not sell personal information — we hold none.

Children

Wordbound is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children, and the game asks for none.

Your choices

Change your ad consent in Settings → Privacy choices where it is offered, watch a video to remove ads for 24 hours if you like, and reset or delete your advertising identifier in your phone’s settings. Settings → Reset progress clears your levels, stars, daily history and streak; uninstalling the game removes everything it has stored on your phone.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that affects you, the revised version will be published on this page with a new revision date. Continuing to play Wordbound after that date means the revised policy applies.

Contact

Questions about privacy can be sent to wordbound@makekk.com.