Privacy Policy — Tideblocks

Application: Tideblocks (package com.tideblocks.game)
Publisher: Sraito
Contact: privacy@tideblocks.com
Last updated: August 7, 2026

1. Summary

Tideblocks is a puzzle game that is free, has no in-app purchases and forces no advertising on you. It remains fully playable offline.

Only two things ever leave your device, and never without your knowledge.

• Cloud saves and leaderboards. The application sends a Google service (Firebase) a technical account identifier, your game progress and your scores. Google acts here as a plain host, on the publisher's behalf.
• The ad videos you choose to watch. At a few specific moments, the game offers you a short video in exchange for an advantage (an extra life, a hint, another attempt). These videos never start on their own. If you watch one, the advertising network Google AdMob receives your device's advertising identifier, technical information about that device, and data about your interaction with the ad. That is the only moment when a third party receives anything about you.

There are no banners, no interstitials, no ads popping up during a game, and no advertising at all in Zen mode. Declining a video is always one button away and takes nothing from the game: no level, no mode and no feature is reserved for people who watch ads.

2. Data sent for cloud saves and leaderboards

The application transmits three categories of information to Firebase, and only these.

An account identifier. On first use, the application creates a technical account with the Firebase authentication service. Depending on the platform, this is either:

• an anonymous account on the web, and by default on mobile — a random identifier generated by Firebase, tied to no name, no email address and no phone number, and requiring no sign-up on your part; or
• an account linked to Google Play Games (Android) or Game Center (iOS) if that service is available and you are signed in to it. In that case the application receives your player nickname as defined in that service, in order to display it in the leaderboard.

On an anonymous account the application has no name to display, so it generates one itself from the identifier, in the form MARIN-8F3A. That nickname reveals nothing about you.

Your game progress. The number of the level reached in Story mode, and for each completed level your best move count and the number of stars earned.

Your scores. For each completed level, your best move count, your stars and your nickname, in order to populate that level's world leaderboard; and your best Survival run, for that mode's leaderboard.

This transmission contains none of the following: identity, email address, phone number, contacts, location, photos, files, microphone or camera content, advertising identifier, device identifier, usage statistics, crash reports.

3. Rewarded advertising: what the game offers, and what it never does

3.1 The principle

A rewarded ad is a short video that you decide to watch, in exchange for an advantage announced up front. The game only ever offers one in three situations:

• Continue — in Survival mode, when your lives run out: watching a video gives back a life and lets the run go on.
• Hint — during a game: watching a video reveals the next optimal move, computed by the solver built into the game.
• Retry — in the Daily Challenge: watching a video grants one more attempt.

3.2 What the application rules out

• No banners, anywhere in the application.
• No interstitials: never a video or an ad screen forced on you between two levels, at launch, or at the end of a run.
• No advertising during play: nothing appears over the board while you are playing.
• No advertising in Zen mode, which stays an entirely quiet place to play.
• No advertising in Story mode beyond the "hint" button, which you are free never to touch: Story mode remains free of timers, of death and of move limits.

Declining a video, or never watching a single one, has no consequence on playability: all 1000 levels and every game mode remain available.

3.3 The data the ad network receives

If — and only if — you start an ad video, the Google AdMob software development kit embedded in the application may collect and transmit to Google:

• your device's advertising identifier (the *Advertising ID* on Android, the *Identifier for Advertisers* on iOS), that is, a number you can reset at any time, tied to your device rather than to you as a person;
• device and network information: model, brand, operating system version, language, time zone, screen resolution, IP address (from which Google infers an approximate location, at roughly city or country level), carrier;
• ad interaction data: which ad was shown, when, whether it was watched to the end, whether it was closed, whether it was clicked;
• the application's identity (com.tideblocks.game) and its version.

The application itself never reads the advertising identifier, never stores it and never sends it to anyone else. Nor does it associate advertising data with your game account or your progress: these are two separate circuits.

3.4 Who is responsible for what

This is the important difference from cloud saves.

