Zero Plus Plus Studios · Last updated 5 October 2026 · zeroplusplusstudios@gmail.com
GroupIt still keeps your progress on your own phone, and we still have no account of our own, no sign-in and no server of our own holding anything about you. Your phone's own iCloud or Google backup can carry that progress to a new phone, and on an iPhone between your own devices, under your own account with Apple or Google; we have no access to it.
What is new in this version is that the game can show you an advert you chose to watch, and can sell a few optional extras. Both of those involve other companies, and this policy exists to say which ones, what each one receives, and how to stop it.
Earlier versions of GroupIt could not reach the internet at all: the permission was stripped out of the app before it was built. That is no longer true, because an advert has to be fetched, a purchase has to be checked with the shop that sold it, and the game asks our website for a small settings file.
What did not change is the game. You can still play every board without spending any money and without watching anything, because gems are paid by the boards you finish. Hints are free and unlimited on the ladder that teaches the game and on a mode's free sample board. Elsewhere, in free play, on the daily, on the endless shelf and on boards a friend sends you, the first hint on each board is free and later ones cost gems, unless you have bought the optional unlimited hints. The extra rule modes cost gems, or come with the optional All modes purchase, which is a shortcut to the same place; colours work the same way; and a tip buys nothing. Nothing a board pays depends on anything you buy.
The game saves your progress on your own device: where you stand on the ladder, the boards you have solved in free play, on the daily and on the endless shelf, the size, difficulty and mode you last picked in free play and the row of the shelf you were on, the last ten boards you finished (kept as the same kind of link the Share button makes, so that you can replay or send them), which rule pages, tours and tips you have seen, the awards you have collected, a record of the days you have played and your longest run of days, your gems, which extras this device owns, and your settings for sound, music, vibration, which tone a quick tap puts down, group-size numbers, colours and reduced motion. A save from an older version may also still hold a day or night choice, which this version never reads. If you played a version from before October 2026, your save may also still hold that version's chapter progress, which is the stars each chapter board earned, the last one you played and the drawings you named. The game no longer adds to those, but a new install is not always free of them: they can arrive with the rest of your save, restored from your device's backup or, on an iPhone, copied across from your other devices through iCloud. Erase all progress clears them.
The game also keeps a few more local records: the last settings file it fetched (see "What the app sends") and when; a short list of the shop's order numbers for gem packs, kept so that a purchase the shop delivers twice is only counted once; a note of the boards you have asked for hints on, each kept as a hash of its content, holding how many hints it has given and, as hashes, the positions they were asked from, so that a board's free hint and its rising price hold and a repeated hint stays free; how many adverts you have watched for gems today, so that the daily limit holds; which days' daily boards have already paid out, and the latest day the phone's clock and our website's clock have shown, so that a changed phone clock cannot pay one twice or replay a day; whether the game has already asked you for a rating, and how many times it has been opened, so that it asks at most once; and a few random or hashed markers the game uses to tell one install, or one iCloud account, from another.
All of it is kept in the app's private storage on your phone. No other app can read it, and nobody at Zero Plus Plus Studios can read it, because it never reaches us. It is not an account, and none of it is your name. Uninstalling the app deletes that copy. A copy held in your iCloud or Google backup stays under Apple's or Google's control until you delete it there.
Your progress also follows you to a new phone, and on an iPhone between your own devices, and the way it does that differs by platform. On an iPhone, the game uses Apple's iCloud key-value storage: it writes your progress, your awards, your gems, and the modes and colours you have bought with them to your own iCloud, and reads back what your other iPhones and iPads on the same iCloud account wrote, so a second device picks up where the first left off. Your settings stay on each device, and your purchases are not part of it. On an Android phone, the game uses Android's Auto Backup, which copies the game's one save file to your Google Drive so that a new phone or a reinstall gets it back; that file holds your progress, your settings and the game's own record of which extras this device owns, and it does not sync between devices as you play.
