This policy explains what Icallon — the Name · Place · Animal word game published by Sage Interactive ("we", "us") — collects when you play on iOS or Android, why, and what you can do about it.
We have tried to describe what the app actually does rather than every hypothetical. If something here doesn't match what you see in the game, tell us and we will fix one or the other.
01You can play without telling us who you are
When you first open Icallon the app creates an anonymous player ID for you. It is a random string. It is not your email address, your phone number, or your name, and we have no way to connect it to you as a person.
You never have to sign in. Signing in with Google is optional and does one thing: it ties your progress to an account so it survives a new phone. If you do sign in, we receive your Google account's email address and basic profile from Google — we never see your Google password.
The display name you choose is yours to pick. A nickname is fine, and we would rather you used one.
02What we collect, and why
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Profile. Display name, avatar, friend code, and the anonymous player ID above. Your email if you signed in with Google. | So you have an identity in rooms, on friend lists and on leaderboards, and so your progress can follow you to a new device. |
| Progress. Scores, best score, streaks, achievements, unlocked themes, difficulty, and your skill rating and tier. | To save your game, rank the leaderboard, and match you against players of roughly your level. |
| Coins, gems and inventory. Your balances, keys and power-ups, plus a ledger of every change to them. | Balances are settled on our servers rather than on your phone, so they can't be tampered with — and so a disputed balance can be explained. |
| Purchases. Confirmation of what you bought, when, and the store's transaction number. | To grant what you paid for, to stop the same receipt being used twice, and for refunds and tax records. |
| Social. Friend list, friend requests, challenge invites, nudges you send, and which rooms you join. | To run friends and multiplayer at all. |
| Answers you type in a game. The words themselves, and whether the table accepted them. | To score the round. See §5 for the separate, optional case where an unrecognised word is sent to us. |
| Device and diagnostics. Device model, OS version, language, approximate region (from your IP), a reset-able advertising ID, and crash reports. | To fix crashes, keep the game working on real devices, and show ads. |
| Usage analytics. Which screens and features you use, session length, and in-game events. | To understand what people actually play so we can improve it. |
| Notification token. A per-install identifier from Apple or Google, if you allow notifications. | So a friend's nudge can reach your phone. Tokens are never shown to other players. |
Your coin and gem balances, name and avatar are also kept on your own device so the game works offline.
03What we never collect
- Your location. Icallon asks for no location permission of any kind, and does not use one. The only geography we ever infer is a rough country from your IP address.
- Your contacts, photos or files. Never requested, never read.
- Your camera. Icallon has no video feature. Games are text, and voice chat is audio only.
- Your payment details. Purchases are handled entirely by the App Store or Google Play. We are told what you bought — never your card number.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with data brokers.
04Voice chat
Voice is available in private rooms only — rooms you or a friend created and shared a code for. It is never available in public matchmaking, and that restriction is enforced on our server, not just hidden in the app.
- Your microphone is used only while you are in a voice room and only after you grant permission. You can revoke it at any time in your device settings.
- Calls are not recorded, stored or transcribed. Audio passes through our own voice server to the other players in the room and is not written down anywhere.
- The voice server is operated by us. Audio is not handed to a third-party voice provider.
- To join a room your app is issued a short-lived token carrying your player ID, your display name and the room code. Nothing else.
Because nothing is recorded, we cannot review what was said in a room after the fact.
05Teaching the dictionary — and how to say no
Players type real words the game has never heard of. If you let us, the app collects those unrecognised answers so the word list can learn them, which is how the game stops rejecting perfectly good answers.
If you turn this on, what leaves your phone is the word, its category, and where in the game it came from. Your player ID, your name and your device are not attached to it, so a submitted word cannot be traced back to who typed it.
- Words are batched on your device, de-duplicated, and sent at most once a day when the app goes to the background — never mid-game.
- Private rooms are a separate switch, and it starts off. "Private" ought to mean private, so words from private rooms are only ever collected if you deliberately opt in as well.
- Both switches live in Settings and can be turned off at any time.
Please don't type anything personal into a game answer. Anything you submit is visible to the other players in your room regardless of this setting.
