Stelline

Privacy policy

Stelline collects no data

Effective date: . Applies to the Stelline app for iPhone and for Android and to this website.

In one paragraph: Stelline does not collect, store, transmit, sell or share any personal data — or any data at all — about you. The app has no internet access, no account or sign-in, no analytics, no advertising and no third-party software inside it. Your settings and your saved game exist only on your phone and are deleted when you delete the app. There is nothing for us to access, correct or erase, because we never receive anything.

1. Who this policy covers

“Stelline”, “the app”, “we” and “us” refer to the Stelline puzzle game for iPhone and for Android and to Andelis Studio LLC, a Florida limited liability company, which publishes it on the App Store and on Google Play. Both versions run the same puzzle engine and follow the same rules set out here; the few points where they differ are marked. “You” means anyone who installs or uses the app, or visits this website. This policy is written to be jurisdiction-neutral; sections 9 and 10 address the questions that European (GDPR and UK GDPR), Californian (CCPA/CPRA) and similar privacy laws ask.

2. Data we collect: none

The app does not collect any information from you or about you, and does not send anything off your device. In particular it does not collect or process:

The app does not use tracking, fingerprinting, cookies or any similar technology. It never asks for a permission from iOS or Android, because it needs none; the Android app declares no permissions at all, not even internet access. Its App Store privacy label is Data Not Collected, its privacy manifest declares no collected data types, no tracking and no tracking domains, and its Google Play Data safety section says that no data is collected or shared.

3. No network access, unless you turn on Game Center

Stelline contains no networking code of its own. It does not connect to the internet, to our servers (we have none) or to anyone else's, whether Wi-Fi or cellular is available or not. Puzzles, including Today's board, are generated and checked entirely on your phone. Everything the app does works exactly the same in Airplane Mode.

The one exception, on iPhone only, is optional and off by default: if you turn on Game Center in the app's Settings, Apple's Game Center framework signs you in with the Game Center account of your Apple Account and posts your times on Today's board to Apple's leaderboards. That traffic goes to Apple, not to us; section 6 describes it. The Android app has no leaderboards and no network access of any kind; section 7 describes it.

4. What stays on your phone

To work as a game, the app keeps a small amount of information locally, inside its own private storage area (the app “sandbox”) on your phone. None of it identifies you, and none of it ever leaves the device through the app.

Local data kept by the app
WhatWhereWhy
Your settings: the mode, board size and difficulty you last chose, Auto-check and auto-dot toggles, timer visibility, piece and mark glyphs, theme, colour-blind mode, appearance and haptics, whether Game Center is on (iPhone); a count of your flawless solves and whether the app has already asked you for a rating; and a random number used to seed the puzzle generator. The app's preferences store, private to the app (user defaults on iOS, the equivalent on Android). So the app opens the way you left it.
The game in progress: the board, your marks, the time elapsed, the hints used and the undo and redo history. A file in the app's private storage folder. So Continue can resume your game after the app is closed.
Today's boards: for each day and mode you played, the board, your marks while it is in progress, your time, whether the solve was flawless and (on iPhone) whether the time has been posted to Game Center. A file in the same private folder. So the card on Home shows where you stand and a day you already played is never regenerated differently.
A small bank of puzzles generated in advance. A file in the same private folder. So New puzzle is instant.

Deleting the app deletes all of it. iOS and Android remove an app's private storage, including its preferences and files, when the app is uninstalled. There is no copy anywhere else that we could keep or restore.

Device backups. Like the data of any app, these files may be included in the backups you make of your phone, according to your own settings: on iPhone, iCloud Backup or a backup to a computer, made by Apple's software under your Apple Account and governed by Apple's privacy policy; on Android, the backups Android Auto Backup makes to your Google account, governed by Google's privacy policy. The app has no part in them and we cannot access them.

5. Third parties: none

The app contains no third-party software development kits, libraries or services: no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising, no cloud sync. It is built only with the system frameworks of each platform (Apple's on iPhone, including, if you turn it on, Apple's Game Center, described in section 6; Google's Android and Jetpack frameworks on Android) and our own code. Consequently, no third party receives data from the app, and we do not sell, share, rent or disclose personal information to anyone, because we have none.

6. Apple: the App Store, TestFlight and Game Center

You download Stelline from Apple's App Store, or from TestFlight when testing a pre-release version. Apple processes the data involved in downloading, updating and (for TestFlight) testing apps under Apple's privacy policy, independently of us.

If you have chosen to share analytics with app developers in iOS (Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements → Share With App Developers), Apple may make aggregated, anonymised crash logs and usage statistics for the app available to us through Apple's developer tools. That data is collected by Apple, not by the app, contains no information that identifies you, and stays within Apple's systems; you can turn the sharing off at any time in the same setting. TestFlight testers can likewise choose whether TestFlight shares crash logs and feedback with the developer.

