Privacy policy

Last updated 22 October 2026, to say who runs the game, why it uses your data, your rights, and how it's protected, that your plan is stored, that coin purchases in the app are recorded, that your daily streak and puzzle length are stored, that daily reminders stay on your device, and that the iOS app shows ads from Google

Crostica is a small word-puzzle game run by one person. It collects only what it needs to sign you in and keep your games, and it doesn't sell any of it. The iOS app shows ads from Google, and Google collects some data from your device to show them; see Ads in the iOS app.

Who runs the game

Guy Montza, an individual in Israel, runs Crostica and decides what it collects and why. In privacy law, that makes him the controller of your data. You can reach him at privacy@crostica.com. If a company takes over the game later, this policy will name it, and you'll be told before the change happens.

Playing without an account

You can play before you sign in. The game then gives your browser or app a random guest ID, with no email or name, and keeps your progress and solves under it. Guest solves don't appear on the leaderboard. If you sign in, they move into your account and the guest ID is deleted. A guest ID nobody has used for 30 days is deleted along with everything under it.

What the game stores

• Your email address. It's how you sign in, and it's what your games and coins are saved under.
• Your name, only if you sign in with Apple and Apple shares it. The game uses it only for the letter in your own header and never shows it to other players. If you choose Apple's Hide My Email, the game gets a relay address from Apple instead of your real one.
• Your Apple user ID, if you sign in with Apple, so the game can recognise you next time, and a token from Apple, used only to tell Apple when you delete your account.
• Your games: the puzzles you've played, your progress and times, your coins and what you earned and spent them on, and when you first and last opened the game.
• The daily leaderboard: a name the game makes up for you, like "Curious Otter", not your real name. Next to it the board shows your best time on each daily puzzle you solve, when you finished it, and how many hints you used. Other players can see this for today's puzzle and earlier ones. Your email and your real name are never shown. In Settings you can get a new made-up name or keep yourself off the leaderboards.
• Share links: when you share a result, the link's title and the page it opens show your leaderboard name and your time, and its preview image shows your time and your hint count, to anyone who has the link. They never show the answers or your email. Delete your account and, within a day, the link shows only the puzzle.
• Your plan: whether your account is on the free plan or Pro, and when Pro ends. It decides how many puzzles you can build in any 24 hours and how much of your history you see.
• Your puzzle length: the puzzle length your account is set to, Quick or Classic, so the game opens on that length.
• Your daily streak: the days you solved the daily puzzle, the days a streak freeze covered, how many freezes you hold, your current and best streak, and the time zone offset your device reported when you solved. Guests have no streak.
• Puzzles you build: a record of each build you start, with its time, whether it worked and the coins you paid for it, so the game can count your builds over the last 24 hours. Builds past the ones your plan includes cost coins, and only when you agree to pay. The game records the coins spent with the rest of your coin history.
• Coin purchases: when you buy coins in the app, the game checks the receipt from the App Store or Google Play and records the store's transaction ID, the pack, the coins it gave you, the price, which store, and when. That's how it gives you the coins exactly once. It never sees your card or other payment details; the store handles the payment.
• Puzzle reports: when you report a puzzle, the game stores which puzzle, the reason you picked, when you sent it, and your email, so we can check the quote. Deleting your account deletes your reports.
• Sign-in records: a scrambled copy (a hash) of each sign-in code and each session, never the code or session itself.

The game doesn't store your IP address and has no analytics of its own. The ads in the iOS app are the one exception: Google collects that data itself, as described in Ads in the iOS app.

Why the game is allowed to use it

Privacy law asks for a reason, called a legal basis, behind each use of your data. These are Crostica's:

• To give you the game you asked to play (a contract with you): your guest ID and guest progress, your account and sign-in, saving your games, progress and times, your coins, your plan, your daily streak, the builds you pay for with coins, and the coins you buy in the app.
• To keep the game free (legitimate interests): showing non-personalised ads in the iOS app to guests and to players on the free plan. Where the law asks for consent before an app stores or reads anything on your device for ads, Google's consent form asks for it first.
• To run a public leaderboard (legitimate interests): showing your made-up name and times to other players. You can object by keeping yourself off the leaderboards in Settings.
• To keep the game fair and safe (legitimate interests): the limits your plan sets on puzzle builds in any 24 hours, the limits on sign-in codes (5 wrong tries per code and 3 code emails an hour), short limits on how many new guest games and code emails one connection can start in a minute (counted in memory from a scrambled copy of the connection's address, which is never saved), stopping abuse and fraud, the sign-in records and the host's short-lived logs, and checking the puzzles you report. You can object to these; see your rights.
• Only if you agree (consent): the daily reminder in the app, which stays off unless you turn it on and never sends anything to us, and personalised ads in the iOS app, which you get only if you allow them in Google's consent form (where it appears) and allow tracking when iOS asks. You can turn either off again at any time.
• Because the law requires it (legal obligation): the purchase records, kept for as long as tax and accounting law requires, even after you delete your account.

Cookies and your browser

One cookie keeps you signed in for up to 60 days. A second one lasts 10 minutes while you sign in with Apple, to make sure the reply really came from the sign-in you started. It is deleted as soon as Apple's reply arrives. The game also keeps your settings, any game in progress, and the first letter of your name and your coin balance (so the header looks the same while the page loads) in your browser's own storage. Signing out clears the letter and the balance.

Daily reminders

In the app you can turn on a daily reminder for the new puzzle. Reminders are scheduled on your device; we don't send push notifications. The app keeps the reminder time, the times you usually solve the daily (to suggest a time) and how many reminders went unanswered on your device only. None of it reaches our servers, and the game stores no device token. You can change the time or turn reminders off in Settings, or block them in your phone's settings.