In both cases it happens under your own account with Apple or Google and under their terms; we have no access to it, and no server of our own is involved. The shop, not the save, is the authority on what you have bought: tap Restore purchases and the game asks the App Store or Google Play again. You can switch the backup off in your device's own settings, under iCloud on an iPhone or under Backup on Android. On an iPhone, erasing your progress (see below) erases it on your other devices on the same iCloud account too, which is deliberate.
As you play, the game also writes a plain line for each thing that happens, such as a board being started, a hint being asked for, a board being finished or an extra being bought, to your phone's own system log. The operating system manages that log, and it can be read only with the phone connected to a computer or in a bug report you choose to send. The game does not keep those lines: each is written to a small file in the game's own storage for the instant it takes the system log to receive it, so that a line is not lost if the app is closed in that moment, and the file is deleted straight away. There is no analytics service of our own in the game, and nothing of ours uploads them. The game also generates a random identifier the first time it runs; it is not derived from you or from your phone, it is not an advertising id, and the game does not send it anywhere.
The game always uses its light colours; it does not read your phone's light or dark setting.
These things leave the phone by the game's own doing in this version. None of them carries anything about how you play.
A settings request, each time the app starts and again if you come back to it after an hour or more away. The app asks our website, hosted on GitHub Pages, for one small file that is the same for every player and says whether the shop and the adverts are switched on. The request carries nothing about you: no identifier, no account, no progress. As with any web request, GitHub, which runs that website, receives your device's IP address and the basic technical information every web request carries, under GitHub's own privacy statement; we do not receive it and do not keep it. The answer is saved on your phone. The time the website reports in its reply is also used, on the phone, to know what day it is, so that neither the daily advert limit nor a daily board's reward can be reset by changing the phone's clock.
GitHub's privacy statement:
https://docs.github.com/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-general-privacy-statement
A consent check, each time the advert system starts, once adverts are switched on. The game asks Google's User Messaging Platform whether you need to be shown a consent form, and shows one where the law requires it. Google receives your device's IP address and the technical details every request carries, under Google's privacy policy, which is linked under "Purchases" below; the game tells it nothing about how you play.
An advert request, when the advert system is running. This goes to Unity, and through Unity to the advertising companies that take part in the auction to fill it. What it carries is described in the next section.
A purchase, when you buy one of the extras. This goes to Google Play on an Android phone or to the App Store on an iPhone, the shop you installed the game from, and it is that shop, not us, that takes the payment.
Four more things happen only when you ask for them. If you press Share, the game hands a link to a board to the app you choose on Android, or copies it to the clipboard on an iPhone; if you press Rate, it opens GroupIt's page in your store; if you open Privacy policy in Settings, it asks your phone to open this policy's page in its web browser; and if you use the contact row in Settings, it opens your own email app with a message to us, as described under "Who we are, and how to reach us" below. The Privacy policy request is the browser's, not the game's, and it goes to GitHub, which hosts the page, as described under "If you play in a web browser" below. Your phone may also show its own review sheet once, after a perfect run; Apple or Google handles that, and it tells the game nothing.
Apart from all of that, your own iCloud or Google account may copy your save, as described above. Your phone does that, and we do not see it.
We send no analytics of our own, no crash reports of our own and no telemetry of our own. The advert software has a crash reporter of its own, described below.
Everything the game sends, and everything the advert and shop software send for it, travels encrypted (HTTPS); the game keeps nothing about you on a server of ours, and what stays on your phone is in the app's private storage.
The pages at zeroplusplusstudios.github.io/groupit/, which are this policy and the terms, the page a shared board opens in and the version of the game that plays in a browser, have no adverts, no shop and no analytics, and they do not fetch the settings file. GitHub, which hosts them, receives your IP address and the basic technical information every web request carries, under the privacy statement linked above. The front page and the shared-board page also load their typeface from Google Fonts, so Google receives the same, under its privacy policy, which is linked under "Purchases" below.
What a browser keeps is kept in that browser's own storage on that device: in the browser version of the game, your progress and settings; on the shared-board page, only which tone you mark with. None of it reaches us. Clearing this site's data in your browser removes it.