• For saves and leaderboards, Google is a processor: it hosts data on the publisher's behalf and is not permitted to use it for its own purposes.
• For advertising, Google acts as a separate data controller: it uses the data described in 3.3 for its own purposes — selecting which ad to serve, billing the advertiser, measuring effectiveness, capping repetitions and detecting fraud — and may combine it with what it collects elsewhere. The publisher only ever sees aggregate statistics (number of videos watched, revenue), never data about an identifiable player.

To understand what Google does with this information, see How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services and the Google Privacy Policy.

If you have consented to personalised advertising, Google may also pass an ad request to its advertising partners (advertisers and bidding platforms) taking part in the auction. The list of those partners is presented in the consent screen described in section 4.

4. Your consent, and how to withdraw it

4.1 In the game

Before the very first ad, the application shows a consent screen provided by Google (*User Messaging Platform*). That screen explicitly asks whether you agree to your data being used for advertising purposes, and distinguishes personalised from
non-personalised advertising.

If you decline, the application shows no advertising at all: the "watch a video" buttons simply disappear, no request is sent to the ad network, and the game stays fully playable. The same thing happens when you are offline or when the ad network does not answer.

You can change your mind at any time from the game's OPTIONS, which reopen the same consent screen.

4.2 In your device settings

Independently of the game, your operating system gives you control over the advertising identifier.

• Android — Settings → Privacy → Ads: you can reset the advertising identifier (data previously associated with it no longer follows you) or, since Android 12, delete it entirely. Applications then receive only a string of zeros, and Tideblocks keeps working normally.
• iOS — Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking: turn off "Allow Apps to Request to Track" to refuse access to the advertising identifier globally. In Settings → Privacy & Security → Apple Advertising, turn off "Personalized Ads". On iOS the application asks for your permission through the system *App Tracking Transparency* prompt in any case; if you decline it, the advertising identifier is not transmitted.

You can also turn off Google ad personalisation from your Google account ad settings.

5. Why this data is collected

• The account identifier, progress and scores exist solely to operate cloud saves (recovering your progress) and the world leaderboard (showing other players' best scores). They are not used to profile you, to measure your use of the application, or to personalise advertising.
• The advertising data exists to display and bill the video you chose to watch, and to fund the development of the game, which stays free and free of in-app purchases.

These two sets are never cross-referenced by the publisher.

6. Where this data is hosted

The data described in section 2 is stored in Cloud Firestore, a database service of
Firebase, a platform operated by Google (Google Ireland Limited for users in the European Economic Area, Google LLC elsewhere). The data described in 3.3 is processed by Google's advertising systems, under the same legal entity depending on your country of residence.

Google operates data centres in several countries and may process this information outside the European Union. Such transfers are governed by the mechanisms provided for by the General Data Protection Regulation, in particular the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, as incorporated into the Google Cloud data processing terms and into Google's advertising terms.

All exchanges between the application and Firebase use HTTPS and are therefore encrypted in transit; so are the exchanges with the ad network. Access to save data is restricted by security rules enforced on the server: each player can only read and modify their own save. Leaderboard scores are, by their nature, readable by all players — that is what makes them a leaderboard.

7. Data stored on your device

Independently of the above, the application stores locally, so that you can resume your game even without a connection:

• the number of the level reached in Story mode;
• for each completed level, your best move count and the number of stars earned;
• your best Survival run;
• the sound setting (on / off) and the "reduced animations" setting;
• the results of the Daily Challenge for the last sixty days and your consecutive-day streak (older days are deleted automatically);
• the technical token that lets the application find your account again on next launch;
• your advertising consent choice, stored by Google's component so that you are not asked again on every launch.

This information is written to the application's private storage. The settings (sound, animations) and the Daily Challenge results stay on the device and are never transmitted.

8. Data sharing

The publisher sells no data and rents no data.