06What other players can see
Icallon is a game you play with other people, so some of your profile is visible to them by design. Specifically:
- Anyone can see your display name, avatar, rating and rank if you appear on the global leaderboard.
- Players in your room can see your name, avatar, score, and every answer you submit.
- Your friends can additionally see roughly when you were last online, and can send you challenges and nudges.
- Anyone you give your friend code to can send you a friend request. You choose whether to accept.
Your email address, notification tokens, purchase history and balances are never shown to other players.
07Advertising
Icallon is free, and ads are how it stays free. We use Google AdMob, which may show banners, full-screen ads between games, and rewarded ads you choose to watch in exchange for coins.
- AdMob may use your device's resettable advertising identifier and general information about your device to choose which ad to show and to measure it.
- On Android, you can reset or delete your advertising ID and opt out of ad personalisation under Settings → Privacy → Ads.
- On iOS, apps cannot track you across other companies' apps unless you allow it. If you were asked and declined, that decision is honoured; you can change it under Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking.
- Where local law requires a choice about personalised advertising, you will be asked, and declining leaves you with non-personalised ads rather than no game.
Buying gems changes nothing about this policy, but it does reduce how often ads appear.
08Who else is involved
We keep the list of companies that touch your data as short as we can:
- Google (Firebase). Sign-in, the game database, notifications, crash reporting and analytics.
- Google (AdMob). Advertising, as described above.
- Apple and Google. App distribution, and processing your purchases.
- Cloudflare. Hosting this website, and the small service that receives optional dictionary words.
Voice chat runs on servers we operate ourselves. We may also disclose information if we are legally required to, or to investigate fraud or abuse of the game.
09Where your data lives
The game database and the servers that settle your balances are hosted in the European Union. Some of the services above are operated by companies based in the United States, so your information may be processed there too. Where that happens we rely on the transfer protections those providers offer, including the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.
If you are in the EU or UK, our legal bases are: performing our contract with you (running the game, your account, purchases and multiplayer), legitimate interests (keeping the game secure, preventing cheating, fixing crashes, and understanding usage in aggregate), consent (dictionary collection, notifications, microphone, and personalised ads where required), and legal obligation (keeping records of purchases).
10How long we keep it
- Your account and progress stay until you delete your account.
- Game rooms are temporary and disappear shortly after the game ends.
- Crash and analytics data expire on the retention schedule Firebase applies, generally within 14 months.
- Purchase records are kept for as long as tax and refund rules require, even after your account is deleted — but stripped of any link to you, and identified only by the store's own transaction number.
- Dictionary words may be kept indefinitely, because they become part of the game's word list. They never identified you in the first place.
11Your choices and rights
In the game you can change your name and avatar at any time, turn dictionary collection on or off, turn notifications and the microphone off in your device settings, sign out back to a guest profile, and delete your account outright.
Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to access a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, take it elsewhere, and complain to your local data protection authority. Email us and we will help — we will not charge you or make it difficult.
Deleting your account removes your profile, progress, friends and balances permanently, and takes effect immediately. You can do it in Settings → Delete account, or from our account deletion page if you no longer have the app installed.
12Children
Icallon is intended for players aged 13 and over. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. The game has friend lists, multiplayer rooms and voice chat, which is precisely why we do not aim it at younger children.
If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, email us and we will delete it. If you are a parent and want to know what your teenager's account holds, ask us and we will tell you.
13Security
Everything the app sends is encrypted in transit. Access to your data is restricted by rules enforced on the server, so another player cannot read your wallet, your notification tokens or your purchase history even if they tried. Balances and leaderboard scores are settled by our servers rather than trusted from the app, which is what stops a modified client inventing them.
No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If we ever suffer a breach affecting your data, we will tell you and the relevant regulator as the law requires.
14Changes to this policy
When we change something material we will update the date at the top of this page and, where it matters, tell you in the app. Continuing to play after a change means you accept the revised policy.
Contact us
Questions about this policy, or about what we hold on you? A real person reads this inbox.
✉ support@playicallon.comSage Interactive · See also Delete your account.