Adverts in GroupIt are rewarded adverts only. There is no advert between boards, no banner and no full-screen interruption: the only advert in the game is one you asked for, by tapping a control that says what you get for watching. It is offered when you do not have enough gems for something, pays a few gems when it has been watched to the end, and can be watched only a few times a day. A video that does not load, or that you close early, costs you nothing and pays nothing.
They are served by Unity LevelPlay, the advertising platform operated by Unity Technologies, which acquired ironSource, so you may see either name. LevelPlay is a mediation platform: it runs an auction between advertising networks, including Unity's own, and the advert you see comes from the winner. Companies that take part in the auction, not only the winner, may receive the advert request, and the winner receives the same information LevelPlay does. Each handles what it receives under its own privacy policy and may use it to build advertising profiles, and to detect and prevent advertising fraud and keep their service secure. Unity's policy, linked below, lists them.
What is sent with an advert request comes from your device rather than from the game: your advertising identifier (see below), your IP address, and technical facts about the phone, which are its make and model, the operating system version, the language and country it is set to, the screen size, the network type, and the name and version of this app. Your IP address is how an approximate location is worked out, usually to a city or a region, which is what decides whether you see an advert for something that exists near you. What happens to the advert afterwards is also reported: that it was requested, that it was shown, that it was watched to the end or abandoned, and that it was tapped. The advert software also has crash and diagnostic reporting of its own, and may send Unity a report, with technical details about the phone, if it fails. It may also be told about purchases made in the app, which is described under "Purchases" below.
What the game itself gives the advert system is small: the app's key, your answers to the consent form, and a statement that this is not a children's app. It asks for adverts in advance and is told whether the reward was earned. We send it nothing about how you play. Not which board you are on, not your results, not your settings, not your progress, and not the random identifier described above.
The advert system is started each time the game opens, once adverts have been switched on for it: first the consent check, where the law requires it, then on an iPhone the tracking prompt, then the advertising software. From then on it may contact its servers before you have chosen to watch anything, because an advert has to be fetched in advance to be ready to play. No advert is shown unless you ask for one.
Unity's Game Player and App User Privacy Policy, which covers LevelPlay and explains what Unity does with what it receives and how it decides how long to keep it:
https://unity.com/legal/game-player-and-app-user-privacy-policy
The extras are sold by the shop, not by us. On an Android phone that is Google Play; on an iPhone it is the App Store. The payment happens in their own sheet, on their own systems, and the game never sees and never receives your card number, your name, your billing address or your email address. There is no field in this app that could accept them.
The extras are of three kinds. Gem packs are consumable: each purchase adds its gems to the wallet on your phone and can be bought again. Unlocks, which are every mode, unlimited hints, or everything together, are bought once and kept. A tip is a purchase that unlocks nothing at all; it exists only to say thank you. What the game receives back is the shop's confirmation that an order exists, and what it does with that is add the pack's gems, or write a flag in its own private storage saying this device owns the unlock.
What we receive, as the developer, is each shop's sales reporting, and nothing the game collects. Google Play's lists orders with their order number, date and price, the country of sale, and refunds, and, for sales in countries where we rather than Google are the seller of record, the buyer's city and postcode. Apple's shows totals by product, day and country, including refunds. Neither gives us your name, your payment details or your email address, and we have never asked for them.
The advert software described above may also be told about a purchase: which product was bought, and the shop's confirmation of it, so that advertising can be measured. The game does not send it your payment details, which it never has.
Restore purchases, the control in Settings, asks the shop what your account already owns and rewrites the local flags from the answer. It restores unlocks, not gems: a gem pack is used up the moment its gems are added, which is how the shops define a consumable purchase. That question goes to Apple or Google, who already know, and not to us.
Their policies:
https://policies.google.com/privacy
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/
Every modern phone carries an advertising identifier: a random number the operating system gives to apps, which advertising companies use to count how often an advert has been shown and to decide which one to show next. It is the main identifier the advert software uses, and it is supplied by the phone rather than by the game. The advert software also receives your IP address and may create identifiers of its own, such as an install or session identifier, which Unity's policy lists. The game passes none of its own.
