Privacy Policy

Who we are

Byron is an independent game for iPhone and Android. In data-protection terms we are the data controller for the information described here. You can reach us at byron@stupidhuman.dev.

What we collect and why

Byron is designed to work with as little personal data as possible. There is no sign-up form, because there is no account to fill in — the app creates an anonymous identity for you on first launch.

Location, specifically

Byron asks for location access only while you are using the app. That is all it needs to play, and it is what you are asked for at first launch. On Android that is all Byron ever has. On iPhone it is all Byron has unless you deliberately turn on the optional feature described under Letters nearby. Byron does not build or store a continuous location history in either case.

Your live position stays on your phone. It is used to draw the map, decide which letters appear around you, and measure whether you're close enough to pick one up. We do not upload a location feed.

Two location-derived things are included in the progress backup, and we want to be straight about them:

• The coordinates of your most recent letter collection. The app compares this to where you are next time, to stop a single spot being farmed repeatedly. Only the latest one is kept — each collection overwrites the last.
• The map squares you've already collected from or dismissed. Byron divides the world into a fixed 60-metre grid, and remembers square references (not coordinates) so a letter you've taken doesn't reappear. Over time this amounts to a coarse record of the areas you've foraged in.

You can revoke location access at any time — iOS Settings on iPhone, or Settings › Apps › Byron › Permissions on Android. The map stops showing letters, because it no longer knows where to put them, but the rest of the app keeps working.

Letters nearby (iPhone only, optional, and off by default)

On iPhone, Byron can tell you when you walk near a cluster of letters while the app is closed. That requires the location setting iOS calls “Always”, and it is the only part of Byron that needs it. The Android app does not have this feature, and does not ask for background location at all.

It is off unless you turn it on, from the Profile tab. Byron never asks for this at first launch. Switching the feature off, or setting location back to “While Using the App” in iOS Settings, removes the regions and stops it.

When it is on, Byron asks iOS to watch up to five circles about 150 metres across, centred on letter clusters near you, and to wake the app if you enter one. Your background position is not sent to us and is not stored. iOS does the watching on the device and tells Byron only that you entered one of those circles; what you see is a notification generated on your phone. At most one arrives per day, and never between 9pm and 9am.

Motion and fitness

Byron reads your step count through Apple's pedometer on iPhone, and through Android's step counter (the ACTIVITY_RECOGNITION permission) on Android. Steps are checked on your phone; what gets backed up is the number of steps banked against each letter and your running totals, not a movement history. Declining motion access doesn't lock you out; it just removes the walking check. Step rewards come from the phone's own pedometer rather than from Apple Health or Health Connect — those are read only by Activity, and only if you allow it.

If you use Byron on an Apple Watch, it asks for Apple Health access the first time you start a walk. It saves each walk to Health as a walking workout, and reads your steps and walking distance only while that workout is recording.

Activity — turning workouts into letters

Byron is a walking game, and in winter a lot of people stop walking and go to the gym instead. The Activity screen exists so that still counts: it reads the exercise your watch or phone has already recorded and turns the effort into letters for the daily word. It is marked beta in the app, and on Android it is only in test builds.

On iPhone this reads Apple Health; on Android it reads Health Connect. In both cases it asks first, and it reads only these, and only for the day you are playing:

• workouts or exercise sessions — when one started and ended, and what it was called
• heart rate, which is what tells a session apart from sitting still
• active calories and steps, used only when no heart-rate data exists
• your resting heart rate, as the baseline the rest is measured against

None of it leaves your phone. The scoring happens on the device, and the only thing saved or backed up is the letters it awarded — never a heart rate, a workout, or anything else from Health. We never see it, and it is not part of the record described in How we see the game being played.

You can decline, and the rest of the game is unaffected — you just earn letters by walking instead. You can withdraw access at any time in Apple Health or Health Connect, and Byron will simply stop finding sessions. Letters already earned are yours and stay in your satchel.

How we see the game being played

Byron keeps a record of how the game is used: the app being opened, a letter being collected (and whether the collect succeeded), a word being submitted, the daily word being solved, a group being made or joined, a reminder being tapped, the route planner being opened. Each record has the time, which phone type it came from, and the app version.

We added this because we were guessing. Byron had no measurement of any kind, which meant we could not tell the difference between a feature nobody wanted and a feature that was quietly broken.

What these records never contain:

• Anywhere you have been. No coordinates, no map squares, no place names. Nothing in this record says where you were, only that something happened.
• Anything you typed. No display names, no words you built, no messages. The values are numbers, yes/no flags and a fixed set of labels we wrote ourselves.

It is entirely first-party: our own app writing to our own database. No advertising network, no analytics company, no third-party code is involved, and none of it is shared or sold. It is tied to your anonymous account id, which is how we can hand it to you or delete it on request.

The detailed records are deleted after 90 days, automatically. What remains after that is a daily count — how many times each thing happened, and how many people did it — which is not connected to any individual account.

Counting installs

We pay for ads for Byron on Google. To tell whether they're worth it, the iPhone app includes Google Analytics for Firebase, which reports to Google when the app is installed and opened, so Google Ads can count the installs its ads brought in. It's the only third-party code in Byron that collects anything, and it has nothing to do with the record described in How we see the game being played.

It collects these automatically. We don't send it anything else:

• a random ID for this install of the app, which changes if you reinstall
• basic app events: first open, sessions, and the in-app purchases from the tip jar
• device model, operating system version, app version, language and country
• approximate location (roughly city level), which Google works out from your IP address

It never gets:

• your advertising identifier. We use the version of the SDK that can't read it, so Byron never asks to track you.
• your Byron account ID, display name, words, letters or scores
• your location from the map or GPS

The app tells Google not to use this data to personalise ads. Google's own handling of it is covered by How Google uses information from apps that use its services. Google keeps the detailed data for two months after you last open the app. After that, only aggregate reports remain, and those aren't connected to any individual install.

This data isn't tied to your Byron account, so the in-app Delete account button can't reach it. Deleting the app stops it, and it expires on its own two months later. Reinstalling starts a new ID with no link to the old one. The Android app doesn't include any of this: Google Play counts its installs without any code in the app.

What we don't do

• No ads in the game, and no advertising identifiers.
• No third-party trackers and no crash-reporting SDKs. The only third-party code that collects anything is the install counting described in Counting installs. Our own record of how the game is played, described in How we see the game being played, stays in our own database and is never shared.
• No selling or renting your data, and no sharing it for anyone's marketing.
• No email addresses, passwords, phone numbers or contacts.
• No access to your photos, microphone, camera or contacts.
• Health data — workouts, heart rate, calories — is read only if you allow it, only for the current day, and only to work out the letters described in Activity. It stays on your phone and is never sent to us.
• Reminders — the daily word, your streak, step rewards, letters nearby — are scheduled by your own phone and never leave it. The one notification we send from our servers is the group “first to collect” alert, which is why a notification token is listed above.

Where your data is stored

Byron's backend runs on Supabase, hosted in Ireland (AWS eu-west-1). Supabase processes data on our instructions as our service provider. Data is encrypted in transit.

The install measurement described in Counting installs goes to Google, which may store it outside the UK and EU under its standard data-transfer safeguards.

Who can see what

Public: your display name, and your daily completion times and points, on the leaderboards. Pick a nickname rather than your full name if you'd rather not be identifiable. The all-time board is also published on this website, at byron-word-walkies.vercel.app/leaderboard.html, where anyone can read it without the app — display name, lifetime points and how many daily words you've finished. Your account ID is not shown there, and neither is anything else.

Private to you: everything else — your satchel, your progress, your streak, and the location-derived data described above. Other players cannot read it, and database access rules enforce that rather than relying on the app to behave.

Your groups: if you join a group, its members can see your display name and your scores on that group's board.

Deleting your data

Open Byron, go to the Profile tab, scroll to the bottom and tap Delete account. After you confirm, we permanently delete your account, your satchel, your progress, your leaderboard results and your group memberships from our servers, and wipe the copy on your phone. It happens immediately and cannot be undone. Nothing is retained in a "deleted" state and there is no grace period.

If a group you created still has other members in it, the group itself survives so their board keeps working — but your membership and name are removed from it. Empty groups are deleted outright.

Simply deleting the app from your phone does not delete the server-side backup, so use the in-app button if that's what you want. If you've already removed the app, use the delete your data page and we'll do it for you.

How long we keep things

Your progress is kept for as long as you keep playing, so that it's there when you come back. Accounts that have been inactive for over two years are deleted. You can delete yours sooner at any time, as above.

The gameplay records described in How we see the game being played are deleted after 90 days. Deleting your account removes them immediately, along with everything else.

Google deletes the install-measurement data described in Counting installs two months after you last open the app.

Children

Byron is not directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect data from them. Byron involves walking outdoors — if a child does play, a parent or guardian should decide whether that's appropriate and supervise it. If you believe a child has given us data, contact us and we'll delete it.

Your rights

If you're in the UK or EU, you have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict and port your data, and to object to how it's processed. Deletion is built into the app; for anything else, email us. Being anonymous cuts both ways, though: there is no email address or name on file for us to look you up by, and the app doesn't show you an account ID either. So tell us what you can — your display name, any group you were in, roughly when you played — which is what the delete your data page asks for, and what we'd need for any of the other rights too. You can also complain to your local data protection authority — in the UK, the ICO.

We process this data to provide the game you asked for (contract), to keep the leaderboards honest (legitimate interests), and to find out whether our advertising works (legitimate interests).

Changes to this policy

If we change how Byron handles your data, we'll update this page and the date at the top. Material changes will be announced in the app.

Contact

Questions, requests, or anything that looks wrong here: byron@stupidhuman.dev.