Cortex Crime
Privacy
What the game keeps, what it doesn't, and how to take it back.
The short version. You can play without telling us who you are. There are no adverts, no analytics and no trackers of any kind — not ours and not anybody else's. Your name and your photograph never leave your iPhone. You can take a copy of everything we hold, or delete all of it, from inside the app.
This policy covers the Cortex Crime iPhone app. The data described here is held by Rockspetre, Inc., California, USA, which is the controller of it.
Your account
When you first open the app you are given an anonymous account: a random identifier, and nothing else. No name, no email address, no phone number. Everything below is attached to that identifier.
You can save your record by signing in with Apple, so it survives a lost or replaced iPhone. We ask Apple only for your name. We do not ask for your email address, and Apple does not give us one. If you never sign in, your record lives on this iPhone and on our server under the anonymous identifier alone.
What stays on your iPhone
Some things never reach us at all:
- Your detective's name — the one on the warrant card. It is stored on the phone and is never sent to our server.
- Your photograph. If you choose one, it is processed on the phone and kept there. It is never uploaded. This is why a new iPhone starts again with a drawn card.
- Your settings — sound, hints, reminders and the rest.
- The daily reminder, if you turn it on, is scheduled by your iPhone. We are not told about it and we cannot send you anything.
What we keep
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your record | Cases closed, grades, points and lies caught, so the game knows where you are. |
| Your seasons | How far through a season you are, and the cold-case board you have built in it. |
| Cases you play | The case, its state, and every move you made in it. This is what lets you put a case down and pick it up on another iPhone, and it is what the game scores. |
| Two counters | How many questions in your own words you have asked today, and how many problems you have reported today. They stop one player running up a bill for everybody. |
| Problems you report | Only if you send one. See below. |
When something you type leaves us
Suspects can answer questions you type in your own words. To do that, the question and the case it belongs to are sent to our AI provider, Google (Gemini, through Google Cloud), which answers in character and returns it. That is the only thing in the game that goes to anybody else.
Questions you pick from the suggested list are answered from the case itself and never leave our server. If you would rather nothing you type is sent anywhere, use only the suggested questions.
When you report a problem
Settings → Report a problem sends us what you write. With it we receive the case you were in, the app's version and build number, and your iPhone model and iOS version — enough to reproduce the problem, and nothing that identifies the device or you.
You may also attach a short log of what the app had been doing: the last sixty lines of where you went in the app and what failed. It holds nothing you typed and nothing about who you are, and the app shows it to you in full before it is sent. Attaching it is your choice and it is easy to turn off.
What we never do
- No advertising, and no advertising identifiers.
- No analytics or crash-reporting service. The app does not carry one.
- No third-party trackers, pixels or social plug-ins.
- We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for anybody else's marketing.
- We do not build a profile of you outside the game.
Taking a copy, and deleting everything
A copy. Settings → Your record → Get a copy of my data hands you a file holding everything above: your record, your seasons, every case with the moves you made in it, and any problems you reported.
Deleting. Settings → Your record → Delete my record removes your record, your seasons, every case you have played and your sign-in, and cannot be undone. Problem reports are kept, because they are the record of what was wrong with the game — but your identifier is removed from them, so they are no longer connected to you.
How long we keep it
As long as your account exists. Delete it and the above happens at once. We do not keep a shadow copy; backups of our database roll over within thirty days.
Keeping it safe
The game runs on Google Firebase. Data travels encrypted and is stored encrypted. Nothing in the game lets one player read another player's anything, and a case's solution is never sent to the app before you have earned it. Requests are checked to make sure they come from the real app, using Apple's App Attest — which tells us a request is genuine and tells us nothing about you.
Children
Cortex Crime is rated 13+ and is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect anything from them. If you believe a child has given us something, write to info@rockspetre.com and we will remove it.
Where your data is
Our servers are operated by Google Cloud and your data may be processed in the United States and other countries where Google operates. Where we are required to have a legal basis, ours is the performance of the service you asked for, and our legitimate interest in keeping it working and unabused.
Your rights
Depending on where you live you may have the right to see what we hold, to correct it, to have it deleted, and to object to how it is used. The first and third are built into the app and need no request. For anything else, write to us.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, the app will say so before it takes effect. The date below is the version you are reading.
Contact
Rockspetre, Inc., California, USA — info@rockspetre.com
Write to us about anything here. If you want something we hold, or want it gone, the app does both without asking us — see above.