Only two third parties are involved, in two very different roles:

• Google, as host of saves and leaderboards (section 6). It is not permitted to use that data for its own purposes. This is not sharing in the sense used by the app stores' privacy forms.
• Google, as advertising network (AdMob) when you choose to watch a video (section 3). This time it genuinely is sharing with a third party, and it is declared as such in the app stores' privacy forms.

If you use Google Play Games or Game Center, those services are additionally governed by the privacy policy of their respective publisher (Google and Apple).

Best scores are public by nature: your nickname, your move count and your best run may appear in the leaderboards viewed by other players. On an anonymous account, that nickname is the one generated by the game and does not identify you.

9. No analytics, no trackers

Beyond what is described above, the application includes:

• no analytics or audience-measurement tool — Google Analytics and Firebase Analytics are not used; this is a deliberate choice;
• no crash-reporting tool;
• no social network button or SDK;
• no advertising network other than Google AdMob, and no additional mediation network.

The application does not embed any Firebase SDK at all: it calls the Firebase web interface directly, which keeps the exchanges limited to what is strictly described in section 2. The only third-party SDK present in the application is Google AdMob's, described in section 3.

10. Purchases and payments

The application offers no in-app purchases, no subscription, and processes no payment data. Rewarded advertising is the game's only source of funding.

11. Android permissions

The application requests no sensitive permission: no location, no camera, no microphone, no contacts, no file access, no notifications.

It declares two permissions that Android classifies as "normal", neither of which is presented to the user as a dialog:

• android.permission.INTERNET, used for cloud saves, the world leaderboard and loading ad videos;
• com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID, which lets the advertising component read the device's advertising identifier, as described in 3.3.

The game's own content (graphics, sounds, levels) is entirely generated by the program and is never downloaded.

12. Children

The application does not request, read or transmit any data capable of identifying a person, including a child. Its content contains no violence and no inappropriate language.

The application does, however, show rewarded ads supplied by a third party. For that reason it is not directed at children under 13 and is not enrolled in Google Play's "Designed for Families" programme. If you are a parent or guardian and believe a child under 13 has used the application, please write to privacy@tideblocks.com.

The world leaderboard displays nicknames and scores; it allows no interaction between players: no messages, no chat, no friend requests, and no content freely written by a user.

13. Retention and deletion

On your device. The information in section 7 remains for as long as the application is installed. To remove it, clear the application's data from Android Settings (Apps → Tideblocks → Storage → Clear data), or uninstall the application. In a browser, clear the site data.

Online, for saves and leaderboards. This data is kept for as long as the account exists, so that you can recover your progress. It is not deleted automatically.

On the advertising side. Advertising data is retained by Google according to its own retention periods, described in its privacy policy. The publisher holds no copy of it and therefore cannot delete it: to act on it, use the means described in section 4, or contact Google directly.

One important point to be aware of: if you clear the application's data or uninstall it while using an anonymous account, the token linking the device to that account is lost. Your online progress then becomes unreachable from the application, although it is not thereby deleted from the server. Using Google Play Games or Game Center avoids this situation, since the account is tied to your player identity.

To request permanent deletion of your online data, write to privacy@tideblocks.com, quoting the identifier shown with your nickname if you know it. The request is handled within a reasonable time and results in the deletion of your save document and your leaderboard entries.

14. Your rights

You have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability over the data described in section 2. To exercise them, write to
privacy@tideblocks.com.

Because this data is deliberately stripped of anything identifying, the publisher may need your account identifier in order to locate the relevant record. Without it, linking a request to a record may be impossible — that is the direct trade-off of choosing to collect nothing that identifies you.

For the advertising data in 3.3, these rights are exercised with Google, which is the controller for it, through the means set out in its privacy policy. The publisher cannot exercise them on your behalf, having no access to that data.

You may also lodge a complaint with the data protection authority of your country (in France, the CNIL).

15. Changes to this policy

Should a future version of the application change this behaviour — by adding an ad format, an analytics tool, or a new category of data, for example — this policy will be updated
before the version concerned is made available, and the "last updated" date above will be changed.

16. Contact

For any question about this privacy policy: privacy@tideblocks.com