Privacy policy
Your game is yours. Here is what we protect.
The short version
You can play Idle Birder as a Guest without creating an online account. If you choose Google sign-in, we use the minimum account information needed to identify your account, protect cloud backups, and let you use optional online features. We do not sell your personal information.
Information we handle
Guest play
Guest game progress and settings are stored locally on your device. Guest play does not create an Idle Birder online account or upload a cloud backup. Limited activity counts described below are sent from Guest play as well as signed-in play.
Google sign-in and your Idle Birder account
If you sign in with Google, Google provides a stable account identifier and basic profile information authorized on the consent screen, such as your email address, name, and profile picture. We use this information to authenticate you and associate your game data with the correct account. We do not receive your Google password.
Game and community data
For signed-in players, we may store your chosen Birding Name, game progress, settings, cloud-save revisions, recovery summaries, app version, and installation identifier. Signed-in players are automatically included in LeaderBird, where their Birding Name and selected gameplay rankings become public. Google identity and email are never displayed in LeaderBird. Guest players can view rankings without appearing in them.
Crash diagnostics and performance
Release builds may send Expo anonymous crash reports, error stack traces, app and build versions, device and operating-system details, screen-route names, and startup or navigation timing. This information helps us find crashes and performance problems. It uses a random installation identifier and is not connected to your Google identity, Idle Birder account, Birding Name, or game-save contents.
Game activity
Release builds count each time the app opens and record whether you have recorded a bird, claimed a goal, bought an upgrade, and entered each habitat. After saved progress loads, they also send a compact latest-progress summary: Big Year, Season, habitat, bird/species/goal/upgrade and unlocked-habitat totals; aggregate Feather, Egg, Real-World collection, Field Study, and Hummingbird Garden Event progress; and app version, build, platform, release environment, and data-schema versions. This helps us understand whether the game works and where players stop progressing. Guest activity uses a random installation identifier shown in Settings; it is not linked to a later Google sign-in. Signed-in activity is associated with your Idle Birder account. We do not send tap-by-tap histories, currency balances, a complete game-save payload, names, email addresses, hardware or advertising identifiers as part of this activity summary.
Feedback and support
If you send feedback, we store your message, selected feedback type, optional reply email, basic game context, platform, and app version so we can understand and respond to it. Please do not include sensitive personal information in feedback.
Real-World Birds and your birding area
Real-World Birds uses recent bird reports from eBird. If you allow location access, the game checks your current or recent device location when refreshing the feature. It sends an approximate area, rounded to a 0.05-degree grid, through our Supabase service to eBird to find reports. Place names are obtained on your device. The game does not track your location in the background.
If location access is denied, the game uses a fixed birding home. It keeps your last successfully saved birding area when one is available; otherwise, it randomly assigns an area without estimating where you live. Restoring location permission lets the game use GPS again on refresh, while keeping the same fallback home.
The current location and bulletin are saved on your device. Your birding home is part of your game progress. If Cloud Save is active, a home based on your previous location is included in cloud backups as an approximate grid point and area name; a randomly assigned home is stored as a destination identifier. Your collected Real-World species and collection progress are also included in Cloud Save. These records are not published in LeaderBird; only your collection total is used for its Real Birds ranking.
Real-World Birds refresh diagnostics
When a refresh succeeds or fails, we receive its result, duration, app/build/platform details, whether it used GPS or a birding home, whether the bulletin was cached, and limited permission or service-error details. A separate random installation identifier lets us see whether repeated failures affect the same installation. We do not link this identifier to your account, Birding Name, game-activity identifier, or cloud installation identifier. These reports contain no coordinates, place names, bird identities, or raw error messages.
How we use information
- Authenticate your account and keep it separate from other players.
- Back up, restore, validate, and protect your game progress.
- Provide an account-owned Birding Name and public gameplay rankings for signed-in players.
- Respond to feedback, troubleshoot problems, and improve the game.
- Prevent abuse and protect the reliability of online features.
Service providers
Idle Birder uses Google for optional sign-in, Supabase for authentication and game-facing online storage, Resend to deliver feedback notifications, and Expo for crash and performance diagnostics. Real-World Birds sends an approximate search area to eBird to retrieve bird reports. This website is delivered by Cloudflare. These services have their own privacy terms.
Cloud saves and retention
Cloud backup keeps a current save and a limited history of recovery versions to help protect against loss or corruption. Recovery history is pruned over time while retaining recent and important snapshots. Account-owned data is retained while your account remains active or as reasonably needed to provide the service, resolve support requests, prevent abuse, or meet legal obligations.
Activity opening totals, first-observed milestones, and the latest progress snapshot are retained while the relevant account or Guest installation record remains active. A later snapshot replaces the prior progress snapshot rather than creating an unlimited login or tap-by-tap history. Deleting an Idle Birder account deletes its associated activity record. Guests can request removal of their activity record by contacting us with the Guest activity ID displayed in Settings. Salted network-address fingerprints used only to limit abuse are pruned after they are older than 48 hours when new activity arrives.
Refresh diagnostic reports older than 30 days are removed as new reports arrive. They are not linked to account deletion. Birding-home areas included in Cloud Save follow the same retention and account-deletion rules as your other cloud progress.
Your choices
- Play as a Guest without Google sign-in or cloud backup.
- Use Guest play without appearing in public LeaderBird rankings.
- Leave the optional reply-email field blank when sending feedback.
- Allow or deny location access through your device settings. Denying access stops new GPS checks; it does not erase an already saved birding area or its cloud backups.
- Delete your signed-in Idle Birder account from More → Profile, or use our account-deletion page when you cannot access the game.
Account deletion permanently removes the authentication account, Birding Name, cloud saves and recovery history, LeaderBird entry, and identifiable account-associated data. Deleting the app removes local data according to your device’s behavior, but it does not automatically delete signed-in cloud data.
Security
We use access controls, authenticated service boundaries, and restricted database permissions intended to protect account and game data. No system can guarantee absolute security, but we limit access and do not place service credentials in the game.
Children’s privacy
Idle Birder is not designed to collect more personal information than is needed for the account and game features described above. A parent or guardian who believes a child has provided personal information may contact us to request review or deletion.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy when the game or its services change. The effective date above will be updated when material changes are published.
Contact us
For privacy questions, support, or account-data requests, email [email protected].