Privacy Policy

What is stored on your device

Your progress is saved locally on your phone, whether or not you ever create an account. It contains only game state:

• levels completed, and the stars earned for each
• your token balance and the hints you have used
• daily puzzle progress, your streak and streak freezes, and past dailies played
• endless mode progress, including a hidden difficulty rating
• the chapter posters you have earned
• your settings: light or dark theme, sound, music, vibration, reminders and anonymous usage stats

Alongside it the app keeps a few things only for itself: the times of day you usually finish the daily (so a reminder, if you turned them on, comes at a sensible time), when it last asked you to rate the game, a note of each purchase it has already counted, and, if usage stats are on, the random number and any counts not yet sent (see below). Of these, only the counts, with that random number, ever leave your phone.

Deleting the app removes all of this from your device.

If you create an account

An account is entirely optional and exists for one reason: so your progress survives losing or changing your phone. If you create one, we store:

• your email address
• an account identifier
• a copy of the same game state described above

If you sign in with Google instead of a password, Google supplies your email address and basic profile information — including your name — and that is stored with your account. We never receive your Google password.

Accounts and saved progress are hosted by Supabase, which stores this data on our behalf. Passwords are stored hashed; we cannot read them.

If you turn on Friends

Friends lets you compare the daily puzzle with people you know. It is off unless you turn it on, and it needs an account. If you turn it on, we store:

• the name you picked from our word lists (two words, such as “Brave Otter”), and when you accepted the terms of use
• your friend code
• who you are friends with, the friend requests you send and receive, and anyone you block
• for each daily puzzle you solve while Friends is on: the date, how many bonus words you found, your rank, how long it took and how many hints you used
• the preset reactions you send and receive
• reports you make about another player, with the reason you picked from a fixed list, and reports other players make about you
• the times you tried adding a friend by code (deleted after a day or so, to stop anyone guessing codes)
• whether we have suspended your account from Friends

Your daily results are seen only by your accepted friends, and only for today and yesterday (by the date in UTC, so friends in other time zones see the same puzzle): whether you solved the puzzle, your bonus words, your rank and your time. Your hints are never shown to anyone. Your name is seen by your friends, by anyone you have a friend request waiting with (either way), and by anyone who has blocked you, in their own Blocked list. Friends also see the reactions you send them.

There is no search, no public profile and no leaderboard of strangers: someone can only add you with a code you gave them. A player you block can no longer see you, and is not told. Nothing you type is ever shown to another player, and there is no chat.

We read reports ourselves to decide whether to act on them, for example by turning off Friends for an account and suspending it from Friends, or closing an account that breaks the terms of use. We use Friends data only to run Friends: not for advertising, and not to build a profile of you.

Turning Friends off deletes your name, friend code, friends list, daily results and reactions straight away. Blocks are kept, both the ones you placed and any placed on you, so they still apply if you turn Friends on again. Reports are kept until your account or theirs is deleted.

Anonymous usage statistics

The game sends us small, anonymous counts of how it is played, so we can see which levels are too hard, whether the tutorial works and whether something is broken. This is on by default, and you can turn it off at any time in Settings → Share anonymous usage stats.

Each count is a short event name and a few numbers, for example "level solved" with the level, the difficulty, the stars earned and the hints used; or "ad shown". We also record the app version. Every count carries a random number that the app makes on your phone the first time it runs. That number is not your account, your email, your advertising ID or anything about your device, and it is never matched to any of them. We never record the letters of a puzzle, the words you find or type, or anything you write.

These counts go to the same Supabase project that hosts accounts (named above), and are used only by us, for improving the game. They are not shared with anyone else and are not used for advertising. If you turn the setting off, the app stops sending, discards anything it had not yet sent and forgets its random number; turning it back on later starts a new one.

Each count is deleted automatically 30 days after we receive it. Purchases are never counted (see Purchases).

As with any online service, our host's request logs briefly record the IP address each request came from. This applies to the usage counts and to word suggestions, and to anyone who plays as a guest as much as to people with an account. We do not use those logs to identify you, and they are not joined to the counts.

