Privacy policy
Last updated 15 August 2026. This policy covers the Ponderanda Android app and the Ponderanda website.
The short version. There is no account and no sign-in. Everything about how you play — your answers, your times, your streaks, your settings — is stored on your own device and is never uploaded. Three things do leave: a single counter with no identifier attached, a security check that confirms the app is genuine, and, on Android only, advertising. Each is described below.
Ponderanda is made by Emberfig ("we", "us"). For the purposes of the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation we are the data controller for the processing described here. You can reach us at hello@emberfig.com.
What stays on your device
The following is written to storage on the device you are using and is not transmitted to us or to anyone else:
- Every answer you give, whether it was right, and how long it took you.
- Which problems you have played, and on which puzzle days.
- Your attempt streak, your perfect streak, and your rest days.
- Your reminder time and the daily habit you attached it to, if you set one.
- Your chosen colour theme and any themes you have unlocked.
On Android this lives in a private database inside the app's own storage, which Android removes when you uninstall the app. On the web it lives in your browser's local storage for the site, which you can clear at any time through your browser's settings. Either way, deleting it is entirely in your hands and we hold no copy — if you uninstall the app, that history is gone, and we cannot restore it.
The app has an Erase local data control in Settings that removes this on the spot.
What leaves your device
1. The daily counter
When you finish a day's attempt — whether you completed all five problems or stopped at the first — the app adds 1 to one counter held in Google Firestore, recording how many problems that attempt got through. This is what lets the app tell you something like "43% of players stopped here too".
The write is a single increment. It carries no account, no device identifier, no session identifier, no timing, and nothing about which problems you saw. There is no field in it capable of holding any of those things. It is written to one of several randomly chosen counters, specifically so that a returning player cannot be picked out by always landing on the same one.
We deliberately do not describe this as anonymous. Making the request means your IP address is visible to Google's servers, and an IP address is personal data. The accurate word is non-identifying: nothing in what we store can be linked back to you, but the act of sending it is not invisible, and we would rather say so than claim otherwise.
Legal basis: our legitimate interest in understanding how a given day's puzzle went, which cannot be met with less data than a bare count.
2. The app integrity check
Before that counter can be written, the app asks Google Play for a token confirming it is a genuine, unmodified copy of Ponderanda on a genuine Android device (Google's Play Integrity and Firebase App Check). Without this, anyone could inflate the counters from a script, which would both corrupt the figures and run up our costs.
The check is performed by Google and involves signals about the device and the app. It carries nothing about you or how you play.
Legal basis: our legitimate interest in preventing fraud and abuse of our service.
3. Advertising — Android only
The Android app shows ads through Google AdMob. There are no ads at any point while you are solving the daily puzzle, and that is permanent. Ads appear only in these places:
- When you choose to watch one in exchange for a colour theme or an extra practice attempt. These are always optional, always announced before they start, and the thing they unlock can also be earned for free by playing.
- Occasionally when you open the app, and never before you have finished the day's attempt.
To serve those ads, Google receives your device's advertising ID, your IP address, information about your device and its settings, and information about the ads you were shown and whether you interacted with them. Google acts as an independent controller for much of this. What they do with it is set out in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services, and the companies that may receive data as Google's advertising partners are listed at Google's list of ad technology providers.
The website shows no ads at all and contains no advertising code.
Legal basis: your consent, where consent is required. See below.
Your choices about advertising
If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, the app asks for your choices about advertising the first time you open it, using Google's consent interface, and no ad request is made before you have answered. You can change your answer at any time from Settings → Ad privacy choices in the app.
Wherever you are, you can limit ad tracking on your device directly: on Android, Settings → Privacy → Ads lets you delete your advertising ID entirely, after which apps including this one can no longer receive it.
If you are in a US state with an applicable privacy law, you may have the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information for targeted advertising. Use the same Settings → Ad privacy choices control, which signals your choice to Google's ad systems.
What we do not do
- There is no account, no email address, no password and no profile.
- We do not sync anything between your devices, and we cannot — nothing that identifies a device ever reaches us.
- We use no analytics or crash-reporting service. We do not know how many screens you opened, how long you spent, or whether you came back.
- We do not send push notifications. The daily reminder, if you turn it on, is scheduled by your own phone and no server is involved.
- We do not sell personal information, and we do not build advertising profiles ourselves.
- The website loads no fonts, scripts, embeds or images from any other domain, and sets no cookies.
Children
Ponderanda is intended for adults. It is not directed to children, we do not knowingly collect personal information from children, and it is not listed in Google Play's Teacher Approved or Families programmes. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us — although in practice the app collects nothing that could identify them.
How long things are kept
| On your device | Until you erase it in Settings, clear your browser storage, or uninstall the app. We never receive it, so we cannot delete it for you. |
|---|---|
| The daily counters | Kept indefinitely. They are whole numbers describing a puzzle day, not a person, and there is nothing in them to delete on your behalf. |
| Advertising data | Held by Google under their own retention policies, linked above. |
Where data is processed
The counter and the integrity check are handled by Google (Firebase and Google Play), which processes data on servers in several countries including the United States. Where personal data is transferred out of the UK or EEA, Google relies on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and the EU-US and UK-US Data Privacy Frameworks.
Your rights
If you are in the UK, EEA or a jurisdiction with comparable law, you have the right to access your personal data, correct it, have it deleted, object to or restrict its processing, and receive it in a portable form. You also have the right to complain to your data protection authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
An honest limitation: for almost everything on this page, there is nothing for us to retrieve, correct or delete, because we hold no data tied to you. If you ask us for a copy of your data, the truthful answer will be that we have none. That is not a refusal, and we will say so plainly. Your in-app history is yours to export or erase directly. For the advertising data Google holds, exercise your rights with Google — they hold it and we do not.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a way that affects what leaves your device, we will update the date at the top and describe the change in the app's release notes. We will not quietly start collecting something this page says we do not.
Contact
Emberfig — hello@emberfig.com