Privacy Policy

The short version

Train Tracks does not ask you to create an account, and does not collect your name, email address or contact list.

Everything you do in the game — puzzle progress, best times, hints used, an unfinished board, your settings and the Conductor's Log journey record derived from that progress — is stored locally on your own device. Advertising is the main area where third parties are involved, and that is described below. The app may also make a brief network check for a newer store version; that check is optional and never required to play. Every puzzle is built into the app itself, so the game can still be played with no network at all; ads and the optional update check need a connection when they run.

Information stored on your device

The app saves the following to your device's local storage so it can keep your records and settings between sessions:

• Which levels you have solved, your best time on each, and how many hints you used on each.
• Any level you are part-way through: the track you have drawn, the crosses you have pencilled in, the time elapsed on that board, and when you last touched it.
• Your settings: sound effects, haptics, dark mode, and whether a long press marks a cross.
• A small record used only for the soft update prompt: which installed version was last tracked, which store version was last offered, and the local date that prompt was last shown, so the app does not nag you on every launch.
• A backup copy of any of the above that the app could not read back, kept so a single unreadable record cannot silently erase your history.

The Conductor's Log (also opened as Log from the home screen) is a journey screen that reads the same local progress. Clean solves, fastest run, route stamps and per-region cards are calculated on your device from that progress; the Log does not create a separate cloud profile or send those figures anywhere.

Removing the app deletes all of it.

We do not collect personal data

None of the information above is transmitted to us. We operate no server that receives your gameplay data, and we have no way to identify you as an individual user of the app. The app carries no analytics, no crash reporting and no measurement library of any kind, so your play is not counted, profiled or reported anywhere.

If you use Send feedback in Settings, the app can pre-fill your message with device name, model, operating system and app version. That information reaches us only if you send the email, and you can read and edit it before sending. Rate us opens the app's store listing, and Share hands a short message to whichever app you pick from the share sheet.

Optional store update check

When a connection is available, the app may look up the latest published version on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store listing and compare it with the version installed on your device. If a newer version appears to be available, the app may show a soft prompt you can dismiss and keep playing.

That lookup contacts Apple's public iTunes lookup service or the public Play Store product page. It does not send your puzzle progress, settings or advertising identifiers to Venus Apps, and the response is used only to decide whether to show the prompt. If the check fails or you are offline, the app simply skips it and play continues as normal.

Advertising

The app displays advertisements supplied by Google AdMob and, through AdMob mediation, other advertising networks such as Unity Ads, InMobi and Meta Audience Network. These include banner ads, full-screen ads after you finish a puzzle, and optional full-screen ads you may choose to watch in exchange for a hint or to reveal a solution.

Watching an ad for a reward is always your choice, and the hint or the reveal is given to you either way, including when no ad is available to show. Each board comes with three free hints before an ad is offered. Ads shown between puzzles appear after you complete a level.

In regions where consent is required (such as the EEA and UK), the app shows a consent form from Google's User Messaging Platform before any ad is requested and before any advertising network is started up. Your answer is recorded on your device, so the form appears once rather than on every launch. Clearing the app's storage or reinstalling the app resets that answer and brings the form back.

To serve ads, these networks may collect device-level information such as coarse location derived from your IP address, device model and operating system version, language, and whether an ad was shown or tapped; on Android they may also use a resettable advertising identifier. This processing is carried out by the ad networks under their own privacy policies, not by us. Google's is at https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites, and its list of advertising partners at https://support.google.com/admob/answer/9012903. We never receive any of it, and see only aggregate earnings figures that contain no information about you.

On iOS the app does not ask for permission to track you and never accesses the advertising identifier (IDFA). Ads on iOS are therefore non-personalised, and neither we nor the ad networks link your activity here to apps or websites owned by other companies. The app does carry the SKAdNetwork identifiers the ad networks need for Apple's own privacy-preserving install measurement, which reports in aggregate and does not identify you.

On Android you can limit ad personalisation at any time through your device settings — "Reset advertising ID" and "Opt out of Ads Personalisation". On iOS the equivalent controls are under Privacy and Security, in Tracking and Apple Advertising.

Permissions

The app itself never shows you a permission prompt. It contains no code that requests a runtime permission, and it does not ask for your camera, microphone, contacts, photos, calendar, files or your location.

The advertising components built into the app do declare permissions in its manifest, and those are visible on the app's store listing, so they are listed here in full:

• Internet access, plus network and Wi-Fi state, used to load ads, to tell whether a connection exists, and for the optional store update check described above.
• Advertising ID, and Android's newer advertising services permissions for attribution and topics, used by the Google Mobile Ads component on Android.
• Precise location, declared by the InMobi mediation component and not by the game. Android never grants a location permission without asking you first, and the app never asks, so it is never granted and no location is ever read. Ad networks work out an approximate region from your IP address instead.
• Wake lock and foreground service, used by ad components to keep a full-screen ad playing.

Puzzle play needs none of this; the game is fully playable in airplane mode. Choosing Rate us, Share, Send feedback or Update may open another app or the store listing on your device.

Children's privacy

The app is suitable for a general audience and does not knowingly collect personal information from children. Because we do not collect personal data in the app, we hold no such information to delete. If you believe a third-party ad network has collected data from a child, please contact both that network and us.

Deleting your data

Because all game data lives on your device, clearing the app's storage in your device settings, or uninstalling the app, erases puzzle progress, best times, hints used, settings, any saved board, the Conductor's Log view of that progress and the soft update prompt record. This is immediate and irreversible. We hold no copy, so we cannot recover that data for you and there is nothing for you to request from us.

Changes to this policy

If the way the app handles data changes, this policy will be updated and the "last updated" date at the top will change. The copy inside the app is the same document as the copy on our website, and it ships with the app rather than being fetched, so a version you have read cannot be altered underneath you. Significant changes will be noted in the app's release notes.

Contact

If you have any questions about privacy in this app, email info@venusapps.com and we will respond as soon as we can.