Privacy Policy
I am Dat Vu, an independent developer, and I make Make 10: Number Blocks on my own. This policy explains, in plain terms, what the game does with information. It covers the iOS and the Android version, which behave the same way.
The short version
Your progress, your scores and your settings live on your phone. Two things reach the internet, and this page is mostly about them:
- Advertising. The game shows one banner ad, supplied by Google AdMob, along the bottom edge of the cards you open (Settings, Scores, the mode picker, the end-of-run card). There is no ad during play, no full-screen ad and no video ad.
- The world board, which is off when you install the game. While it is off, nothing about you leaves the device — no account is created and no request of any kind is made. If you switch it on, your best score and the name you play under are published to a public leaderboard.
There are no in-app purchases, no subscriptions, no analytics SDK, and no account of mine to sign in to.
What stays on your device
One small save file holds your best scores, your recent runs, the run in progress, your settings (sound, vibration, reduce motion, appearance), your player name, the players you have chosen to hide, and how far you got through the first-run tutorial. I never receive any of it.
Deleting the app removes this file the way your phone normally does.
Advertising
What is shown, and by whom
The banner comes from Google AdMob. Serving it means Google's advertising SDK runs inside the app, and Google receives information from your device to select, deliver, measure and protect that ad against fraud. That typically includes a device advertising identifier, coarse information about your device and app, and whether an ad was seen or tapped.
What Google does with it is governed by Google's own terms, not mine: see Google's Business Data Responsibility page and How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.
Your choices about ads
If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, a Google consent form appears before any ad is requested, and your answer decides whether ads can be personalised. You can change that answer at any time in the game: Settings → Ad privacy choices. That entry only appears where the choice applies.
On iOS the game never asks for App Tracking Transparency permission and does not track you across other companies' apps or websites.
On Android you can reset or delete your advertising ID in your phone's Settings ▸ Google ▸ Ads. On iOS, Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Tracking and Apple Advertising control the equivalent.
There is no paid option to remove the banner today.
The world board, if you turn it on
How it starts
The world board is off when you install the game, and the game asks you once whether you want to join. While it is off no anonymous account is created for you and no request is made. You turn it on — and off again — in Settings → World board.
What is published, and where
It runs on Google Firebase (Cloud Firestore, with Firebase Anonymous Authentication), in a project I control. There are three boards, one per rulebook (Easy, Normal, Hard), each holding the top 100 scores. When your best score qualifies, one row is written for you:
| Field | What it is |
|---|---|
| Player name | The name you play under. Public — everyone on the board sees it. |
| Score, best streak, moves | The numbers the row displays. |
| Player id | A random id the game generated on this device. It is not your phone's identifier, contains nothing about you, and exists so one player is one row. |
| Anonymous user id | Created by Firebase Anonymous Authentication so the server can tell that a row belongs to you and refuse writes from anyone else. It is not linked to an email address, a phone number or a Google/Apple account. |
| Updated at | When the row was last written. |
That is the whole payload. A run that is not a personal best sends nothing at all, and a score that the top 100 already outranks is not sent either.
Your name on the board
You can type a name in Settings → Player name. Until you do, the game generates one for you (an animal and a number, like "fox 41233"). A name is checked before it is accepted and before it is published: names carrying contact details or offensive words are refused.
Please do not put your real name, email address, phone number or any other personal detail in it. It is shown to every other player.
Names you would rather not see, and reporting one
Tap any row on the world board and you can hide that player — the row disappears from your board immediately, and that choice stays on your device and is never published. The same sheet lets you report the name, which files it for me to review and take down; a report carries the reported player's id and name, the board it was on, and the anonymous user id of the person reporting, so that reports cannot be filed by nobody. Reports are write-only: no player can read them.
You can undo every hide with Settings → Show hidden players again.
How to delete it
Switching Settings → World board off means gone, not "no longer looked at": the game deletes the rows it published for you on all three boards and deletes the anonymous Firebase account itself. Nothing of yours is left on the server.
To remove what is on the device as well, delete the app. If something goes wrong and a row appears to be stuck, email me and I will remove it by hand.
No purchases, no analytics of mine
There are no in-app purchases and no subscriptions. Nothing in the game costs money after you have it.
There is no analytics SDK. The game notes what happened during a session in memory so the code can reason about the run; that note is never written to disk and never sent anywhere, and it disappears when you close the app.
If you email me
If you write to me for support, I process what you send — your email address, device and app details, screenshots, and your message — to answer you and to look into problems. I keep support emails for 12 months unless I have a legal or security reason to keep them longer.
What the game never asks for
There is no account of mine and no login. The game does not ask for your real name, email address, contacts, location, photos, camera, microphone, health data, bank or card details, or passwords. It requests no runtime permissions on either platform.
Why I process this, and on what basis
- The world board: because you switched it on. That is your consent, and the same switch withdraws it — which also deletes what was published.
- Advertising: where a consent form is required, on your consent through that form, which you can change at any time in Settings. Where it is not required, on my legitimate interest in funding a free game with non-personalised advertising.
- Support email: to answer the request you made of me.
Who else is involved
- Google — AdMob for the banner, and Firebase (Cloud Firestore and Anonymous Authentication) for the world board.
- Apple and Google Play — app distribution.
I do not sell personal information, and I do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising beyond what the consent form above describes.
Where the data goes
Firebase and AdMob are operated by Google and may process information on servers outside the country you live in, under Google's own terms and transfer protections. I hold no separate database of my own.
Security
The save file sits in the app's own sandboxed storage, which your phone protects along with the rest of the device. Everything that leaves the app travels over HTTPS. The world board's rules allow a player to write only their own row and never to lower a score, and reports can be written but never read back by players. No method of storage or transmission is completely secure, and I will not pretend otherwise.
Children
The game is not directed at children. It is a general-audience puzzle, it shows advertising, and it carries a public leaderboard with names players choose, so it is not designed for or aimed at children below the minimum digital-consent age in their country, and I do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has published something through this game, email me and I will remove it.
Your choices
- Play with the world board off — that is how it arrives, and it stays off until you turn it on.
- Turn it off at any time in Settings → World board; the rows and the anonymous account are deleted.
- Change your ad consent in Settings → Ad privacy choices, where that choice applies to you.
- Hide any player from your board, and unhide everyone again, from Settings.
- Report a name that should not be on the board.
- Delete the app to remove everything held on the device.
- Email me with a question, a request, or a complaint about any of this.
- Complain to your local data-protection authority if you are in a country that has one.
Changes
I will update this page when the game, its providers, or the law changes, and the new effective date will appear at the top.
Contact
Dat Vu
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
datvu.meo@gmail.com