Privacy
Square Swaps · last updated 27 August 2026
The short version. Square Swaps has no accounts and asks you for nothing. It keeps your progress on your own device. It reports anonymous figures about how the game is played — which modes and themes, how long a session ran, whether you came back — so I can tell whether anyone is enjoying it. You can switch that off in Settings. If you see ads, Google serves them and Google's rules apply to those.
What the game stores on your device
Your save file lives on your device and is never uploaded. It holds your progress and settings: scores, which levels and pages you have opened, which themes you have earned, your achievements, your counted statistics, and the sound and haptics switches.
Deleting the app deletes all of it. There is also a Delete all data button in Settings under Dev Mode, which returns the game to how it was on the day you installed it.
What the game reports
The game sends a small set of anonymous figures about how it is used. This is the only data that leaves your device, and it exists to answer one question: do people play this, and do they come back. It goes to a server I run, and is stored in a database I control. No analytics company is involved and no third party is given a copy.
| Report | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Session | That the game was opened, how long it was open, how many days since install, and how many sessions you have had |
| Run | Which mode, which level, the score, how long it lasted, how it ended, and the rank earned |
| Firsts | One-off markers such as finishing the tutorial or earning a first rank, and which day it happened on |
| Purchase | Which product was bought — the identifier only. No price, no receipt, no store account |
| Snapshot | Running totals: squares matched, meters filled, ranks earned, arcade games played, best score, and how much you have played in each theme |
Every report also carries an anonymous install identifier, the session it
belongs to, the build number, and the platform name (for example
Android). Nothing else.
What is never collected
- Your name, email address, phone number or any account details — the game has no sign-in and no text entry of any kind.
- Your location.
- Your contacts, photos, files, calendar or any other app's data.
- Your device's advertising identifier, hardware serial or IMEI.
- Anything at all about what you do outside Square Swaps.
The install identifier
The first time you run the game it generates a random value and keeps it in your save file. It is made on your device out of nothing but chance — it is not your advertising identifier, not a hardware identifier, and it does not exist anywhere else or follow you into another app. Its only purpose is to let two reports from the same install be recognised as the same install, which is what makes "did anyone come back the next day" answerable at all.
Deleting the app's data, or using Delete all data, ends that identifier permanently. A new one is generated if you play again, and there is no way to connect the two.
Turning it off
Settings → Share usage data. Switching it off stops collection immediately and discards anything queued but not yet sent. The game plays exactly the same either way, and nothing is withheld from you for saying no.
Where it is kept, and for how long
Usage reports are held in Google Cloud Firestore, in Google's United States region, under an account belonging to me. Each report is stamped with an expiry two years out and is removed automatically when it arrives — the deletion is a policy on the database, not something anyone has to remember to do. Nobody buys this data and nobody else is given it.
If you are in the UK or EU, that means your reports are transferred to the United States. They contain no name, address or account — only the anonymous figures listed above — and the transfer relies on the standard contractual clauses in Google Cloud's terms.
Advertisements
The free version shows occasional full-screen ads between games. These are served by Google AdMob. When an ad is requested, Google receives information from your device under its own privacy policy — typically your advertising identifier, IP address, device and app details, and general region. I do not receive any of it, and I cannot see who you are from it.
- Google's policy: How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services
- You can reset or delete your advertising identifier in your device settings — on Android under Settings → Privacy → Ads, on iOS under Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking.
- Where the law requires it, you will be asked for consent before personalised ads are shown, and you can change that answer later.
Buying the unlock removes ads entirely, and with them everything Google would otherwise receive.
Purchases
Purchases are handled by the App Store or Google Play. Payment details go to them and never to me or to the game — I am told only that a purchase completed, so the game can unlock what you bought. Restoring purchases asks the store what you already own.
Settings the game fetches
On launch the game fetches three small configuration files from
squareswaps.com: how often ads appear, what the store shows, and
where usage reports go. These are ordinary web requests, so my host briefly
sees the same thing any website sees — your IP address and the time of the
request. Nothing is sent with them and nothing about you is stored from them.
The same applies when a report is sent: the request arrives carrying your IP address, as every web request does. It is not stored with the report and forms no part of it — but like any web server, mine keeps short-lived request logs that include it, and those are discarded after thirty days.
Children
Square Swaps is not directed at children under 13, and I do not knowingly collect anything from them. If you believe a child has provided information through the game, write to me and I will remove it.
Your rights
The game holds no name, address or account for you, so there is nothing to look up by identity. What you can do:
- Stop collection — Settings → Share usage data.
- Delete everything — delete the app, or use Delete all data. This ends the install identifier for good.
- Ask for a copy, or for it to be erased — send me your install identifier and I will find those reports and hand them over or delete them. The identifier is the only way to locate them; without it there is nothing connecting the reports to you, which is rather the point.
- Ask anything else — write to hello@squareswaps.com and I will answer.
If you are in the UK or EU, the lawful basis for the usage figures is legitimate interest — knowing whether a game is being played is what makes it possible to keep working on it — and you can object at any time using the switch above.
Square Swaps is made in the United States, and that is where its data is handled.
Changes
If what the game collects changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top changes too. Anything materially different will be flagged in the app.