Privacy Policy

Abyssal (“Abyssal”, “we”, “us”) is a trivia game for iPhone, operated by Gilbert Schmidler. This policy explains what information the app uses, why, who it’s shared with, and the choices you have. If you have any questions, email gibgjs@gmail.com.

The short version

• To judge your answers, the answer you submit and the question it’s for are sent to our server, to Google’s Gemini AI, and to Wikipedia.

• We use an anonymous ID to count your free daily questions and check whether you have Premium. We don’t ask for your name, email, contacts, or location.

• We don’t show ads, we don’t track you across apps or websites, and we don’t sell your information.

Information we use

Your answers

When you submit an answer, we send the answer text and the question it’s for to our server so it can be judged. Our server:

• sends them to Google’s Gemini API, which decides whether the answer counts and how rare it is, and generates a short fact about it;

• looks the answer up on Wikipedia (Wikimedia Foundation) to see how popular the topic is.

We save each judgment (the question, your answer in simplified form, and the result) for up to 30 days, so the same answer gets the same result and doesn’t need to be judged again. These saved judgments are not linked to your ID or any other information about you.

Please don’t type personal information into the answer box. It’s meant for trivia answers only.

Spoken answers

If you tap the microphone, your speech is turned into text using Apple’s speech recognition. Where your device supports it, this happens entirely on your iPhone. Otherwise, Apple may process the audio on its servers under Apple’s own privacy policy. We never receive audio. Only the transcribed text is sent, like a typed answer. The microphone is used only while you’re answering by voice, and only after you grant permission.

Anonymous player ID and daily usage

The app creates a random, anonymous ID for you through our purchase provider, RevenueCat. It isn’t based on your name, email, Apple Account, or device identifiers. We use it to:

• count how many free questions and rare-answer reveals you’ve used today. We store the ID, the date, which questions you started, and when. These records are automatically deleted after 3 days;

• check whether you have Premium.

The app also sends your device’s time zone offset so your free questions reset at your local midnight.

Purchases

If you buy Abyssal Premium, the payment is handled entirely by Apple. We never see your payment details. RevenueCat receives the purchase information Apple provides, such as the product, purchase date, renewal status, and transaction identifiers, so the app and our server can tell whether Premium is active. RevenueCat keeps purchase records according to its own privacy policy and legal requirements.

Technical information

Like any internet service, our server provider, Cloudflare, receives your device’s IP address when the app connects. We use it only briefly, to limit how many requests one connection can make so the service isn’t abused, and we don’t store it. Cloudflare may keep limited logs under its own privacy policy.

Information stored only on your device

Your deepest dive, number of dives, game progress counters, and settings are stored on your iPhone and are never sent to us.

If you contact us

If you email us, including through “Send feedback” in the app, we receive your email address and whatever you write. Feedback emails include your app version, iOS version, and the last few characters of your anonymous player ID so we can help. We use this only to respond and improve the app.

What we don’t do

• We don’t collect your name, email (unless you email us), phone number, contacts, photos, or location.

• We don’t use advertising or analytics tools, and we don’t track you across other companies’ apps or websites.

• We don’t sell or rent your information, or share it for advertising.

Who we share information with

We share information only with the service providers that make the app work, and only for that purpose: