Privacy Policy

Odd Ones Out is a party-game app (iOS) and website. You can play without creating an account: there is no sign-up, no email address, and no password. We do not ask for your real name, email, phone number, or precise location.

To be clear about what we do hold: you pick a display name, and that name is stored — on your device and, when you play online, on our servers together with your random user ID. Your IP address is also handled by our servers while you play. Both are covered in detail below (sections 02 and 11). Because you choose the display name yourself, we ask you not to use your real name — a nickname is exactly what it is meant to be.

When you play, you choose a display name (any nickname you like) and an avatar (a cartoon character from a set we provide). They are saved on your device so you don't have to re-enter them each session, and you can change them at any time from Settings.

In multiplayer and online games, your display name and avatar are sent to our servers and shared with the other players in your room so they can identify you. We do store the display name — it can appear alongside your user ID in room data, in play history, and in player reports — so please choose a nickname rather than your real name. A name you invent tells us nothing about who you are; a real name does.

We never verify a display name against any real-world identity, and we do not link it to an email, phone number, or social account — because we don't have any.

To understand how the games are played, we store usage data for gameplay events such as opening, starting, or completing a game, and errors. For each event this can include the game name, the mode (local, multiplayer, or global), the screen you're on, how long something took, the room code, and the number of players and rounds. We also store basic technical context: device type, language, timezone, screen size, network type, and available memory.

Each device is given a random identifier (a "user ID"). This data is pseudonymous rather than fully anonymous: it is tied to that random ID — and, where you have played online, to the display name you chose — but not to your real name, email, or any verified identity. We cannot work out who you are from it unless you tell us yourself. You can see your own user ID at the bottom of the app's Settings screen.

Alongside individual events, we keep a history of activity linked to your user ID — which games you have played, when you played them, how many rounds and players were involved, which modes you used, and whether you have ever been reported or banned. This history is what lets us see patterns over time instead of isolated snapshots.

We use it to improve the games, to detect abuse and cheating, and — importantly — to help you if you ever lose your profile. Because we can look up the activity behind a user ID, we can usually confirm that a profile really was yours and see what you had played (see Losing Your Profile below).

This history is tied to a random user ID and to the display name you chose — not to an email, phone number, or any verified identity. We cannot look up "who" you are from it, only what that device has done in the app; that is also exactly why a self-chosen nickname is the right thing to put in the name field.

When you first open the app, we ask a few quick questions and store coarse, non-identifying details: an age range, gender, country, and language. You don't have to give your real information if you'd rather not — we only use these answers to understand our players and improve the games.

Your profile is stored on your device and on our servers, in a record keyed to your random user ID. That record holds your display name, your number of wins and sessions, which games you have tried and how many times you have played each one, your favourite game, when it was last updated, and the most recent IP address used (see section 11).

We keep it server-side for three reasons: so statistics survive across sessions, so we can detect abuse and cheating, and so we have something to look up if you ever lose your profile and contact us. In global 1v1 matchmaking, your win count is shared with the opponent you are matched with, so both players can see each other's record before the game starts.

Your user ID is what ties everything together, and it is stored on your device. If you delete the app, reset or lose your device, or switch to a new phone, that ID can be lost — and there is no login or password to fall back on. When that happens the app will normally start you fresh, and we cannot promise an automatic restore.

But the profile record itself — your display name, wins, sessions, games played, and favourite game — is kept on our servers, keyed to that user ID. So contact us at oou.inquiries@gmail.com and we can look it up, confirm from the play history that it was yours, and see what we can restore. The more you can tell us — your old user ID, the display name you used, roughly when and what you played — the better our chances.

Tip: write down your user ID from the bottom of the Settings screen while you still have access. It is the single most useful thing you can give us.

Purchases are a separate matter and are handled by Apple: use Restore Purchases in Settings with the same Apple ID.

When you play in an online room or through global matchmaking, your display name, avatar, and game actions (such as guesses, votes, and scores) are transmitted in real time to the other players in your session. This is necessary for the game to function. We do not permanently store the content of individual moves or in-game messages beyond what is captured as part of the gameplay statistics and play history described above.

If you use the Report Player feature, the report is stored so we can review it. A report includes the reported player's user ID and the display name they were using, the reason selected, a timestamp, and the user ID of the player who submitted it — the last so we can tell genuine reports from abuse of the report system. Reports are not shown to other players. We use this information solely to investigate abuse and enforce bans.

If something goes wrong, we store the error message and the screen where it happened so we can fix it. We do not store IP addresses together with error data.

An IP address is the piece of data that could most plausibly identify you, so we are specific about what happens to it:

• While you play, your IP is used to maintain your connection during the session.

• We store the most recent IP address seen for your user ID as part of your profile record, and we keep it up to date as you play. We use it only to enforce bans, to detect abuse such as one person flooding the servers from many profiles, and as a possible way to recognise your profile if your user ID is lost (for example after a reinstall) so your statistics can be restored.

• We do not use IP addresses for advertising, profiling, or precise location. We do not derive your street address or GPS position from them, and we do not share them with third parties except our hosting provider, which necessarily routes the traffic.

• Where a user is banned, the IP is retained for as long as the ban is in force so it can be enforced and appealed.

You can ask us to delete the profile record behind your user ID, including the stored IP — see Your Rights.

