Privacy policy

What we collect

• A guest account. The first time you open Apticks we create an anonymous account with a random ID. It lives in your browser or on your iPhone. If you clear your browser data or delete the app before saving your account, it can't be recovered.
• Your profile. A display name (you start as "Player" and a number), and if you choose to add them, your college and graduation year.
• Your email address, only if you save your account or sign in. We use it to send one-time sign-in codes. We don't send marketing email.
• Your game activity. The duels you play, your answers, scores and times, your rating, wins, streaks and Daily Challenge results.
• Your test countdown, if you use it. The company and date you set, and afterwards whether you cleared the test and how hard it felt. This stays private to you; we only look at it in aggregate, to see how practice relates to real results.
• Feedback you send. Your message, the email address if you give one, the app version, device or browser type, screen size and the page you were on, plus your name, rating, games played and college at that moment, so we can reproduce a problem.
• Basic technical logs. Our hosting and database providers record requests (such as IP address, browser and time) to keep the service secure and running.

We don't collect your location, contacts, photos, camera or microphone, health or payment information, and we don't use an advertising identifier. The website stores your guest session and a few preferences (like having seen the tour) in your browser's local storage; the app stores them on your iPhone. We don't use advertising or analytics cookies.

What other players can see

Apticks is social, so some of your profile is public to other players: your display name, college, graduation year, rating, games played, wins, streak, your recent wins and losses, your college rank and when you joined. It appears on leaderboards, in duel results and on your profile page, and a friend who opens a challenge link from you sees your name and college. In a duel, your opponent also sees your score, which questions you got right and how fast you answered. Your email, the option you picked on each question and your test countdown are never shown to other players. If you'd rather stay low-key, use a nickname and leave the college blank.

Practice opponents labelled "Bot" are computer players. They are not real people and never appear on leaderboards.

How we use it

• To run the game: matching you with opponents, scoring, ratings, streaks, leaderboards and your history.
• To sign you in and keep your account safe.
• To read and answer your feedback and fix what's broken.
• To understand, in counts, how Apticks is used: how many people play, come back and invite friends. This is not advertising or profiling.

We don't sell or rent your data, we don't show ads, and no decision about you is made by automated means beyond the game's own scoring.

Who we share it with

Only the services that run Apticks, and only so they can do that job:

• Supabase hosts our database and sign-in, and sends the one-time sign-in codes.
• Vercel hosts the website.
• An email provider (Gmail or Resend) delivers your feedback to us.

These providers run servers in several countries, so your data may be processed outside India. We may also share information if the law requires it.

Keeping and deleting your data

We keep your data while your account exists. To delete it, open Profile → Account → Delete account on the website or in the app. This works for guest accounts too. When you delete:

• Your name, college, graduation year and email are removed, and you are signed out for good.
• Duels you played stay in your opponents' history, shown as "Deleted player". Counts such as rating and games played stay on that anonymous record, which no longer points to you.
• Feedback you sent is kept so we can fix the problems you reported. It can include your name or email if you wrote them. Email us and we will remove it.

Prefer not to use the app? Email mayurl.7267@gmail.com from the address on your account and we'll delete it for you.

Your choices

You can edit your name, college and graduation year in Profile at any time, and delete your account as above. You can also ask us what we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it. Email mayurl.7267@gmail.com and we'll reply within 30 days. We handle personal data following the principles of India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

Children

Apticks is for students and job seekers. It isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their data. If you think a child has given us information, email us and we'll delete it.

Security

Everything travels over HTTPS, and the database only lets you read and change your own records. No system is perfectly secure, so please don't put anything sensitive in your display name or feedback.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we'll update the date at the top, and tell you in the app or on the website when the change matters. Using Apticks after that means you accept the updated policy.

Contact

Apticks is run by an independent developer in India. Write to mayurl.7267@gmail.com with any question about this policy or your data.