Privacy Policy
Summary
WordWar does not collect, transmit, or store any personal data on our servers. There are no accounts, no analytics, no advertising, no telemetry, and no third-party trackers. The game is fully playable offline. The only time the app touches the network is when you tap a word in the post-game results screen to look up its definition — that single action opens an in-app browser to Google Search.
What data WordWar stores on your device
WordWar stores the following on your device, and only on your device:
- Four preferences: which visual theme you’ve selected, which dictionary mode (Standard or Anything Goes) you’ve chosen, whether in-app sound effects are on or off, and a single flag recording whether you have already dismissed the “How to Play” tutorial so it does not reappear.
- The bundled word dictionary that ships inside the app, used to validate words. This is read-only reference data, identical for every copy of the app — it contains no information about you.
That is the entire data footprint. WordWar does not store:
- Your name, email address, phone number, location, or any account information.
- A history of your games, scores, words played, or game state across launches — every game starts fresh.
- Any device identifier (advertising ID, IMEI, Android ID, MAC address, IP address, install token, push token).
- Any analytics, telemetry, error logs, crash reports, or session data.
None of this on-device data is transmitted off your device, associated with an identity, or shared with any third party by us. If you uninstall the app, the operating system removes all of it in the normal way.
Network access (the word-lookup feature)
The app declares the INTERNET permission for a single feature: when you tap a word on the Game Over screen, an in-app browser opens https://www.google.com/search?q=define+<word> so you can read its definition. Specifically:
- The lookup is initiated only by your tap. All gameplay, validation, and dictionary checks happen offline using the bundled database. You can play the game indefinitely without ever invoking this feature.
- The in-app browser allows pages on
google.com,google.co.uk, andgoogle.co.in. Links to any other host open in your device’s normal browser. - JavaScript and DOM storage are enabled inside the in-app browser, so Google may set cookies within that browser session in the same way it would in any other browser. We do not read, store, or transmit those cookies.
- Words you have submitted that the app has flagged as sensitive are explicitly blocked from the lookup feature — tapping them shows a “Search Unavailable” dialog instead of opening a search.
- Once you close the in-app browser, no record of what you looked up is retained anywhere by the app.
When Google receives one of these search requests, it does so under Google’s own privacy practices (policies.google.com/privacy), not ours. The request contains the word you tapped plus the standard information any web request exposes (such as your IP address and User-Agent). We have no agreement with Google about these requests, do not receive any data back from them, and have no visibility into them.
Data sharing and sale
We do not share, sell, rent, license, or otherwise disclose any data to any third party, because we do not collect any data to share in the first place. The word-lookup feature above is a direct user-initiated request to Google, not a data transfer from us.
Security
Because the app stores no personal data and transmits no personal data, there is nothing for us to secure on a server. The four on-device preferences are kept in Android’s standard SharedPreferences storage, which is sandboxed to the app under Android’s per-app data isolation. The bundled dictionary is read-only.
Data retention and deletion
We retain no user data — there is nothing on our side to retain or delete. The four on-device preferences and the bundled dictionary are removed by Android automatically when you uninstall the app or clear its data from system settings.
If you would like to confirm in writing that we hold no data about you, email support@arigatou.uk and we will reply confirming the same.
Children
The app is not directed at children under 13 and is not enrolled in Google Play’s Designed for Families program. The app rates Teen/12+ via IARC because its bundled dictionary contains the full English vocabulary, including infrequent profanity. The app collects no personal information from anyone, including children — there is no chat, no user-generated content visible to other users, no in-app purchases, no advertising, and no account system. We therefore have no personal information about children (or anyone else) to disclose, delete, or restrict.
Your rights (GDPR / UK GDPR / CCPA)
Because we hold no personal data about you, there is no data to access, correct, port, restrict, object to, or delete. If you believe we hold data about you and would like that confirmed or actioned, contact support@arigatou.uk and we will respond within 30 days.
Changes to this policy
If we ever change the app to begin collecting data — we currently have no plans to — this policy will be updated and the “Last updated” date above will change. We will not retroactively change the policy with respect to historical data, because there is no historical data.
Contact
Questions, concerns, or data requests: support@arigatou.uk
We aim to respond within 7 working days.