Privacy Policy — Spy (جاسوس)

Spy is a party game played on one phone passed around a table. There are no accounts, no sign-in, no online play, and no server of mine behind any of it. This page says what leaves your phone, who receives it, and what you can switch off. It covers the iOS app Spy (bundle id com.eli.spygame). Last updated: 22 August 2026

The short version

If you read nothing else, read this.

• Player names, your settings, and the words your group plays with stay on the phone. They are never sent anywhere.
• Firebase Analytics receives how a round was set up — counts, lengths, language. Not content.
• Firebase Crashlytics receives a report when the app crashes.
• Google AdMob shows one kind of ad — an app-open ad over the setup screen — and may collect device identifiers, IP address and ad interaction data.
• Nothing is sold. There is no login, so nothing collected is tied to a real identity.

What stays on your device

Player names and every setting — language, number of players, number of spies, round length, which categories are picked, and the three rule switches — are saved in iOS UserDefaults on the phone itself. I never receive them.

One more flag sits there: whether the app has been opened before. That is how the very first launch is kept ad-free.

The secret word a group is playing with is never transmitted either. It is chosen on the device from a word list bundled inside the app.

Deleting the app removes all of it from the phone.

What Firebase Analytics collects

Firebase Analytics is run by Google. It records how the game was configured, so I can see which settings people actually use.

It never receives player names, and never receives the words in play. These numbers say a game had seven players and two spies. They say nothing about who those people were.

• Number of players in the round
• Number of spies
• Round length
• How many categories were selected
• How many words those categories could draw from — a count, never the words themselves
• Which rule options were switched on
• App language — sent with events and also kept as a standing property of this install
• Whether the round ended on the timer or was ended by the host
• How long the round actually ran before it ended
• An app instance identifier Firebase generates for this install
• Device model and OS version
• An approximate location derived from your IP address

Crash reports (Firebase Crashlytics)

When the app crashes, Crashlytics sends a report so the bug can be found. A report contains the crash itself, your device model and OS version, and four custom keys I attach: app language, number of players, number of spies, and which screen was on show.

Those four keys are everything I add. Crashlytics wraps its own standard diagnostics around them — app version, an install identifier, the state of the device at the moment it fell over. No names, no words, no text you typed.

Advertising (Google AdMob)

The game is free and advertising pays for it: one format, an app-open ad, shown over the setup screen only. It never interrupts a round, a vote, or the reveal. The first launch is left alone; after that the ad can appear each time you open the game or return to it, as long as the setup screen is what is on show.

The ad is fetched in the background as the app starts, so AdMob is contacted on launches where no ad ends up on screen. On every launch the app also asks Google whether a consent form is required where you are.

AdMob is Google's. To serve that ad, AdMob may collect device identifiers, your IP address, and how you interacted with the ad. None of that reaches me beyond an aggregate earnings figure.

The app also carries Apple's SKAdNetwork list. With it, iOS itself can confirm to an ad network that an install followed one of its ads, without telling anyone who you are.

What the app does not collect

Stated plainly, because a game about secrets should be clear about its own.

• Player names — they never leave the phone.
• The secret words a group plays with — never transmitted.
• No accounts, email addresses or passwords. There is nowhere in the app to sign in.
• No access to your contacts, photos, camera, microphone, or precise (GPS) location. The only location signal involved is the rough one Google derives from an IP address.
• No data is sold. Nothing is shared beyond the Google services named on this page, apart from the install confirmations Apple's SKAdNetwork sends to whichever network served an ad — and those carry no identity.
• There is no online play and no server of mine, so there is nothing about you for me to hold.

Why any of this is collected

Analytics: to see which parts of the game get used — how many spies groups actually pick, how long rounds run, which language, which categories — so I know what to fix and what to build next.

Crash reports: to find and fix crashes.

Ads: to pay for the app so it can stay free.

Legal bases (EEA and UK)

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, this is the basis for each thing.

Personalised advertising and any tracking across apps: your consent, given through Apple's tracking prompt and Google's consent form. You can withdraw it at any time — see the next section. Declining Apple's prompt leaves the ad in place and makes it non-personalised; refusing consent in Google's form stops the app requesting ads at all.

Analytics and crash reports: legitimate interest in keeping the app working and understanding how it is used. If you want to object, write to @xswap_to on Telegram, bearing in mind that there is no identifier in that data I could trace back to you.

Your choices

Everything you can control is here.

• Tracking prompt: iOS asks before any tracking-based ad personalisation. Decline and the ads are non-personalised. Change your answer later in Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking.
• Consent form: where regional law requires one (EEA, UK), Google's User Messaging Platform shows a consent form. To reopen it and change your answer, tap "Ad privacy options" on the setup screen. That button only appears where the form was required in the first place — elsewhere there is nothing to reopen. Refuse consent there and the app requests no ads at all.
• Apple's own ad settings are in Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising. Those govern ads Apple serves, not AdMob's — the two controls above are the ones that apply here.
• There is no in-app switch for analytics or crash reporting. If you would rather they did not run, deleting the app stops them.
• Deleting the app also clears the player names and settings stored on the phone.

Children

The game is not directed at children under 13, and I do not knowingly collect personal data from them. There is no sign-up, so no age or identity is ever asked for.

If you are a parent or guardian with a concern, write to @xswap_to on Telegram. I will do what I can, though nothing collected identifies a person to me.

How long data is kept

On your phone: names and settings stay until you change them in the app or delete the app.

With Google: analytics events, crash reports and ad data sit on Google's systems under Google's retention rules. Google controls those periods, not me. I will not promise a deletion timeline for data I do not hold and cannot reach — Google's policies, linked below, are the accurate source.

Data requests

Write to @xswap_to on Telegram and I will answer.

Be aware of the shape of the problem. The app has no login, so no name, email or account is attached to anything collected. In most cases I cannot locate "your" data, because nothing in it points at you.

For data Google holds through Firebase and AdMob, Google's privacy policy and your device's ad settings are the working controls. Limiting or resetting the advertising identifier in iOS breaks the link AdMob relies on.

Third-party services

Google's services are the ones the app talks to — Analytics, Crashlytics, AdMob, and the consent form that comes with AdMob. They are covered here:

• Google Privacy Policy — https://policies.google.com/privacy
• How Firebase (Analytics and Crashlytics) uses data — https://firebase.google.com/support/privacy
• Google AdMob — https://support.google.com/admob/answer/6128543 and https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the new version replaces this page and the date at the top changes with it.

Anything significant — a new service, a new kind of data — will be described here rather than quietly added.

Contact

Privacy questions, data requests, or anything in this document that does not match what you see in the app: @xswap_to on Telegram