Word suggestions

When the game says a word you typed is not in its list, you can tap Suggest this word. That sends us the word, the part of the game you were in (for example "daily" or a level number) and the same random number described above, and nothing else; there is no free text. If you have turned off Share anonymous usage stats, a suggestion carries a one-off random number instead, which is not stored on your phone or linked to anything else. You can send up to ten a day. We read the suggestions by hand to decide whether to add a word, and list what changes on our word list changes page.

Suggestions are deleted once we have reviewed them, and automatically 90 days after we receive them at the latest.

Sharing and challenge links

Share result and Challenge a friend open your phone's own share menu, and go only to whoever you choose. What they share is numbers: the puzzle's number or date, your rank, how many bonus words you found, your streak, your time and how many hints you used. Never the letters, the answer, your name or your account.

A challenge link opens the game if it is installed. Otherwise it opens a page on wordtogethergame.com, which reads the score from the link inside the browser and sends nothing back to us. Like any website, our host keeps the address of the page that was opened, including that score, in its request logs for a short time.

Our website loads everything it shows, fonts included, from wordtogethergame.com itself. Visiting it does not make your browser contact Google, or any company other than our host.

Advertising

The game shows ads supplied by Google AdMob. Google's ads software in the app (the Google Mobile Ads SDK) collects the following and sends it to Google, which uses it to show and measure ads, for analytics, and to prevent fraud:

• your IP address, from which Google estimates your general (approximate) location
• your device's advertising ID and app set ID
• how you interact with the app and its ads: for example when the app is opened, and the ads you see and tap
• diagnostic information about the ads software, such as crash logs and how quickly ads load

This data goes to Google, not to us. How Google uses it is described in Google's policy for partner sites and apps.

Where the law requires a choice — for example under GDPR — the app shows Google's consent form before requesting any ad, and your answer is honoured. You can change that choice at any time in Settings → Privacy and ads choices, which appears where the choice applies. You can also reset or delete your advertising ID, or limit ad personalisation, in your device's own settings.

Purchases

If you buy anything in the game — Remove Ads, the Supporter Bundle or a token pack — Google Play handles the payment; we never receive your card or payment details. The app receives a record of the purchase from Google Play (which product, whether it is complete, and the purchase reference Google gives it) so it can turn the ads off or add the tokens, make sure each purchase is counted only once, and confirm the purchase with Google. That record stays on your device and is not sent to our servers, and purchases are not part of the anonymous usage counts. (Version 1.7.0 briefly counted which product was bought, with the random number described above; version 1.7.1 stopped this, and we deleted those counts.) Google's handling of the payment is described in the Google Payments privacy notice.

What we do not do

• No third-party analytics SDK. The only tracking is what Google's ads software does to show ads (see Advertising). The anonymous counts described above are our own, can be switched off, and are not linked to you. Google AdMob is the only part of the game that uses your advertising ID.
• No crash or performance reporting of our own. (Google's ads software collects diagnostics about itself, as described under Advertising.)
• No advertising or marketing emails. Email is used only to confirm your address and to reset your password.
• We do not sell your data, and we do not share it with anyone beyond the services named above.

Deleting your data

You can delete your account from inside the app: Settings → Account → Delete account. This removes your account and the saved progress attached to it — your email address, your account identifier, the name and basic profile information Google supplied if you signed in that way, and the copy of your game state. It happens on our server straight away and cannot be undone.

You can also email support@wordtogethergame.com and ask us to delete it, or to delete data held about you without closing your account. We will action either within 30 days. Deleting the app from your phone removes the local copy.

Deletion from our live systems is immediate when you delete from inside the app. A copy can survive in our host's routine encrypted backups for a short while afterwards; those backups are rotated, and a deleted account is gone from them within 30 days. Backups are never used to restore a deleted account.

The anonymous usage counts and word suggestions carry no account, email or other identifying information, so we cannot tell which ones are yours and they cannot be looked up or deleted one by one. They are deleted automatically instead: counts after 30 days, suggestions after 90 days at the latest. Turning off Share anonymous usage stats stops any more being sent. Deleting your account does not need them to be removed, because they were never linked to it.

Full instructions are on the delete your account page.

Deleting your account also deletes everything Friends stored about you, including reports you made and reports made about you.

Children

WordTogether is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has created an account, email us and we will delete it.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects what we collect, the date at the top of this page changes with it.