Game Center (iPhone only; optional, off by default)

Stelline 1.1 adds Today's board, the same board for everyone for 24 hours, and two Game Center leaderboards for it (one per mode). Nothing about them requires an account or a connection: you can play Today's board offline like any other board. If you turn on Game Center in the app's Settings, or accept the prompt on the Today's board card, Apple's Game Center framework signs you in with your Game Center account and the app sends Apple, for each Today's board you solve, your time to the hundredth of a second, whether the solve was flawless, and the version of the app's puzzle generator. Apple stores these scores, shows your Game Center nickname and avatar next to them on the leaderboard as Apple's rules and your Game Center profile settings allow, and provides the leaderboard screens shown in the app. All of this is processed by Apple under Apple's privacy policy and the Game Center terms; we run no server and receive none of it. Turn Game Center off in Stelline's Settings to stop posting times; the times already posted stay on Apple's leaderboards until they expire (they reset daily). Your Game Center profile, nickname and who can see your activity are managed in iOS Settings → Game Center.

7. Android and Google Play

Stelline for Android, version 1.0, is on Google Play (listing). It is the same game as the iPhone version, built on the same puzzle engine, and everything in sections 2 to 5 applies to it. The differences are these:

8. Children

Stelline is suitable for all ages and is rated 4+ on the App Store. It collects no personal information from anyone, on iPhone or on Android, including children under 13 (or the age of digital consent that applies where you live), and contains no ads, no purchases and no chat. Game Center is optional and off by default; for a child's Apple Account, Apple's Screen Time and Game Center settings decide whether leaderboards are available at all. On Android there is no sign-in of any kind. The only web addresses it can open are the pages of this site (support and this policy) and the contact form linked from Settings, hosted by Tally, and only when you tap them; they open in your browser, outside the app.

9. Your rights under GDPR, CCPA and similar laws

Privacy laws such as the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulations, the California Consumer Privacy Act and its equivalents in other places give you rights over personal data an organisation holds about you: to access it, correct it, delete it, receive a copy of it, restrict or object to its use, opt out of its sale or sharing, and not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights.

Because Stelline does not process any personal data, we hold nothing to which these rights could apply. We are not a controller or processor of your personal data in relation to the app, we have no legal basis to cite because there is no processing, we retain nothing, we transfer nothing across borders, we do not sell or share personal information, and we make no automated decisions about you. The only data that exists is the local game data described in section 4, which is under your sole control: to erase it, delete the app.

If you nonetheless believe we hold personal data about you, for example because you emailed us, you can ask us to access, correct or delete it using the contact below, and we will do so. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

10. This website

This website is a set of static pages. It sets no cookies, uses no analytics and loads no fonts, scripts, images or other resources from third parties, with one exception: the contact form on the support page, described below. It is published through a static hosting provider (currently GitHub Pages, a service of GitHub, Inc.), which, like any web host, may record technical information such as the IP address of visitors in its server logs to deliver the pages and protect its service; that processing is described in GitHub's privacy statement. We do not receive those logs.

Support email. If you write to support@stelline.page, we receive your address and your message in iCloud Mail (a service of Apple Inc.), use them only to answer you, and delete the exchange within 24 months of the last message. The app never attaches anything to an email on its own; you decide what to send.

Contact form. The form on the support page is provided by Tally BV (Gent, Belgium), which stores what you submit on servers in the European Union and acts as our processor under its data processing agreement. Each submission reaches us by email at support@stelline.page; we use it only to answer you and to improve Stelline, and delete submissions from Tally within 12 months. The form uses Google reCAPTCHA to block spam, which loads a script from Google when the form is shown and is covered by Google's privacy policy. Every field except the message is optional, and nothing from the app is attached on its own.

Feedback board. The public ideas and roadmap board at stelline.featurebase.app is provided by Featurebase (Cordnet OÜ, Tallinn, Estonia) and hosted in the European Union. What you post or vote on there is public; you can take part as a guest without creating an account, and anything you enter (a name or an email, if you choose to give one) is handled under Featurebase's privacy policy. We read the board to plan the game and do not copy your details anywhere else.

If you email us, we receive what you send (your address and your message) and use it only to reply. We do not add you to any list.

11. Changes to this policy

If the app ever changes in a way that affects your privacy — for example if a future version added an optional online feature, or leaderboards on Android — we would update this policy first, change the effective date at the top, describe the change plainly, and update the app's App Store privacy label and Google Play Data safety section to match. The current version of this policy is always the one published at this address.

12. Contact

Questions about privacy, or about anything else: email support@stelline.page or use the contact form on the support page.

Data controller: Andelis Studio LLC, 7901 4th Street North, Suite 300, St. Petersburg, Florida 33702, United States.