Ads in the iOS app

The iOS app shows banner ads from Google AdMob on the home screen, the leaderboard and the end of a puzzle, never while you solve. Ads are limited to content rated for general audiences. Pro players see no ads. The website and the Android app show no ads.

To show ads, measure them and catch problems, Google's ad software in the app collects from your device:

• device identifiers: Apple's advertising identifier if you allow tracking, and identifiers limited to one app or one developer's apps;
• your IP address, which Google uses to estimate your rough location, such as your country or city, never your exact location;
• the ads you see and tap, and how you interact with them;
• diagnostics: crash logs, performance data such as load times, and other technical details about the app and device.

The game never gives Google your email, your name, your Apple user ID or your games. Google uses this data under its own policy, explained in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services.

Before any ad loads, the iOS app asks for your choices. If you're in the European Economic Area, the UK, Switzerland, or a US state with its own privacy law, the iOS app first shows Google's consent form. It then shows Apple's prompt asking whether the app may track you. Ads are personalised only if you agree to Apple's prompt and, where it appears, Google's form. Otherwise you still get ads, but they're non-personalised: they're chosen from what you're looking at in the app and your rough location, not from your activity in other apps and websites.

You can change your mind at any time. In the app, open Settings and choose Privacy choices. Or, on your iPhone, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking and turn tracking off for Crostica.

Who else handles your data

• Cloudflare hosts the game and its database, and sends the sign-in code emails. Like any web host, it handles each request and keeps short-lived operational logs.
• Apple, if you choose Sign in with Apple or buy coins in the iOS app.
• Google, if you buy coins in the Android app. The game sends Google the purchase's token to check it.
• Google AdMob serves the ads in the iOS app and collects the data described in Ads in the iOS app directly from your device, under Google's own policy.
• Anthropic or Cloudflare Workers AI write new puzzles. They get the topic you type, if any, and never your email or anything else about you.

Where your data goes

The game is run from Israel, but its database is in Cloudflare's data centres in the United States, and Cloudflare answers each request from a data centre near you, anywhere in the world. Anthropic is in the United States too, and so is Google, which collects the ad data in the iOS app. So your data leaves Israel, and if you live in the EU or the UK, it leaves there too. Cloudflare and Anthropic handle it under their data processing terms, which include the EU's standard contractual clauses (and the UK's version of them) where those apply. Anthropic gets only the topic you type, never your email. Google collects the ad data as an independent controller, which means it decides how to use that data and protects and transfers it under its own terms, set out in the Google Privacy Policy.

How long it's kept

Until you delete your account, except purchase records, which are kept without your email for as long as tax and accounting law requires. Sign-in codes expire after 10 minutes and sessions after 60 days without use. Guest sessions expire after 30 days without use.

How your data is protected

• The game only works over HTTPS. A plain HTTP address is sent on to HTTPS, and the sign-in cookie is marked so the browser sends it only over HTTPS and page scripts can't read it.
• Sessions are stored only as hashes, so someone who saw the database still couldn't use them to sign in as you. Sign-in codes are hashed too, but a 6-digit code is short, so what protects it is that it lasts 10 minutes, allows 5 wrong tries, and works once.
• Codes expire after 10 minutes, and sessions after 60 days without use (30 for guests). Signing out ends the session straight away.
• The game doesn't store your IP address.
• Only Guy, and the automated deploy system he controls, can reach the database and the hosting account.
• Cloudflare hosts the game and its database.

Deleting your account

Open Settings in the game and choose Delete account. That removes your account, email, name, Apple link, games, coins, streak and sessions straight away, on every device. If you signed in with Apple, the game also tells Apple, so it leaves the list of apps using Sign in with Apple in your Apple Account. The count of builds you started is deleted too. Build records kept for cost accounting and purchase records kept for tax stay, with your email taken off them, and the puzzles themselves stay, since they aren't about you. You can also ask by email at privacy@crostica.com, without opening the game.

Your rights

Under the EU's GDPR, the UK GDPR and Israel's Privacy Protection Law (as changed by Amendment 13), you can:

• See your data (access): ask for a copy of what the game holds about you.
• Correct it (rectification): ask to fix anything wrong. You can get a new leaderboard name yourself in Settings.
• Delete it (erasure): choose Delete account in Settings, as described above, or ask by email.
• Pause its use (restriction): ask the game to stop using your data while a question about it is sorted out.
• Object: object to the uses based on legitimate interests. To keep yourself off the public leaderboards, use Settings; for the rest, email.
• Take it with you (portability): ask for your data in a file a computer can read.
• Withdraw consent: turn off the daily reminder in Settings, and change your ad choices in Settings > Privacy choices or in your iPhone's tracking settings, as described in Ads in the iOS app.

For anything not in Settings, email privacy@crostica.com from the address you sign in with. You'll get an answer within a month, at no cost.

Complaints

Please email first, so the problem can be fixed. You can also complain to a data protection authority at any time. In Israel that's the Privacy Protection Authority. In the EU or the UK, it's the authority where you live, such as the Information Commissioner's Office in the UK.

California

Crostica doesn't sell your personal information. In the iOS app, if you allow personalised ads, Google uses your device's advertising identifier and ad data to show you ads based on your activity, which California law may count as sharing your personal information for targeted ads. To opt out, choose Privacy choices in the app's Settings, or turn tracking off for Crostica in your iPhone's settings. The website and the Android app show no ads. California residents can ask to know, correct or delete what the game holds, the same way as above, and won't be treated differently for asking.

Children

The game isn't aimed at children under 13, and doesn't knowingly collect their data.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a company takes over the game, you'll be told before it happens. Questions, or any of the requests above: privacy@crostica.com. The rules for using the game are in the terms of service.