Android App Privacy Policy

This policy covers the TackleZone Android application distributed through Google Play. The website privacy policy covers tacklezone.app separately, because the two collect different things.

TackleZone Studios ("we", "us", "our") operates the app. By using it, you agree to the practices described here.

There is no account. We never ask for your name, email address, phone number or payment details in order to use the app. Your favourite teams, players and leagues are stored on your own device, not on our servers, and we cannot see them.

What does leave your device: requests for football data, questions you type into the Settle It feature, feedback you choose to send us, and standard crash and usage reporting from Google Firebase. Each is described below.

The following is saved in the app's local storage and never transmitted to us:

• Favourites and watchlist — the teams, players and competitions you follow.
• Display and filter preferences — position filters, sort choices and similar settings.
• Cached football data — recent fixtures and rankings, kept on disk so the app opens quickly and works briefly offline.
• Quiz progress — which day's question you have answered.

Uninstalling the app deletes all of it. Clearing the app's storage in Android settings has the same effect.

Fixtures, live scores, standings, line-ups and player statistics come from third-party sports data providers, principally API-Football / API-Sports. The app does not contact them directly; requests pass through our own server function, which holds the API credentials.

As with any internet request, your IP address is visible to our hosting provider (Google Cloud) as part of normal routing. We do not attach your name, an account or an advertising identifier to these requests, because the app does not collect them for this purpose.

When you ask Settle It a question, two things are sent to our server:

• The question you typed. It is forwarded to OpenAI, which generates the verdict from football statistics we supply alongside it. Please do not type personal information into this field — it is meant for questions about footballers.
• A random installation identifier. A string of random characters generated on your device the first time you use the feature. It is used only as a counter key, so that one installation cannot exhaust the daily limit for everyone. It is not your advertising ID, it is not linked to you, and it is discarded when you uninstall.

Questions and their verdicts are cached on our servers so that a popular question does not have to be answered twice. Cached verdicts contain the question text and the football data used to answer it.

If you use the in-app feedback option, we receive the message you write, and — only if you choose to fill it in — an email address so we can reply. To make bug reports actionable, the app also attaches the app version, your Android version and your device model.

Sending feedback is entirely optional. We use it to fix problems and decide what to build, and we do not add your address to any mailing list.

We use Google Firebase for two things:

• Firebase Crashlytics — when the app crashes or hits a handled error, it reports the stack trace, your device model, Android version, app version and an installation identifier generated by Crashlytics. It does not send the contents of your screen or anything you have typed.
• Firebase Analytics — anonymous, aggregated usage counts, so we can see which features are used. The events are simple counters such as opening a match, running a comparison, completing the quiz or asking Settle It. They record that something happened, not what you searched for or typed. Google additionally collects an app instance identifier, device and operating system details, and an approximate location derived from your IP address (country or region level, not a precise position).

If you turn notifications on, the app registers with Firebase Cloud Messaging, which issues a delivery token held by Google. The app subscribes that token to topics — for example "kickoff alerts for Arsenal" — and we send messages to topics rather than to individuals.

We deliberately do not keep a database of device tokens or a list of who follows what. The consequence is that we cannot tell who receives a notification, and we cannot message you individually. You can turn notifications off at any time in the app or in Android settings.

The app includes the Google AdMob SDK and therefore declares Android's advertising ID permission (com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID).

Advertisements are not currently displayed in the app. If and when we enable them, Google and its partners may use your advertising ID to serve and measure ads. You can reset or delete that ID, and turn off ad personalisation, under Settings → Privacy → Ads on your Android device. We will update the "Last updated" date above and the Google Play Data safety section when this changes.

• Google (Firebase, Cloud Functions, Firestore, Cloud Messaging, Crashlytics, Analytics, AdMob, Google Play) — hosting, crash reporting, analytics and delivery.
• API-Football / API-Sports — the source of all football data.
• OpenAI — generates Settle It verdicts from the question text and the statistics we send with it.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with data brokers or advertisers beyond what is described in section 9.

Our server functions run in Google Cloud's europe-west1 region. Google and our other providers may process data in other countries, including outside your own. Using the app means accepting that international transfer.

• On-device data stays until you clear the app's storage or uninstall it.
• Crash reports and analytics are retained according to Google Firebase's own retention settings and policies.
• Feedback messages are kept while we act on them, and deleted once resolved.
• Cached Settle It verdicts and football data are kept only as long as they are useful, then overwritten or deleted.

The app is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has sent us personal information through the feedback form, contact us and we will delete it.

You can, at any time and without contacting us:

• Turn notifications off, in the app or in Android settings.
• Reset or delete your advertising ID, and turn off ad personalisation.
• Clear everything the app has stored, by clearing its storage or uninstalling it.
• Simply not use the Settle It or feedback features.

Depending on where you live, you may also have rights to access, correct or erase personal data we hold, and to complain to a supervisory authority. Because the app has no accounts, there is usually little or nothing held that identifies you — the realistic exceptions are a feedback message you sent us and the question text in a cached Settle It verdict. Write to us with enough detail to find it and we will delete it.

We may update this policy as the app changes. The "Last updated" date above will change when we do, and material changes will also be reflected in the app's Google Play Data safety section. Continuing to use the app after a change means you accept the updated policy.

TackleZone Studios
Email: tacklezoneapp@gmail.com

For questions about the website rather than the app, see the website privacy policy.