Privacy policy.

1. Who this policy covers

This Privacy Policy explains how Ten Trick Pony ("we," "us," or "our") handles information in connection with this website and the games and applications that link to this policy, including Figures of Speech and Gravity Tunnel Arcade on Android, and Sonder on Android.

Sonder works differently from our games, so it has its own section below: section 11, Sonder.

It covers our own data practices. App stores, hosting platforms, and other external services have their own privacy policies, as explained below.

2. Information in our games

Our games currently do not collect, transmit to us, or share personal information about players. They do not require a Ten Trick Pony account, use advertising or analytics trackers, or include in-app purchases. We do not use third-party advertising or analytics SDKs in our games.

A game may store progress, settings, or high scores locally on your device or in your browser. This local game data is used to remember your preferences and progress; it is not sent to us. Your device or platform may separately back up application data according to your settings and its own privacy policy.

Sonder is the exception: it shares what you choose to write with phones nearby, but still sends nothing to the studio. See section 11.

3. Website and technical information

This website does not include advertising trackers, analytics scripts, account registration, or forms that collect player information.

When you visit a website or a browser-hosted game, the hosting provider receives technical information needed to deliver and protect the service. This can include your IP address, browser or device information, requested pages, and the date and time of a request. Hosting providers may keep operational and security logs under their own policies.

This website loads fonts from Google Fonts. Your browser contacts Google to retrieve those fonts, which can disclose technical request information such as your IP address. See Google Fonts' privacy information and Google's Privacy Policy.

If you change the color theme, we save that preference in your browser so it applies on your next visit. It is not sent to us.

We do not set advertising or analytics cookies on this website. Hosting platforms may use technical cookies or similar technologies to operate or secure their services. You can manage cookies and local storage through your browser settings.

4. When you contact us

If you email us, we receive your email address, the contents of your message, and any information or attachments you choose to provide. We use that information to respond to your request, provide support, and resolve the issue you contacted us about. Please avoid sending sensitive personal information that is not needed for your request.

Our email service provider processes messages to deliver and store correspondence. We do not use support messages for advertising or sell them to third parties.

5. Sharing and external services

We do not sell or rent personal information. We may use service providers for website hosting, security, and email delivery, and may disclose information when legally required or necessary to protect users, our services, or legal rights.

If you download a game, make a purchase through a store, or follow an external link, that platform may process account, transaction, device, or other information under its own policies. We do not receive your full payment card details. A store's handling of a game purchase is separate from in-app purchases, which our games currently do not offer.

Relevant platform policies include Google / Google Play, itch.io, and Playdate. Other linked websites provide their own privacy information.

6. Retention, deletion, and your choices

We do not keep a central database of personal player information collected by our games. Local game data remains on your device or in your browser until you clear it or remove the game, subject to your platform's backup and storage settings. Clearing data can permanently erase saved progress.

We retain support correspondence only as long as needed to handle the request, maintain necessary support records, or meet legal obligations. Hosting and platform providers manage the retention of their own logs and records under their policies.

You can contact us to request access to, correction of, or deletion of personal information you have supplied to us. Depending on your location, you may have additional privacy rights, including the right to object to or restrict processing and to complain to a data protection authority. We respond in accordance with applicable law and may need to verify a request before acting on it. For information held independently by an app store or other platform, contact that provider directly.

7. Security

We use reasonable measures to protect information entrusted to us, including HTTPS for this website. No method of internet transmission or electronic storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

8. Children's privacy

Our games do not knowingly collect personal information from children, including children under 13. If you believe a child has provided personal information to us through support correspondence or another channel, contact us so we can investigate and delete it as appropriate.

Sonder is for people 13 and older; it doesn’t allow anyone under 13 to use it. Read Sonder’s Child Safety Standards for our prevention practices and how to report a concern.

9. Changes to this policy

If our practices change, including if a game introduces online accounts, analytics, advertising, in-app purchases, or other data processing, we will update this policy and the relevant game disclosures before those changes take effect. Where required, we will provide additional notice and obtain consent. The date at the top of this page identifies the latest version.

