Privacy Policy

The short version

Games Bucket List has no user account and no login. Your library — games, statuses, ratings, notes and lists — is stored on your device and, if you are signed in to iCloud and hold a Pro subscription, synchronised through your own private iCloud database. I never see it — with one exception you trigger yourself: a list you decide to publish becomes a public page (section 10).

The app contains no analytics SDK, no advertising, no tracking pixels and no third-party trackers. Apart from the purchase SDK behind the subscription (section 9), what leaves your device is what you look up in the game catalog, the title lookup for a link you share into the app (section 5), and any list you publish yourself.

1. Controller

Name

Peter Hildel

Address

Gustav-Adolf-Str. 19, 90513 Zirndorf, Germany

Email

info@hildel.com

Controller within the meaning of Art. 4(7) GDPR for the processing described below. There is no statutory obligation to appoint a data protection officer.

2. Data the app stores on your device

Everything you enter stays in the app's local database on your device:

• Library entries: title, platform, genre, release year, status, rating, notes, the date you added or finished a game, and the source link if the entry came from the share sheet.
• Lists: name, description, colour, icon and which games belong to them.
• Profile: the display name you choose and, optionally, an avatar image.
• Preferences: app language, light/dark appearance and library layout.
• Cached cover art for games you saved, kept in the app's cache directory.

This data is not transmitted to me. Deleting the app removes the local copy; if iCloud sync is active, see section 3.

3. iCloud sync (Apple CloudKit)

If you are signed in to iCloud on your device and hold a Pro subscription (section 9), the app synchronises your library through Apple's CloudKit into the private database of your own iCloud account. That storage area is under your control, not mine — I have no access to it and receive no copy, no key and no statistics about it.

Apple Inc. / Apple Distribution International Ltd. acts as the operator of iCloud; the processing is governed by Apple's privacy policy. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (providing the functionality you requested).

You can stop the sync at any time by signing out of iCloud or turning off iCloud Drive for the app in iOS Settings. The app then keeps working locally, and the same happens when the subscription ends: the sync pauses, nothing is deleted. To delete data already synced, remove the entries in the app or delete the app's iCloud data via iOS Settings → your name → iCloud.

4. The game catalog service

To fill in titles, platforms, genres, release years and cover art, the app queries a catalog service I operate at games-bucket-list-api.vercel.app (hosted by Vercel Inc.). A request is only sent when you search for a game, open a game's details, or save something through the share sheet.

Depending on the action, such a request contains:

• the search term or game title you are looking up (max. 160 characters),
• the catalog ID of a game whose details are being loaded,
• for entries created from a shared link: the platform the link came from (for example “steam”, “youtube”, “web”) and the game's ID on that platform — not the full URL,
• the language of your device (for example “de-DE”), so results come back in a sensible language,
• technical connection data such as your IP address and the time of the request, which any web server receives.

Your library, your ratings and your notes are never part of these requests — what a list you publish yourself carries instead is described in section 10. No user account, device identifier or advertising ID is transmitted, and the requests are not used to build a profile. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (providing the functionality you requested).

Cover images are downloaded from the IGDB image server the catalog points to — images.igdb.com, operated by Twitch Interactive, Inc. — and cached on your device. As with any image on the web, that server sees your IP address at the moment of download.

5. The share extension

When you share a link or a piece of text into Games Bucket List, the extension writes it into a shared container on your device and makes the network requests itself, without waiting for the app to launch. The title it ends up with is matched against the catalog as described in section 4.

To find out what a shared link is called, your device asks the provider of that link directly — and for this it sends the full URL:

• for a YouTube link, the oEmbed interface of youtube.com (Google), which returns the title of the video,
• for every other link, Apple's LinkPresentation, which fetches the shared page itself.

These requests go from your device to that provider and not through my catalog service, so that provider sees your IP address and the URL you shared — just as it would if you opened the link in a browser. What reaches me is still only the resulting title plus the platform and the game's ID on it, never the full URL.

6. Photos and Image Playground

An avatar is optional. If you pick a photo, iOS shows you its own picker and only the image you select is handed to the app — the app does not get access to your photo library beyond that. If you create an avatar with Image Playground, that happens through Apple's system feature on supported devices; the resulting image is stored in the app's container on your device. Avatars are not uploaded to me.

7. Diagnostics, analytics and advertising

The app writes technical log messages through Apple's system logging (OSLog) — these stay on the device and are not sent anywhere. There is no analytics SDK, no advertising and no tracking of any kind.

The app does contain one SDK from a third party: RevenueCat, which handles the subscription (section 9). That is purchase infrastructure, not tracking — it runs without a user identity, without attribution and without an advertising ID. “No analytics” means the app itself: it measures nothing about how you use it. What is evaluated about the purchases is described in section 9.

