Where your skulls go

• Short version
• On your phone
• Leave your ghost
• My server
• Ads
• Apple services
• Younger players
• Your choices
• This website

The short version

I'm one person. I make Died Here, I run the small server behind it, and I wrote this page. "I" below means me; "the game" means the Died Here app.

• There's no account to make. The game never learns what you're called or how to reach you.
• The game sends where you died only after you tap Leave my ghost on a card it shows when you clear your first level. Tap Keep it private and nothing about your play leaves your phone, and you still see everyone else's skulls.
• What it sends has no ID in it. Not a device ID, not an advertising ID, not a Game Center name, not an exact time.
• The game shows ads from Google AdMob between levels. Google collects data for those ads under its own policy, and asks you first where the law requires it. iOS asks whether apps may track you; saying no changes nothing in the game.

What stays on your phone

Your progress, your death counts, your settings, the skull styles you've unlocked and your replays are saved on your device. The game doesn't copy your progress to iCloud or anywhere else. Deleting the app deletes what's on the phone.

Before you answer the "Leave your ghost?" card, the game keeps a small queue of your death reports on the phone, in case you say yes. If you say no, the queue is deleted.

"Leave your ghost?"

After you clear your first level, the game asks: Leave your ghost? Where you die helps the next player. No name, no account. The two buttons are the same size. You can change your answer any time in Settings, under Privacy. Turning it off deletes the queue on your phone and stops sending.

What it sends when you say yes

One small report per level you played, sent in batches. Each report holds:

• which level and which version of that level;
• where you died, as squares on the level's grid (each square is 16 game pixels), with the name of the trap and how many times;
• which traps you reached, how many attempts you made and how long you played that level;
• whether you cleared it, and how many deaths it took;
• a few yes-or-no flags the game works out itself, such as "this was the first time I died at this trap" or "I needed five tries here";
• up to two ghost clips: about 2.5 seconds of your doll's positions around a trap, plus the number of the skin it wore and the app's build number;
• for the Weekly Troll, which week the run belongs to.

Once a day it also sends one anonymous count: the week you installed the game, how many days ago that was (in a range such as "4–7 days"), the app build, and yesterday's totals of play sessions, ads shown, videos you chose to watch, and deaths. That's how I can tell whether people come back, without knowing who anyone is.

What it never sends

Who you are: no name, no email address, no Apple Account, no Game Center nickname. Nothing that singles out the device either: no device identifier, no advertising identifier, no install ID. And no location and no clock time. No two reports carry anything that links them to each other or to you.

What everyone can see

Your reports are added to running totals for each level and trap. Every player's game downloads those totals: how many people reached a trap, how many died there, a coarse heat map of where, and up to 20 recent ghost clips per trap. A ghost is an anonymous little figure wearing a skin. Nobody, including me, can tell which ghost was yours.

Because nothing is tied to you, I can't find or delete "your" reports afterwards. Once they've been added up, they're just part of a number.

My server, and how it stays anonymous

The server runs on Cloudflare (Workers, with its D1 database, KV and R2 storage and Analytics Engine). Cloudflare handles the traffic and stores the totals on my behalf, on its network in several countries.

Your IP address

Any server sees the internet address a request comes from. Mine doesn't store it. To stop one network flooding the numbers, the server turns the address (or, for IPv6, its network part) into a scrambled code using a secret key and today's date, so the same network gets a different code every day. That code is used to count reports per network per day, and it's deleted after two days. To be completely honest about the limit of this: someone who had my secret key could try every possible IPv4 address against a stored code during those two days. I keep that key out of the code and out of the database.

The server's request logging is switched off. It records days, never times of day.

Proving it's really the game

To make fake reports harder, the game may use Apple's App Attest, which lets an app prove it's a genuine copy. The server keeps only a one-way hash of the key ID Apple creates, the first and last day it was seen, a count, and the first proof object. That record is kept apart from all gameplay data, is never matched with it, and is deleted 90 days after it was last used. The game may also get a random daily ticket from the server; it contains no device information and expires by the end of the next day.

