Privacy policy

Who is responsible

The controller under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is Hasan Sinan Alioglu, trading as GKW Games, Cologne, Germany. The full postal address is in our Impressum. You can reach us about privacy at support@gkw.games.

This website

Hosting

gkw.games is a static website delivered by Cloudflare Pages (Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend St, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA). When you open a page, Cloudflare processes technical data such as your IP address, the time, the requested file, your browser's user agent and the referring page. This is needed to deliver the site and to protect it from attacks. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in running a secure website (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Cloudflare is certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework; the European Commission's standard contractual clauses also apply.

No cookies, no analytics

The website sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser. It uses no analytics, advertising or social media tools. Fonts and images come from our own domain, so no third party learns that you visited.

The playable games on the website, GKW Breaker on the home page and the Ascenseur demo levels, run entirely in your browser. They save nothing and send nothing.

Email

If you email us, we use your address and message to answer you (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR for questions about our games, otherwise Art. 6(1)(f)). We delete the conversation when it is resolved, at the latest 12 months after it ends, unless the law requires us to keep it longer.

Ascenseur

Ascenseur is an elevator puzzle for iPhone, iPad and Android, published by GKW Games.

What the game itself collects

Nothing. The game has no account system, no server and no analytics or crash reporting of its own, and its own code makes no network connections. Every level plays offline.

What is stored on your device

The game keeps one small save file on your device with:

• your best star rating for each level you have played,
• your remaining number of hints,
• your settings (sound effects, reduced motion).

This file is never sent to us or anyone else. On Android it is excluded from device backups and is deleted when you uninstall the game. On iPhone and iPad it is part of the device backups you make yourself (iCloud or computer), under your own Apple account. Settings › Reset progress erases your stars at any time.

Permissions

Ascenseur never asks for your location, camera, microphone, contacts, photos or files. On Android, the only permissions are the ones the ad software adds, such as internet access, network state, the advertising ID and Android's Privacy Sandbox ad services. None of them shows a prompt. On iPhone and iPad the only prompt is Apple's App Tracking Transparency request, described below.

Ads in Ascenseur

Ascenseur is free because it shows ads. There are two kinds:

• Full-screen ads may appear after you clear a level, from level 11 on, spaced several levels and at least 90 seconds apart while you play. Never during a level, and never after a failed run.
• Rewarded ads are optional. When you are out of hints you can choose to watch one to get three more. Watching is never required to play or finish any level.

Who provides the ads

The ads come from Google AdMob, using the Google Mobile Ads SDK and Google's User Messaging Platform. For users in the European Economic Area and Switzerland the provider is Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland; in the United Kingdom and everywhere else it is Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. Google processes this data as an independent controller under its own privacy policy.

What Google processes

According to Google's disclosures for the Mobile Ads SDK, this includes:

• Device identifiers: the advertising ID (Android advertising ID, or Apple's IDFA if you allow tracking) and app-scoped identifiers,
• IP address, from which an approximate location is derived,
• Ad and usage data: which ads were requested, shown and tapped, and how you interacted with them,
• Device information: such as device model, operating system version and language,
• Diagnostics: crash and performance data about the ad software itself.

On Android the ad software may also use Android's Privacy Sandbox (Topics and attribution) where your device supports it and you have not turned it off in your device settings.

Google uses this to deliver ads, to measure them, to limit how often you see the same ad, to detect fraud and abuse, and to personalise ads. The game never combines this with any data of its own, because it has none.

Legal basis

Where the law requires consent, as in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, the ad software stores or reads information on your device (such as the advertising ID) for measuring ads, limiting repeats and personalising ads only with your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, § 25(1) TDDDG). If you decline, Google may show "limited ads" instead. These do not use your advertising ID or device storage for those purposes, only to detect invalid traffic, and rely on our legitimate interest in funding a free game (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) and on Google's own legal bases.

Transfers outside the EU

Google may process data in the United States and other countries. Google LLC is certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, including its UK Extension and the Swiss-U.S. framework, and uses the European Commission's standard contractual clauses for other transfers.

Read more

• Google Privacy Policy
• How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services
• How Google uses data for advertising
• How long Google keeps data

Security and third parties

The game keeps its save file in the app's private storage, which other apps cannot read, and sends nothing of its own over the network. This website is served only over encrypted HTTPS. The ad software sends its data to Google over encrypted connections. Google has committed to protecting this data under its Controller-Controller Data Protection Terms, which include the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, a level of protection at least equal to this policy.

Our mailbox is run by an email provider that processes messages on our behalf under a data processing agreement (Art. 28 GDPR).

How long data is kept

• Save file: on your device until you reset your progress or uninstall the game.
• Your consent choice: on your device, stored by Google's software, until you change it, clear the app's data or uninstall.
• Ad data at Google: for the periods Google describes in its retention policy.
• Website request data at Cloudflare: only as long as Cloudflare needs it to deliver and protect the site, as described in Cloudflare's privacy policy. We do not collect or store these logs ourselves.
• Emails: until your request is resolved, and at the latest 12 months after the conversation ends, unless the law requires us to keep them longer.

Your choices

Consent in the EEA, UK and Switzerland

When you open Ascenseur in these regions and your choice is needed, the first time and whenever it needs renewing, Google's consent form appears. You can accept, decline, or choose per purpose and per partner. Your choice is stored on your device by Google's software and passed to Google with each ad request; we never see it.

You can withdraw or change your consent at any time. This version of the game has no button to reopen the form, so for now: on Android, clear the game's data (Settings › Apps › Ascenseur › Storage › Clear data); on iPhone and iPad, delete and reinstall the game. The form appears again on the next launch. Both steps also erase your progress. A button to reopen the form inside the game is planned; if you have questions until then, email us.

Tracking on iPhone and iPad

Before your device's advertising identifier is used for tracking, Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt asks for permission. If you choose Ask App Not to Track, the identifier is not shared. You can change this at any time in Settings › Privacy & Security › Tracking.

Advertising ID on Android

You can reset or delete your advertising ID in Settings › Google › Ads (on some devices Settings › Privacy › Ads). A deleted ID can no longer be used for personalised ads.

Deleting data

We hold no data about you from the game, so there is nothing for us to delete. Uninstalling removes the game's data from your device. For data processed by Google, use Google's controls linked above or contact Google directly.

Children

Ascenseur is a general-audience puzzle game suitable for all ages. It is not directed at children, it asks nobody for personal information, and its ads are not targeted at children. If you believe a child's personal data has been processed in connection with our games, email us and we will help resolve it.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to access your data (Art. 15), to have it corrected (Art. 16) or erased (Art. 17), to restrict its processing (Art. 18), to receive it in a portable format (Art. 20), and to object to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21). You can withdraw consent at any time with effect for the future (Art. 7(3)). To use these rights, email support@gkw.games. For data that only Google holds, we will point you to the right place.

Your right to object

Where we rely on legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR), you can object at any time, on grounds relating to your particular situation (Art. 21 GDPR). This covers the hosting logs, email handling and limited ads described above. Email support@gkw.games; for limited ads you can also stop all ad processing by uninstalling the game.

You may also complain to a data protection authority, for example in the EU country where you live, or to the authority responsible for us: Landesbeauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit Nordrhein-Westfalen (LDI NRW), Kavalleriestraße 2–4, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany.

Changes

When our games or this website change what they do with data, we update this page and its date. Each game's section describes the current version in the App Store and on Google Play.

Contact

Questions about privacy go to support@gkw.games. The postal address is in the Impressum. A German summary for this website is on the same page under Datenschutz.