Privacy Policy
What Hidewire collects, how long it keeps it, and who sees it.
The short version: we collect the least we can get away with, your position is not shared with the seeker except at reveal ticks, and your photos are deleted a day after the round.
What we collect
Account: your date of birth, a handle you choose, and if you sign in with Google or Apple, the email address they give us. Guests get a device-local account and we collect no email at all.
Location: your coordinates while a round is running. Between reveal ticks these stay on the server and are never sent to the seeker. We sample coarsely, roughly 100 metres, except in the few seconds around a tick.
Photos: the two images per check-in, plus the numeric quality scores and a perceptual hash used to detect reuse.
Gameplay: rounds played, outcomes, XP, and the stats shown on your profile.
What we do not collect
We do not run face detection, facial recognition, face landmarking, or any biometric processing on your photos, ever. The validity checks operate on whole-image statistics such as brightness, blur, and edge density. Nothing in the pipeline can produce an identifier for a person.
We do not ask for gallery access. The camera is live-capture only.
We do not record audio.
We do not sell your data, and we do not share it with data brokers.
How long we keep it
Photos: deleted permanently 24 hours after the round ends, by a scheduled job that writes an audit record for each deletion.
Positions: purged when the round ends.
Match results and stats: 90 days.
Account: until you delete it. Deleting the account removes everything associated with it.
Players aged 13 to 17
Accounts whose stored date of birth places the user under 18 receive non-personalised, contextual advertising only. This is enforced on the server, not in the app.
We do not show the App Tracking Transparency prompt to these accounts and we do not collect behavioural analytics from them beyond what is needed to run the product.
Who we share with
Other players in your party, and only what the game requires: your handle, your check-in photos while the round runs, and your position at reveal ticks.
Service providers who host the database, storage, crash reporting, and advertising. They act on our instructions.
Law enforcement, where we are legally required to.
Your choices
You can revoke location or camera permission at any time in your device settings. The game will not work without them, but that is your call to make.
You can delete your account from the app, and you can request a copy of your data.
You can report a POI that should not be in the game. Reported locations are reviewed and removed within 15 days if the report is valid.
Contact
Privacy questions go to hidewiresupport@gmail.com.