11. Sonder

Sonder is an Android app by Ten Trick Pony Studios for sharing short, anonymous notes ("fragments") with people you pass by. It has no accounts, studio servers, ads, studio analytics, crash reporting, or tracking. Sonder has no internet access of its own, and no information about you, your fragments, or your encounters is sent to us.

What is shared with nearby phones

When sharing is on, Sonder uses Google Nearby Connections, part of Google Play services, to exchange fragments directly with nearby phones running Sonder over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, within roughly tens of metres.

• Your fragment: its text, mood, and a random fragment identifier. Your personal name, account, phone number, location, or a timestamp is not attached.
• A short-lived random name: your phone broadcasts a random discovery code unrelated to you or your fragment. It changes every 15 minutes and whenever you write a new fragment, reducing persistent identification.

Once another phone receives your fragment, that copy cannot be taken back. Stopping sharing, replacing the fragment, or deleting your local data does not erase copies already received by others. Received fragments are revealed a few hours later in unordered batches with a rough time such as "this afternoon," to make them harder to associate with a particular encounter. This does not guarantee anonymity: write only what you are comfortable sharing with strangers.

What stays on your phone

Sonder stores your written and received fragment history, arrival and reveal times, saved and archived choices, and settings in private storage on your phone. Deleted or reported fragments are remembered only by identifier, with their text removed, to prevent accepting them again. Source-phone identifiers used for blocking, and blocked-phone records, are retained for one week. These records are not sent to the studio. Sonder disables Android backups and device transfers, so its data is not backed up to Google Drive or copied to a new phone.

Permissions and why they are needed

• Nearby devices (Bluetooth and Wi-Fi): to discover nearby phones running Sonder, connect to them, and exchange fragments.
• Location: Android requires location permission for the nearby-device scanning Sonder uses, because such scanning could potentially reveal location. Sonder never reads, records, or shares your location.
• Notifications: to tell you when new fragments appear and show when background encounters are running.
• Running in the background (foreground service): to continue encounters while Sonder is closed, if you enable Background encounters in Settings. An ongoing notification indicates that the service is running, and you can turn it off.

Google Play services

Google Play services handles Nearby Connections' Bluetooth and Wi-Fi work on Sonder's behalf. It has its own internet access and operates under Google's Privacy Policy. Google documents collection of Nearby SDK performance metrics and device information, managed through your device's Google Usage & diagnostics settings; see Nearby Connections' data collection information. We do not receive information from Google about your use of Sonder.

Safety

Sonder checks fragments on your phone when you write or receive them, using filters to help block hate, sexual content, threats, and personal details such as phone numbers, links, and usernames. Filters cannot catch everything. You can report fragments or block a source phone; reports remain on your device and are not sent to a server. After reporting, you can choose to email us about it: Sonder opens your own email app with a draft that includes the reported fragment’s text, and nothing is sent unless you send it yourself. Emails you send us are handled as described in section 4. We can’t identify who wrote a fragment, but we use reports to improve the filters on every phone.

Our Sonder Child Safety Standards explain prohibited content, reporting options, and how we respond to child safety reports.

Your choices and deleting data

Turn Sharing off in Settings or tap the moon on the home screen to stop exchanges. Use Stop sharing on the Write screen to stop sharing your current fragment, or disable Background encounters in Settings. You can delete fragments individually, use Clear All Data in Settings to remove all locally stored Sonder data, or uninstall the app. You can also manage permissions in Android settings; denying necessary permissions prevents nearby discovery and sharing. Because we hold no Sonder player data, there is nothing for us to access, correct, or delete on our side. Copies of fragments already received by other phones remain with those recipients. Contact us in Settings opens your email app to write to us.

Age

Sonder is for people 13 and older. Where the law has Google Play share a user’s age range (in Texas, for example), Sonder checks it when it starts; if the user is under 13, Sonder doesn’t share or receive anything. The age range is used only for that check and is never stored.