On Android it is the Google Advertising ID. In your phone's settings, look under Privacy and then Ads. The wording and the place vary by phone and by Android version, and deleting the advertising ID needs Android 12 or newer; older versions offer only a reset or an opt-out of ads personalisation. Deleting it means apps are given nothing in its place. Resetting it only gives you a new one.
On an iPhone it is the IDFA, and it is only available to an app that has asked you and been told yes. GroupIt asks once, with the standard system prompt, shortly after the game opens once adverts have been switched on, which is before any advert is requested and whether or not you ever ask for one. If you say no, you still get the reward and you still get an advert. It is chosen without your advertising identifier, but the advert system still receives your IP address and the phone details listed above, and may use them, for example to pick an advert by approximate location. You can change your answer at any time in Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking.
If you are in the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area or Switzerland, a consent form from Google's User Messaging Platform asks whether adverts may be personalised, before the advertising software is started. Nothing is sent to the advertising software until you have answered, and you can change the answer whenever you like from Privacy choices in the game's Settings, which reopens the same form. Declining personalisation costs you nothing in the game: the rewards are identical and the adverts are simply not personalised. If your answers mean adverts may not be requested at all, the game does not start the advertising software and offers no video, so you lose only the optional gems a video would have paid; every board, and the gems the boards pay, are unaffected. Outside those places no form is shown.
Where the law requires your consent for advertising and for the advertising identifier, we ask for it and rely on it, and on an iPhone we also ask through Apple's tracking prompt. We rely on the performance of a contract with you for handling a purchase and for restoring one you already made: you asked to buy something, and delivering it is the contract. The record the shops keep of a sale, they keep under their own legal obligations as the seller.
We do not profile you ourselves, we do not make automated decisions about you, and we do not combine anything across apps. We could not: nothing about how you play this game leaves the phone it is played on. The advertising companies described above may do those things with what they receive, under their own policies.
Showing you a personalised advert means an identifier about your device is passed to advertising companies. Under California law that may count as sharing for cross-context behavioural advertising, and several other states use similar language for the same thing.
We do not sell personal information for money, and never have. To limit the sharing: on an iPhone, decline the tracking prompt described above or turn tracking off in Settings, and your advertising identifier is not given to the advert system. On Android, delete your advertising ID in your phone's settings, under Privacy and then Ads, which needs Android 12 or newer; resetting it only replaces it. You can also use the privacy choice inside an advert, where Unity's adverts show one. Adverts are requested in advance, so not tapping the control that offers one does not stop the request. The game does not currently send an opt-out signal to the advertising platform for US state laws. If you would rather send the request in writing, email us at zeroplusplusstudios@gmail.com and we will pass it on.
On your phone, until you uninstall the app, or until you use Erase all progress for the things that button clears, which are listed below along with what it keeps. A copy held by your own iCloud or Google account stays there, under Apple's or Google's terms, until you delete it.
By Unity and the advertising networks, for as long as their own published policies say. We hold no copy of anything an advert request sent, and no way to query it, because we are not given it in the first place. Unity's policy, linked above, sets out how Unity decides how long to keep it.
By Apple and Google, the record of a sale, for as long as their terms and the tax law that applies to a seller require. We see that only as a report, and only in the form they choose to show it.
By us, nothing from the app itself, which sends us no data. We keep only what you choose to email us, for as long as we need to answer you, and the sales and advertising reports that Apple, Google and Unity make available to us.
If you are in the UK or the EEA you have the right to ask for access to your personal data, to have it corrected or erased, to object to or restrict how it is processed, to receive it in a portable form, and to withdraw consent at any time. Withdrawing consent does not undo what was lawfully done before you withdrew it. Similar rights apply under a number of US state laws.
Write to zeroplusplusstudios@gmail.com and we will reply within one month. Please say which right you are exercising and which phone and country you are writing about; because there is no account here, that is genuinely all we have to go on, and we will tell you honestly if the answer is that we hold nothing.