If you choose to send crash and usage data to Apple in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics, Apple may share aggregated crash reports with me as the developer. That is an Apple setting you control, and the reports contain no personal library content.

8. App Store and purchases

The app is distributed through Apple's App Store. Download, updates and any payment processing are handled by Apple; I only receive anonymous, aggregated sales statistics through App Store Connect.

The app offers Pro, an auto-renewable subscription available monthly or yearly, which unlocks the paid features — among them iCloud sync and publishing lists. Purchase, renewal and cancellation all run through your App Store account: Apple handles the billing, and I receive no payment data at all — no card number, no billing address, no name. You manage or cancel the subscription in iOS Settings → your name → Subscriptions. Which store client the app uses for this is described in section 9.

9. Purchases and subscriptions (RevenueCat)

The store client for the Pro subscription is the SDK of RevenueCat, Inc., 1032 E Brandon Blvd #3003, Brandon, FL 33511, USA. It is the only third-party SDK in the app and it is configured anonymously on purpose: the app never signs you in to it and hands it no user identity, no attribution data and no advertising ID.

What is processed there:

• an anonymous app user ID the SDK generates itself,
• your purchase and subscription status,
• the App Store transaction data belonging to it,
• technical connection data: device, OS and app version, IP address and the time of the request.

The payment itself runs exclusively through Apple; I receive no payment data.

What I do see of these purchases is the RevenueCat dashboard: aggregated numbers on subscriptions started, renewed and cancelled. They show me no individual person, and none can be traced back to one. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (providing the functionality you requested).

10. Lists you publish

You can publish an individual list as a public link. That is always a deliberate act, one list at a time, and it never happens automatically. When you do, this leaves your device and is stored by the service described in section 4:

• the name of the list,
• its description, if it has one,
• its entries in order as catalog IDs — a manually kept title only for an entry with no catalog match,
• and, only if you switch that on for this list, the status and rating of each entry.

Explicitly not included are your personal notes, the timestamps from your library (added, started, finished), the source link an entry came from, the catalog matching state — and nothing that identifies you or your device, your profile name and avatar included.

The page can be opened by anyone who has the link. No account is created for it: the permission to change or withdraw the list is a token issued exactly once, of which the server keeps only a hash. What you publish is a snapshot, not a live mirror of your library — it changes only when you update it. Withdrawing deletes the record on the server, and withdrawing is never tied to the subscription. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (providing the functionality you requested).

11. This website

This website is static and hosted on GitHub Pages (GitHub Inc., 88 Colin P. Kelly Jr. Street, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA). When you visit it, the hosting provider processes technical connection data — IP address, time of request, requested file, referrer and user agent — in server log files, which is technically necessary to deliver the page. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in operating a functioning website).

The site sets no cookies of its own and uses no analytics. Every resource it needs — stylesheets, scripts and web fonts — is served from this site itself, so no third party receives your IP address when you open a page. Your dark-mode preference is stored locally in your browser (localStorage) and never leaves your device.

Video on the home page. The teaser on the home page is first shown only as a preview image, which is also served from this site. Only when you click “play” is the YouTube player loaded in privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com). Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland) then receives your IP address and technical data about your browser, and YouTube may set its own cookies or similar storage during playback. The legal basis is your consent given by clicking (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, § 25(1) TDDDG); without a click, no connection to YouTube is made. Details: Google's privacy policy.

12. Recipients and transfers outside the EU

• Apple — iCloud sync, App Store distribution, payment processing.
• RevenueCat, Inc. — store client for the Pro subscription.
• Vercel Inc. — hosting of the catalog service and of the published list pages.
• Neon — the database behind the published lists, obtained through Vercel.
• Google — title lookup for a shared YouTube link (youtube.com oEmbed).
• The operator of a page you share — link preview through Apple's LinkPresentation.
• Twitch Interactive, Inc. — the IGDB image server that delivers cover art.
• GitHub Inc. — hosting of this website.
• Google — YouTube player on the home page, only after you click “play”.

These providers may process data in the USA. The transfers are based on the EU standard contractual clauses and, where applicable, the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. No data is passed on for advertising purposes, and nothing is sold.

13. Retention and your rights

Library data is kept for as long as you keep it in the app. A list you published stays on the server until you withdraw it; withdrawing deletes the record. Catalog requests are processed to answer them; server logs at the hosting providers are deleted according to their own retention periods (typically a few days to weeks).

You have the right to information (Art. 15), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20) and to object (Art. 21 GDPR). One email to info@hildel.com is enough. Because the app stores no personal data on my side, a request for information will usually be answered with exactly that.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority — for me that is the Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht, Promenade 27, 91522 Ansbach, Germany.

14. Changes to this policy

If the app gains features that change how data is handled, this page will be updated before those features ship. The date at the top always shows the current version.