Dear Navigator: Compass Riddles
Dear Navigator is a puzzle game played on a compass. You answer the explorer's lines by moving your phone, and some notes ask you to take a walk. This policy explains what that means for your data.
Short version: there is no account, and the game works without an internet connection. Your location, your movements and the microphone are used on the device to run the game, and none of them is recorded or sent. Once a day the game sends our server an anonymous count, with no ID of any kind, so that we know how many people play. If you say yes when the game asks, it also sends detailed statistics about play, such as which lines get solved, with no name and nothing about where you are. You can turn both off. The game shows adverts; they are personalised only if you agree.
You do not create an account to play. We do not collect your name, email address, phone number, date of birth, contacts or photos.
The game contains no crash reporting. Apart from adverts (section 9), the only things it sends are the daily count and the play statistics described in section 7.
What we use it for. Some of the explorer's notes are walks. While a walk is waiting and the game is open on the screen, the game reads your phone's location to measure how far you have gone and in which direction.
Where it goes. Nowhere. Your coordinates are used in the phone's memory to work out a distance and a direction, and are never written to storage and never sent. The point a walk is measured from is forgotten when you close the game. The game keeps only results: that a walk was done, on which day, and running totals of metres walked toward each point of the compass.
When it runs. Only while the game is in front of you. The game does not ask for, and does not use, location in the background.
Turning it off. You can refuse the permission, or revoke it in your device settings at any time. The walks cannot be measured without it. Everything else in the game works as before.
The game reads the phone's motion sensors (the accelerometer, the magnetometer and, where the phone has one, the barometer) to tell a shake from a tap, to know when the phone is held still, and to point the needle north. On Android it also reads the light sensor and whether the phone is charging, which a few hidden badges react to. None of this needs a permission.
These readings are used the moment they arrive and are not kept. The game stores what came of them: lines solved, badges earned, counts such as the number of steps, and a calibration figure for the compass that describes the phone's hardware and says nothing about where it is.
The compass's glass can fog, and blowing on the phone clears it. To notice that, the game measures how loud the sound at the microphone is.
Only loudness is measured, in memory, on your device. No audio is recorded, saved to storage, or transmitted anywhere. The microphone is opened only while there is fog on the glass and the game is in front of you. You can refuse or revoke the permission; only clearing fog by blowing is affected.
compass-save.json in the app's private storage.
It holds your progress through the lines, your cards and album, badges and level, counts and
totals as described above, your settings, and which permissions you have answered. It contains
no coordinates, no place names and no audio.None of this is uploaded by us. On Android the game is excluded from cloud backup and from device-to-device transfer. On iPhone, a backup of the phone made through iCloud or a computer may include the save file, as it does for most apps; that backup is yours and is controlled in the phone's settings. Uninstalling the app removes the save file.
After the first card, the game asks once whether it may tell you when the next card has arrived. If you allow it, your phone shows a notice in the morning after a day you played. The notice is scheduled on your phone by the game itself; no server and no push service are involved, and nothing is sent. You can turn it off in your phone's settings at any time.
The back of the compass has one Statistics row (turn the compass over, then tap the row) with three settings: all sends both of the things below, anonymous sends only the daily count, and off sends nothing.
Once a day, when you open the game, it sends our own server
(compass.jousoft.fi) an anonymous count: the day you started playing, how many days
ago that was, the riddle you have reached, your phone's language, the game's version and whether it
is Android or iPhone. No ID of any kind is sent, and nothing about where you are. Our server works
out the country from your internet address, using IP to Country Lite by
DB-IP (CC BY 4.0), and does not store the address. To stop one
phone sending many counts, the server keeps a scrambled form of the address for the rest of that
day only; it cannot be turned back into the address and is deleted every day. We keep only
totals, such as "40 players who started on 21 October opened the game two days later", for at
most 25 months. The same count is also sent the first time you have 5, 10, 20, 40 and so on
riddles behind you, so that we can see how far players get.
We use the count to see how many people keep playing and how far they get. It is sent from the start, without a question, because it says nothing about you; you can turn it off at any time by setting Statistics to off.
Like any web server, ours keeps a log of requests, including internet addresses, for at most 14 days, to keep the service running and secure. The log is not used for the counts.
Before the first line, the game asks whether it may also send detailed statistics about play. These are sent only if you say yes (Statistics: all).
If you say yes, the game uses Google Analytics for Firebase, a service of Google Ireland Limited, to send:
The statistics never include your location or coordinates, distances or directions you walked, audio, or anything you could be named by. We use them to see how the game is played, for example which line players get stuck on, so that we can make the game better. They are not used for advertising, are not combined with data from other apps, and are not used to track you.
Google processes the statistics on our behalf. They may be processed outside the European Economic Area, under the European Commission's standard contractual clauses. Google Analytics does not store your IP address. We keep the statistics for at most 14 months.
This version has no share function. When one is added, a card will go only where you choose to send it, through your phone's own share sheet, and this policy will say so.
The game is free to play and is paid for by adverts. Some adverts are shown between lines; others you choose to watch, for example to earn hint tokens.
Our own adverts. Some adverts are for our other games. They are part of the game itself: nothing about you is sent or used to choose them, and tapping one only opens that game's page in the App Store or Google Play.
Adverts from advertising partners. The game may also show adverts served by advertising partners. To show an advert, count it and prevent fraud, a partner receives from your phone: its advertising identifier (unless you have turned it off or not allowed it), the IP address and a rough location derived from it, the phone model, operating system and language, the app, and how you interact with the advert. A partner never receives your precise location, your movements, audio, or the game's play statistics.
Personalised adverts only if you agree. Where the law requires it, including in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, the game asks for your consent before a partner may use your data to personalise adverts, and you can change your choice at any time in the game. On iOS the game also asks Apple's permission before the advertising identifier can be used. If you do not agree, you still see adverts, but they are chosen without your personal data, for example from the app and a rough location.
Current partners. The advertising partners in use are listed here, each with a link to its own privacy policy. At present there are none: the only adverts are for our own games.
Purchases. The game may offer optional in-app purchases. They are handled by the App Store or Google Play. We receive confirmation of a purchase, never your payment details.
We do not sell or rent your data to anyone.
Dear Navigator is not directed at children under age 13. Some of it asks the player to walk outdoors. We do not knowingly collect data from children.
If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to the processing of your personal data, and to data portability.
In practice:
You may also lodge a complaint with your data protection authority. In Finland this is the Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman (tietosuoja.fi).
Controller: Jousoft Oy, 2268304-1, Sinebrychoffinkatu 11, 00120 Helsinki, Finland. Contact: info@jousoft.fi.
If this policy changes materially, the date at the top will change, and the app will be updated to match the new version.