Privacy Policy

Android gives every app a private storage area that other apps cannot read. Dottle writes three things into it, and that is the complete list:

• The game in progress — which squares hold which colour, whose turn it is, and the moves available for an undo, so that closing the app mid-game does not throw it away.
• Your settings — the difficulty level you last chose, whether hints are switched on, and whether you were playing the computer or another person.
• Nothing else at all. No record of games played, no wins, no losses, no streak, no rating, no history of which difficulty beat you.

The first two are replaced as you go: the next game overwrites the last one, a changed setting overwrites the old setting. Nothing accumulates. There is no file in this app that gets longer the more you play, which is unusual enough in a strategy game to deserve the panel three places below.

All of it sits in the app's own storage. It is copied into a device backup only if you have Android's backup switched on, in which case Google holds that backup under Google's terms and we never see it. Uninstalling takes the lot with it.

• No sign-in and no profile. Nothing in the app asks for a name, an email address or a telephone number, and there is nowhere to keep one.
• No advertising and no advertising identifier. There is no advertising code in the package, so the Advertising ID is never read and nothing you do at the board becomes a targeting signal.
• No analytics and no crash reporting. No session is counted, no screen is logged, no stack trace is uploaded, and there is no remote switch we could throw from this end.
• No online play, no leaderboard, no ranking. Your opponent is the device or the person you hand the phone to. Neither route goes near a network.
• No permissions of any consequence. No location, contacts, camera, microphone, photos or files — and the whole game plays with the handset in flight mode.

These describe the build on the store today. The final panel sets out the order in which any of them would have to be withdrawn if that ever changed.

Starting a new game replaces the saved one. For everything at once, Android's own app settings will clear Dottle's storage while leaving the app installed, which returns it to its first run — no game in progress, difficulty back to its default, hints back to theirs.

Neither route needs anything from us, and neither can be undone, because no second copy of any of it was ever made anywhere.

The data controller is Epic Bargains and Deals Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales with its registered office at 6 Martha Close, Salford M5 3QN, United Kingdom. The person answerable is Adam David Birds. The UK GDPR requires a controller to name itself however small the processing turns out to be, which is why the company is given in full rather than described as "the developer".

In practice that duty covers correspondence and nothing further, because the app hands us nothing to be responsible for. Installing or updating Dottle through Google Play is a separate relationship between you and Google, which is its own controller for that, on its own terms.

Mail reaches flip@aastaautolaen.online. Your address, your message and anything attached arrive with us and are kept while the matter is live and for a short period after it closes, in case it reopens, and are then deleted. The lawful basis is legitimate interests: answering people who write about our own software. It is read, replied to and used for nothing else — no list, no onward sharing, no marketing.

Nothing in the app is identified, so nothing in your email can be matched against a game you played. If a position scored oddly, describe it — which difficulty, roughly what the board looked like — because there is no way for us to retrieve it.

The UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 give you rights over personal data held about you: access, a copy, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability. Rather than restate the list, here is what actually happens between you pressing send and the matter closing, because that is the part nobody ever writes down.

The day it arrives

It is read by a person, not a queue. No form is required and no particular wording: "what do you have on me" and "delete everything" both count as valid requests and are treated as such. Nothing is charged, for this or any repeat of it within reason.

Within a few days

You get an answer rather than an acknowledgement. In almost every case that answer is short, because the only personal data this company holds is the email thread itself — there is no account to search, no device identifier to match you against and no gameplay record anywhere. A request aimed at the app will be answered to say exactly that, with this page cited, which is the complete response and not a deferral.

Within one month

That is the statutory deadline and it is the outer limit here, not the target. If a request were ever complex enough to need the two-month extension the Regulation allows, you would be told why, in writing, before the first month ran out.

If we get it wrong, or go quiet

Then you do not have to argue with us. The Information Commissioner's Office supervises this in the United Kingdom, takes complaints directly at ico.org.uk, and does not require you to come through us first. Saying so plainly is not a formality — a right you have to be told about twice is not much of a right.

One thing worth separating out: the game in progress and your difficulty setting are on your handset, not in our possession. We cannot produce, correct or erase them, and any claim otherwise would be untrue. The fourth panel says how you do it yourself, in about ten seconds.

Dottle has no chat, no shared content, no links leaving the app and nothing to buy. It gathers no data from anybody, which includes anybody under thirteen, so there is no age gate to run and no parental consent to collect, and neither is simulated here. It is a grid and some discs — the same game that has been played on cardboard for a century and a half.

The date under the title names the edition in force. Where a release would make any statement above untrue — anything collected, anything transmitted, a component added, a permission requested, a transfer out of the United Kingdom — the sequence does not vary: this page is corrected first, the Data safety declaration in the Play Console is corrected in the same sitting, and only then does that release reach anybody. A sentence tidied for clarity is not such a change and brings nothing with it but a fresher date.

Superseded editions are kept. Ask at the address below for the earlier text and it will be sent, which is the only way anybody outside this company can hold the paragraph above to account.