Short form. Switchyard collects nothing about the person using it. It has no account, no server and no way out to a network, and the levels you have finished sit in a folder belonging to the app on your own handset.
The clauses that follow set the same thing out at length so that each part of it can be checked rather than believed. A policy runs long when there is a great deal of collecting to account for; this one is short for the opposite reason.
This document concerns the application alone. Green Lizard Technologies Limited is a company with other business of its own, and whatever records that business keeps are not described here and are not reachable from the app.
The publisher. The company that lists Switchyard on Google Play, and the one to write to about anything in this document, is:
GREEN LIZARD TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED
Director: Ian George Hunter
The Cube, Arngrove Court, Barrack Road
Newcastle upon Tyne NE4 6DB, United Kingdom
Mail: points@greenlizardtechnologies.best
Under the UK GDPR the company is the controller for whatever the app might process. Nobody processes anything on its instructions in connection with the app, no second party shares the decisions, and no representative has been appointed abroad, since there is no processing for such an arrangement to govern.
No data protection officer has been appointed and none is required. That obligation reaches public authorities and bodies whose core activity is monitoring people on a large scale or handling special categories of data on a large scale, and a puzzle that never opens a socket is neither.
What is not gathered. No advertising framework was compiled into the release. Nor was a statistics library, an attribution kit, a crash reporter, a sign-in provider or a payment component. These are absences from the package rather than settings inside it, so nothing waits to be switched off and no server has the standing to switch it back on.
Stated one at a time, the app at no point reads, derives or transmits:
- a name, an email, a telephone number or an address;
- whichever string Android holds as an advertising identifier, the Android ID, a handset serial or a hardware address;
- the position of the device, by satellite, by network or by inference;
- contacts, calendar entries, messages, call history, the microphone or the camera;
- how long a level took, how many hints were spent, or which tier is being played;
- pictures or any other file already on the handset.
Every yard, rail, signal and wagon is drawn by the app from artwork compiled into it, and nothing is fetched at first launch or afterwards. That is why the app is complete the moment installation ends and why aeroplane mode changes nothing about how it behaves.
What is written to the handset. Switchyard records which levels have been solved, the best run and par position on each, which tier is unlocked, how many hints remain, and the sound, vibration and pause-and-plan settings. That list is complete, and all of it is held in the private storage area Android allots to the application.
Android walls that area off around the app that owns it, so other software installed on the handset is not shown what is inside. The company is not shown it either: nothing in the build will act on an instruction arriving from outside, there being nothing in it that listens.
One movement of files is the platform's doing rather than the app's. Android runs an automatic backup bound to a Google account, and where a person has it enabled the system may copy an application's files into that person's own Drive so a replacement handset can restore them. That copying is performed by Android under settings the account holder controls. The company takes no part in it, cannot read what it carries and cannot disable it on anybody's behalf; the control sits per app in Android's own settings.
Removing the app removes the folder and everything in it. Clearing the app's data from Android settings empties the folder and leaves the app installed, which is also the way to wipe a record of solved levels without losing the app.
Permissions, and the store. The manifest asks for next to nothing. No entry exists for the camera, for the microphone, for location, for contacts or for the telephone, with the result that Android never has a permission to put before you in the first place.
Obtaining the app from Google Play, or updating it, is an arrangement between the person and Google on Google's own terms, and no part of the account or device data involved in that is routed through this company. What the developer console offers is already aggregated — installs counted by country, crash rates, star ratings — with nothing in it that identifies anyone, and there is no second source.
Children. A routing puzzle is a harmless thing to put in front of a child, and Switchyard carries no advertising, no chat, no links leading out, no contact between players and no screen asking for money. Since nothing at all is gathered from anybody, nothing is gathered from a child.
Article 8 governs processing founded on a child's own consent, and the United Kingdom fixed that threshold at thirteen years in the 2018 Act. Nothing in this app is founded on consent, so neither provision has anything to bite on. Any parent wanting that stated in a letter should write and ask.
Governing rules. Registration in England puts this company under the UK GDPR together with the Data Protection Act 2018. Oversight of both belongs to the Information Commissioner, whose office is at ico.org.uk.
Collecting nothing does not discharge every duty. Article 13 wants the controller identifiable regardless of whether anything is collected — hence clause 2, with a registered name, a director and a street rather than a brand. And Article 5(2) assigns the burden of showing compliance to this company; a reader is never expected to prove the negative.
What this document cannot offer is the assurance most often given — a long record of handling your data carefully. No such record exists, because no handling takes place. It is the smaller claim and the sturdier one: an empty siding derails nothing.
Because the listing is open everywhere, the app reaches people living in EU member states, who are covered by the European text of the Regulation. Their complaint belongs with the authority of their own country, and nothing obliges them to come here first — it is merely the faster route.
Rights, and the answer they will meet. Articles 15 to 21 provide for access to what is held, correction, erasure, restriction on use, a portable copy, and objection to processing. Article 77 adds a complaint to the Commissioner, and nothing written in this document could weaken it.
Write to points@greenlizardtechnologies.best. Article 12(3) allows a month; an answer will come well inside it and will be brief, since there is no file under anyone's name to produce, amend, erase, suspend or forward.
Identification is not demanded first, either. No stored record exists that such a check could be protecting, and collecting an identity document in order to announce that there is nothing to show would be the single careless act in the entire exchange. If the reply is unconvincing, say so once and it will be read again properly; after that the Commissioner is the right address.
Amendment. Should a later build of Switchyard take on anything that touches personal data — progress synchronised between devices or onto a leaderboard, a crash reporter, level packs or hints sold for money, advertising of any description — this document is rewritten and published before that build is rolled out, and not after it.
The edition line beneath the title moves at the same moment, and the substance of the change is repeated in the Play release notes, so that it reaches people who never visit this address. The address itself stays where it is for as long as the app is listed.