What Word Search does with your data.

1Who is responsible

ARLing s. r. o., Ivanská cesta 19112/32E, 821 04 Bratislava, Slovakia, company ID 56583486. We are the controller of the small amount of data described here. Write to support@arling.sk about anything on this page.

2What the game keeps, and where

Word Search stores its state in the app's own private storage on your phone, in two files that no other app can read. Nothing in them is sent anywhere.

The first file holds the game: which words you have found, your level and chapter, your coin balance, the highlighter styles you have bought, your daily streak, the calendar of recent daily puzzles, and your settings for sound, volume, vibration, letter size, reduced motion, high contrast and the hidden word list.

The second file holds the counters that keep advertising within its limits: how many levels you have finished, when an ad was last shown and how many were shown today. These are numbers, not a record of you.

Android's cloud backup is switched off for this app, so none of it is copied to a Google account. There is no player account, no cloud save, no leaderboard, no chat and no multiplayer. The game does not read your contacts, photos, files, microphone, camera or location, and it asks for no runtime permission at all.

This version contains no purchases. The game does show a coin shop screen, but buying is switched off in the code and the screen says so.

Two things in the installed app's permission list are worth explaining before you wonder about them. The billing permission is there because Google's purchase library is still compiled into the app from an earlier plan; with buying switched off, nothing can start a payment and we see no payment data. The advertising library adds permissions of its own, among them the one for the Android advertising ID. Neither of those changes anything written above: the game itself still sends nothing.

3Advertising by Google

The game shows ads through the Google Mobile Ads SDK, and asks for consent through Google's User Messaging Platform. These two libraries are the only reason the app needs the internet. They are Google's software, running inside the app, and what they collect goes to Google, not to us. We never receive it.

Google's own disclosure for this SDK lists four things it may collect: your IP address, which Google may use to estimate the general area you are in; your interactions with the app, such as launches, taps and video views; diagnostic information, such as start-up time, hangs and energy use; and identifiers of the device or account, including the Android advertising ID and the app set ID. Google says this traffic is encrypted in transit with TLS. Google uses it for advertising, measurement and fraud prevention.

The source is Google's page Data disclosure for the Google Mobile Ads SDK. Google's own privacy policy and its page on how Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services describe what happens afterwards, including how long Google keeps it and where it is processed. We do not control any of that and we will not pretend otherwise.

Because of this SDK, the app is not a zero-collection app, even though the game itself sends nothing. Saying otherwise in the store would be false.

4Consent and how to change your mind

Where the law requires it, mostly in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, Google's consent message appears the first time the game starts. Your answer is stored by Google's library, not by us, and the game only requests ads when that library says it may.

To change your answer later, open the game, tap the information button and choose Privacy choices. That row only appears when the consent library says a choice is required in your region, because showing it everywhere would open an empty screen for most of the world.

You can also reset or delete the advertising ID for the whole phone in Android's own settings, under Privacy and then Ads. Refusing personalised advertising does not switch off advertising itself, and it does not mean no data at all is processed.

The puzzles work offline. No ad is ever required to keep playing, and the optional rewarded ad only ever adds coins you could also earn by playing.

5Children

Word Search is not directed to children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect anything from them. The app asks for no name, no age and no e-mail address, so there is nothing for a child to submit. If you believe a child has sent us personal information directly, write to us and we will delete it.

6How long things are kept

What the game stores stays on your phone until you remove it, and we never hold a copy. To erase it: Android Settings, then Apps, then Word Search, then Storage, then Clear storage. Uninstalling the game does the same. Coins and progress do not come back afterwards, because there is no backup anywhere.

Retention of what Google collects is set by Google and described in the pages linked in section 3.

If you write to us by e-mail, we keep your message and address for as long as it takes to deal with it and to meet any legal obligation that applies. Please do not send passwords or identity documents to the support address.

7Your rights

Under the GDPR you may ask us for access to your personal data, correction, deletion, restriction or portability, and you may object to processing. You may withdraw consent at any time, which does not affect processing that was lawful before you withdrew it. For advertising we rely on your consent where consent is required; for the game itself there is nothing to rely on, because nothing leaves your phone.

In practice we hold almost nothing about you, so a request usually ends with us telling you that. Write to support@arling.sk. You may also complain to the Slovak supervisory authority, the Office for Personal Data Protection, at dataprotection.gov.sk.

8Changes

We change this page when the app changes, and the date at the top changes with it. We do not quietly add a new library and leave the old text standing.

The About screen in the game opens arling.sk/privacy/word-search/. That address redirects to this page, so there is one policy at one address.

Support for all our games: arling.sk/play/support/.