We use this data to operate and improve the games (for example, to see which games are popular and where players drop off), to fix errors, to help players who have lost a profile, and to prevent abuse and enforce bans. We do not sell your data, and we do not use it for advertising.

To be explicit, Odd Ones Out contains no advertising and no third-party advertising or tracking SDKs. We do not sell, rent, or trade your data. We do not build advertising profiles, do not track you across other apps or websites, and do not use the App Tracking Transparency permission because we have nothing to track you with. We do not use your data — including photos or answers — to train machine-learning models.

If you are in the EU/EEA, we process data on the basis of our legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) in operating, securing, and improving the app and preventing abuse, and on contract performance (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR) where processing is necessary to deliver a multiplayer game you have chosen to play. Where we ask for permission — for example access to your photo library — the basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you can withdraw at any time in iOS Settings.

• Live gameplay data (room state, connections, shared photos): only in server memory, deleted when the room ends.
• Profile records (display name, statistics, most recent IP): kept while the profile is in use, and until you ask us to delete it.
• Usage events and play history (including display names used online): kept for as long as they are useful for statistics, support, and abuse prevention, and reviewed periodically.
• Reports and ban records (including an IP for a banned user): kept for as long as the ban is in force, so it can be enforced and appealed.
• Error logs: kept until the underlying issue is resolved.
• Data on your device: kept until you delete the app or reset it from Settings.

Our game servers run on third-party cloud hosting infrastructure, and profile records, play history, reports, and error logs are stored in a hosted database provided by a third party. Hosting may involve servers located outside the EU/EEA. Where that is the case, transfers are covered by appropriate safeguards such as the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. These providers act as processors — they host our systems on our instructions and are not permitted to use your data for their own purposes.

Purchases are handled entirely by Apple through the App Store under Apple's own privacy policy; we never see your payment details. We do not use third-party analytics, advertising, or attribution services.

One game, Answer with a GIF, lets you search for a GIF to reply with. Those searches are served by KLIPY, a third-party GIF provider. Your search text is sent from our servers to KLIPY so it can return matching results, together with your random user ID, which KLIPY uses to tell one requester from another. Your device never contacts KLIPY directly, so KLIPY does not see your IP address, and we do not send your display name. As everywhere else, the user ID is a random string that is not linked to your real identity.

Traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit, and administrative access to our systems is limited and protected. We design for data minimisation: we avoid collecting anything we don't need, keep sensitive material (such as shared photos) in memory only, and never store payment data.

No system can be guaranteed completely secure. If a breach ever affects your data, we will act promptly and, where required by law, notify the relevant authority and affected users.

Administrative access to our systems is restricted to the app's owners — owners only, never other players. We may disclose data to authorities only where we are legally required to do so, or where it is necessary to investigate serious abuse or protect someone's safety.

Because the data we hold is pseudonymous — a random user ID and a nickname you chose — we usually cannot identify a specific person from it, and we may not be able to link a request to you without your user ID. If you provide your user ID (found at the bottom of Settings), you can exercise your rights in relation to the data behind that ID: access a copy of it, ask for correction or deletion, ask us to restrict or object to processing, request portability, withdraw consent, or appeal a ban.

Email oou.inquiries@gmail.com and we will respond within 30 days. Note that if you ask us to delete your history, we lose the ability to help you recover or verify a lost profile later. If you are in the EU/EEA, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority (in Denmark: Datatilsynet).

Odd Ones Out includes a game — Whose Camera Roll — where players share a few photos from their own device and others guess whose photo it is. These photos are handled with extra care:

• You choose them. The game only uses photos you personally select (or a random pick from your library that you approve), and only after you grant photo access in iOS. We never scan or upload your photo library on our own.

• Only for the round. The photos you share are sent to the other players in your room so the game can be played. They are kept only temporarily in server memory while the game is running — never written to disk, never saved in a database, and never used to build a photo archive or a training dataset.

• Deleted right after. When the game ends — or if everyone leaves the room — the photos are deleted immediately from the server. We keep no copy.

• We upload only what's needed. The app sends only the exact number of photos the current game uses, scaled to the number of players, so nothing extra ever leaves your device.

• Screenshot-protected. While playing, the shared photos are shielded so they do not appear in screenshots or screen recordings.

• No face recognition. We do not analyse who or what is in your photos, run facial recognition, or create face data of any kind.

This is an online multiplayer game and is not available in Under 12 mode (see below).

Odd Ones Out is not intended for children under 12. When a player selects Under 12 as their age during onboarding, the app automatically applies a set of restrictions to keep the experience safe and age-appropriate: mature games and question categories are hidden or locked, only a small set of hand-picked family-friendly categories is available, and online multiplayer — including the photo-based Whose Camera Roll game — is disabled, because content in online rooms is controlled by other players and cannot be guaranteed appropriate. You can read the full list in our Rules for Under 12.

The selected age is stored on the device only, is not verified against any external database, and is applied in good faith — we encourage parents and guardians to complete onboarding together with their child. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 12. If you believe a child has provided data, please contact us at oou.inquiries@gmail.com.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time — for example when we add a new game or change how something works. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. If a change materially affects how we handle your data, we will make it clear in the app. Continuing to use Odd Ones Out after a change means you accept the updated policy.

Questions about your privacy? Email us at oou.inquiries@gmail.com. You can also find this policy from the Settings screen inside the app, or visit our Support page.