Privacy Policy
Gerrymeandering is a puzzle game. It works without accounts or logins, and you can play all of it without sending us anything. Two things do leave your device: the advertising in the App Store and Google Play versions, and a leaderboard entry — but only if you choose to post one. This policy explains both, plus everything the game keeps locally.
What the app stores on your device
The app saves the following on your device, using your
device's local storage (localStorage):
- A display name you optionally type in for the leaderboard.
- A random identifier generated on this device the first time you post a score. It is not tied to your name, email, or any account, and it is never shown to anyone. Its only job is to stop other players from claiming or overwriting your leaderboard name.
- Your puzzle and campaign progress, stars, and results.
- Your game settings (such as sound and motion preferences) and which tutorials you have already seen.
- A local copy of your own leaderboard scores, so the boards still show something when you are offline.
Uninstalling the app, or clearing its storage, removes all of it. We keep no copy on our servers and cannot restore progress you have deleted. Your phone’s own backup (iCloud or Google) may include it, under your device’s backup settings.
Leaderboards
The game has three optional leaderboards — all-time, Daily
Gerrymander, and the 50-states campaign. Nothing is posted automatically.
When you type a display name and tap the post/submit button, the app sends
the following to our leaderboard server at
gerry-api.subastra.dev, which we operate:
- The display name you typed (up to 20 characters).
- Your result for that board: your all-time score, or the seats, district total and efficiency gap for a daily map, or the House seats, states completed and the side you played for the campaign.
- The random per-device identifier described above.
The server stores your display name, your result, the time you posted, and a one-way cryptographic hash of that identifier — never the identifier itself. Your IP address reaches the server and its network provider (Cloudflare) as an unavoidable part of any internet request; we use it in memory only, to limit how often a single connection can post, and we do not store it in the leaderboard database.
Display names posted to a leaderboard are public. Every other player sees them. Please do not use your real name, your email address, or anything else you would not want published, and do not post a name on behalf of someone else. Every name is checked automatically against a word filter on our server before it is accepted, and rejected names are never stored or shown; nobody reads names by hand, and no filter catches everything. If you see a name that should not be there, email us at the address below and we will remove it.
Leaderboard entries are kept until they are removed. You can delete your own entries yourself with Remove me from the leaderboard on the leaderboard screen. Or email hello@subastra.dev from any address with the display name you posted, and we will remove the entry from every board. You do not need an account to make the request.
If you never post a score, the game never contacts the leaderboard server with anything about you, and every mode remains fully playable.
Advertising
The App Store and Google Play versions of the game show occasional full-screen ads supplied by Google AdMob. (The version that runs in a web browser currently shows no ads at all.)
These ads are always non-personalized. The app does not track you: on iOS it never asks for App Tracking Transparency permission and never reads the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), and every ad request is made with personalization switched off. You will see ads chosen from general context, not from a profile of you.
To serve and measure these ads, Google and its ad partners may still collect and process:
- A device advertising identifier on Android (the Android Advertising ID), used for things like frequency capping and fraud prevention rather than for building a profile. On iOS no advertising identifier is read.
- Your IP address and general (coarse) location derived from it.
- Device and app information (device model, operating system, app version, language).
- Ad-interaction data, such as which ads were shown and whether they were tapped.
This data is collected by Google, not by us, and is governed by Google's privacy policies: Google Privacy Policy and How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.
Your choices and consent
- Leaderboards: posting a score is entirely optional. Skip it and nothing about your play leaves the device.
- Europe / UK (EEA, UK, Switzerland): the first time the app shows ads it presents a Google-provided consent form, and you can change your mind later.
- iOS: there is nothing to opt out of. The app shows no App Tracking Transparency prompt because it does not track: ads are non-personalized for everyone, whatever your device settings say.
- Advertising ID (Android): you can reset or limit it at any time in Settings → Privacy → Ads.
Children
The app is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. Ads are delivered under Google AdMob's standard (not child-directed) settings, and the leaderboards are public, so we ask that children do not post to them.
Other things the app does not do
- It does not require an account or ask you to log in.
- Apart from advertising and a leaderboard entry you choose to post, it does not send your gameplay to any server. Your progress, stars and settings never leave the device.
- It does not access your contacts, camera, microphone, photos, or files, and does not use precise GPS location.
- This version has no in-app purchases and no subscriptions, so it never asks you for payment details.
Future changes
If a future version changes what data is involved — such as adding accounts or an in-app purchase — we will update this policy and change the "Last updated" date above.
Contact
Questions about this policy, a request to remove a leaderboard entry, or a name you want to report? Email hello@subastra.dev. See also the support page.