How long things are kept

• Per-level daily counts and the daily anonymous counts: 400 days.
• Counts of reports the server rejected (for example, a death in a spot no body could reach): 90 days.
• Level totals, heat maps and the 20-ghost rings: as long as that version of the level is in the game.
• Per-network daily codes and ticket hashes: 2 days.
• App Attest records: 90 days after last use.
• A dated backup of the public totals, so I can undo vandalism on a level.

When the game downloads skull maps, the weekly level or its settings, those requests carry nothing about you, and nothing about them is logged.

Ads

Died Here is free and paid for by ads from Google AdMob. Here's how they work in the game:

• No ads at all during your first five levels and first few minutes.
• After that, a full-screen ad can appear between levels, only after you tap Next, with an "Ad break" label first. Never when you die, never during play, never when you open the app.
• Video ads that give you help only play when you choose them and confirm a second time.
• No ads when you're offline.
• Ad content is limited to a PG rating, with gambling, dating and social casino ads blocked. You can report an ad from Settings or Pause.

Google's ad software collects information to show, measure and limit ads, which can include your IP address, device and app information, ad interactions and, if you allow it, your device's advertising identifier. Google explains this in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.

• In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, Google's consent form appears before any ad, and you can change your choice later from the game's Settings.
• Apple's tracking prompt comes after your first five levels, with a short note from me first. If you say no, the advertising identifier stays private and ads are less personalised. Every level, skull and setting stays as it was.

Because the game uses AdMob, the App Store page lists "Data Used to Track You". I'd rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise.

Game Center, sharing, notifications, crashes

Game Center is optional. The game signs in to it only when you open the Weekly Troll. Your weekly score (deaths and time) and achievements go to Apple's Game Center, and Game Center shows your friends' scores. Your Game Center name is shown on your device by Apple; it is never sent to my server. Apple's privacy policy covers Game Center.

Sharing uses the iOS share sheet. Nothing is sent until you pick where it goes. A dare link holds a level number and your death count, and nothing else. If you save a clip to Photos, iOS asks for permission to add it.

Notifications: the game can remind you once a week when a new Weekly Troll opens. It asks only after you've cleared your first Weekly. Your phone sets the reminder itself; no notification token goes to me. If you ignore three in a row, the game stops scheduling them.

Crashes: there's no third-party crash or analytics tool in the game. If your iPhone is set to share analytics with developers (an iOS setting), Apple passes me anonymous crash reports and performance figures.

Younger players

Died Here is rated 9+ and isn't made for children, but younger players do find games like this. Where a law requires it, the game asks Apple's Declared Age Range. If it learns the player is under 13, it never shows the tracking prompt, and it asks Google for child-directed, non-personalised ads only. Crowd reports never contain personal information, whatever the age.

If you're a parent and think your child shared something personal with me (by email, say), write to me and I'll delete it.

Your choices, all in one place

• Stop sending your death spots: Settings › Privacy › Leave your ghost.
• Hide other players' skulls: Settings, "Show other players' deaths" (On death, Always, or Never), or Blind mode.
• Ad consent (EEA, UK, Switzerland): the privacy choices entry in the game's Settings.
• Tracking: iOS Settings › Privacy & Security › Tracking.
• Weekly reminder: in the game's Settings, or iOS Settings › Notifications.
• Everything on the phone: delete the app.

Depending on where you live, you may be entitled to ask me for a copy of anything I keep on you, or for it to be fixed or erased. Write to me and I'll answer. In most cases the honest answer is that I hold nothing that can be traced to you, and I'll explain why.

This website

This site sets no cookies, runs no analytics and loads its fonts from its own folder, not from anyone else's servers. The company hosting it, Cloudflare (Cloudflare Pages), may keep ordinary server logs (such as IP addresses) for security, under its own policy.

Changes and contact

If the game starts collecting anything new, this page changes first and the date at the top changes with it. Anything that needs your permission will ask in the game before it happens.

Died Here is made by Quang Trung Nguyen. Questions, requests or complaints: trungpro5398@gmail.com. A real person reads it, and it's me.