Privacy Policy

What Mibbies stores, and where

On your device

Mibbies saves your child's progress locally: which worlds they have woken, the mibbies and eggs in their family, the traits and snacks they have discovered, which games they have played, and where they are in the tutorial. This is kept in the app's own storage on the device.

Your child can also give each mibbie a nickname (up to 12 characters). Mibbies never asks for a real name and does not need one, but whatever is typed is stored the same way as the rest of the save: on the device only. It is never transmitted to us or to anyone else.

In your own iCloud

So that a family's mibbies can follow them from an iPhone to an iPad, the app places a copy of that same save file in your iCloud storage, using Apple's iCloud key-value service. This is your Apple account, not ours. We have no access to it, no console for it, and no way to read, export or recover it. Apple's handling of iCloud data is governed by Apple's Privacy Policy.

If you sign out of iCloud or turn iCloud off for Mibbies, the app simply keeps using the copy on the device.

In your Photos, only when you ask

Mibbies can turn a moment in the game into a photo postcard. Saving one is placed behind a grown-ups only gate. You must press and hold a button for several seconds, which a young child will not do by accident.

When you save a postcard, iOS asks your permission to add photos to your library. Mibbies uses add-only access: it can place a new picture in your library and nothing more. It cannot see, read or search the photos already there. The postcard is a picture of the game, nothing else, and it goes to your library alone. It is never uploaded anywhere.

What Mibbies does not do

As of this version, Mibbies contains:

• No advertising of any kind, and no advertising identifiers.
• No analytics, telemetry, crash reporting or usage measurement. Nothing measures how, when or how long the game is played.
• No third-party SDKs, trackers or software development kits.
• No accounts, logins, profiles or email collection.
• No in-app purchases, subscriptions, currencies or paid extras.
• No social features: no chat, no messaging, no user-to-user contact, no sharing to social networks, no comment fields.
• No links out of the app to websites, stores or other apps.
• No location, contacts, microphone, camera, health, or device-identifier access.

This version of the app makes no network requests at all. Everything it needs, including its fonts, its 3D engine and its music, which is generated live rather than streamed, is contained in the app itself. This is verified automatically as part of our build process before every release.

Children's privacy

Mibbies is made for children roughly 4 to 10 years old and is listed in the App Store's Kids Category.

This version does not knowingly collect, store, use or disclose any personal information from children, or from anyone else. Because nothing leaves the device except into the family's own Apple iCloud, there is nothing for us to collect, sell, share or lose.

This means, in the language of the relevant laws:

• Under the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Mibbies collects no personal information from children under 13, and therefore does not require verifiable parental consent for collection. No information is disclosed to any third party.
• Under the EU/UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we are not a data controller or processor of any personal data from users of this app, because no personal data is transmitted to or held by us.
• Under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA), we do not collect, sell or share personal information, and we have never done so.

We do not use your child's information to build profiles, to target advertising, or to encourage spending. There are no loot boxes, no timers that punish you for leaving, no streaks to break, and nothing to buy.

Deleting your data

Because we hold nothing, there is nothing to request from us. You are always in full control:

• To delete everything on the device: delete the app. iOS removes its storage with it.
• To delete the iCloud copy as well: on your device, open Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage Account Storage, find Mibbies, and delete its data. You may also turn iCloud Drive off for Mibbies at any time to stop the app using iCloud in the future.
• To delete a saved postcard: it is an ordinary picture in your Photos app. Delete it as you would any other.

Beta testing (TestFlight)

If you are trying Mibbies through Apple's TestFlight programme, Apple provides us with the email address you used to accept the invitation, along with any crash reports and any feedback or screenshots you choose to send us through TestFlight. We use these only to fix problems and improve the game, and we delete them when testing ends. We do not add testers to mailing lists or share their addresses with anyone.

TestFlight is operated by Apple and is governed by Apple's Privacy Policy. TestFlight is for adults; please do not invite a child to join it directly.

The app itself behaves identically in TestFlight. It still collects nothing and still makes no network requests.

Changes to this policy

Mibbies is still being developed, and future versions may do things this one does not. We will update this page and change the effective date below before any such version is released, never quietly afterwards.

In particular, we would update this policy before a version that:

• measured anything about how the game is played, even anonymously;
• offered anything for sale inside the app;
• linked out of the app to a website, a store, or anywhere else;
• sent anything your child made to us or to anyone other than your own iCloud.

If a change ever meant collecting personal information from a child, we would obtain verifiable parental consent first, as the law requires, and we would say plainly what is collected and why.

Contact us

Questions about privacy in Mibbies are welcome.