The Guardians Privacy Policy
The Guardians games ask for your email when you start the game. Your email is hashed (ie, encoded in such a way
that
it cannot be undone) and then stored so you can retrieve your save games at a later point.
- You do not have to enter your email, but we will not be able to retrieve your save games if you somehow
delete or lose them!
- We will NEVER use your stored email to contact you for any reason.
- We will NEVER give your email to any third parties for any reason.
- In fact, we can't! Because we only store a hashed version of your email, it is irretrievable by us or anyone
else.
- The only thing your email can possibly be used for is as an ID to look up your saved game states should you
somehow lose your game progress by deleting the app or getting a new phone.
Why do the Guardian games ask for emails for cloud saves?
- We take your privacy very seriously. Most common cloud save solutions such as the Facebook SDK and the
various app store plugins collect gameplay data in the background they can use to advertise at you.
- Due to the nature of this app and the fact that it targets people with depression, we think that would be
wrong. We don't want anyone tracking your usage of any Guardians games in a way that can ever be tied back
to you.
- It's for that reason that we created our own custom solution for for cloud saves. It is entirely optional,
but if you do choose to use it, we take great care to hash your email so your data can never be traced back
to you unless you re-enter your email into the game, as described above.
The Guardians games are built using Unity.
- Please see the Unity Privacy Policy
for more details.
- All Guardians games use Unity's crash reporting system. This logs crashes and errors to
Unity's crash dashboard, which lets us hunt down and fix bugs we may otherwise never know about. The
dashboard logs crashes and errors you may encounter, and never collects any personal identifying
information.
The Guardians games collect anonymous gameplay data.
- This data can never be traced back to you or your phone in any way and is used to help us make better games,
and also so we can publish scientific papers on our findings. To better understand how to make new novel
games that really help people, we look at aggregate data to see things like where levels can be more fun,
what activities people choose to do, and which activities help people the most.
- We never collect any phone information, contacts, location, or anything that can possibly be traced back to
you. Ever.
- We never collect any gameplay data that could potentially be used to identify anyone, such as pet names. We
take great lengths to ensure all collected data is truly 100% anonymous.
- Additionally, unless requested, we never look at any individual person's data. We only look at aggregate
trends, and only for the purpose of learning where our game is and isn't working, and why.
- This goes without saying, but we will never sell any data to anyone. We aren't here to make money, we're
here to advance science and help people!
Your privacy is important to us!
- If you have any concerns at all, please Contact Us.