Some of this you can do faster yourself, without asking anybody:
Settings → Erase all progress clears your progress: the ladder, free play (with the size, difficulty and mode you picked there), the daily and the shelf (with the record of the days you have played and your longest run), the pages, tours and tips seen, the list of boards you recently solved, any chapter progress kept from an older version, and your awards. It does not clear your settings, your gems, the modes and colours you own, the extras you bought, or the lifetime counts behind some awards. An erase is meant to give you a fresh start, not to take away something you paid for. It also leaves the record of free hints used, adverts watched today and daily boards paid, which exist so that erasing cannot be used to repeat a reward.
Your iCloud or Google copy: Erase all progress rewrites it at the next sync, and on Android at the next backup, so a reinstall before then can bring the old save back. To delete the copy itself, use your iCloud storage settings on an iPhone, or the backup settings in your Google account on Android.
Resetting or deleting your advertising identifier, in the device settings named above, or turning Tracking off on an iPhone, stops advertising companies using it to recognise this phone from then on. It does not delete what was already collected, and your IP address and other technical identifiers are still sent with an advert request.
Uninstalling the app removes everything it put on your phone, including the record of what you own. Your purchases are held by your Apple or Google account rather than by the app, so reinstalling and tapping Restore purchases brings them back.
For anything already held by Unity or by an advertising network, the request has to be answered by them, because we cannot identify you to them. You can send it yourself using the route in Unity's privacy policy at the address above, naming the app it concerns, which is com.zeroplusplus.groupit; or email us and we will pass it on and supply anything their form needs.
If you think we have handled this badly, you can complain to a supervisory authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office:
In the EEA it is the authority for the country you live in.
GroupIt is a general-audience logic puzzle and is not directed at children under 13. When adverts are switched on, the advertising platform is set up to treat this app as not directed to children, which is the truthful answer for it, and the app is not enrolled in any families advertising programme.
We do not knowingly collect anything about a child under 13. If you believe a child has used this app and an advertising identifier was collected, deleting your device's advertising ID, or turning tracking off on an iPhone, stops that identifier being given to apps from then on, but it does not remove what advertising companies already hold; email us at zeroplusplusstudios@gmail.com so that we can ask the advertising platform to delete what it holds.
On an Android phone this version declares eleven permissions, one of which only protects the app's own internal messages, and none of them shows you a prompt. Vibrate is for the short tick when you mark a cell or press a control; you can turn vibration off in Settings, and it carries no information about you. The advertising ID permission lets the advertising platform read the identifier described above. Internet and network state are needed because the settings file, the consent check, adverts and purchases cannot work offline; the game itself needs no connection to play, and works in aeroplane mode apart from those. Billing is Google Play's own permission for buying something inside an app. The advertising software adds permissions for Android's advertising privacy features, which are ad topics and ad attribution, and, for its background scheduling, permission to keep the phone awake briefly, to start after the phone boots, and to run a foreground service. None of these gives the game access to your contacts, your location, your microphone, your camera or your files.
On an iPhone there is no permission list to show: the tracking prompt described above is the only question the game asks the system, and the iCloud storage described under "What the app stores" needs no prompt because it is your own account's own storage.
If what this app sends ever changes again, this policy will be updated before that version is published, and the change will be described in the release notes on the store you installed it from. The date at the top moves with the text, because an unchanged date on changed text is the one thing in here that could be read as bad faith.
You can read this policy at any time from inside the game: Settings → Privacy policy opens it in your phone's web browser.
GroupIt is made by Zero Plus Plus Studios, which is the data controller for the small amount of processing described above. Questions about this policy, and any request under it: zeroplusplusstudios@gmail.com
If you use the contact row in Settings, the game opens your own email app with a message to that address and a short footer already filled in: the game's version, your phone's operating system and its model, so that we can tell what you were using. You can read and change the message before you send it, and nothing is sent until you press send in your email app. When you do, we receive your email address and whatever you wrote, we use them only to answer you, and we keep them for as long as we need to do that, as described under "How long anything is kept".