Backstapp – privacy policy

This is the privacy policy of the Backstapp app for Android and iPhone. The app’s own privacy page, under Settings → Privacy, carries the same text; this page adds who publishes the app and how to reach us.

This app collects nothing about you. There is no account: your name and your games travel over Bluetooth, from phone to phone in the room you play in, and never to a server. The one network connection is the Featured section, described right below.

Featured section

While the lobby is open, the app downloads a public announcement file and the pictures it names from featured.backstapp.com (GitHub Pages): at most twice a day, and once more each time you switch this on. The request carries no name, account or identifier. The server sees your IP address, as with any web page, and on an iPhone also the system version and the language setting that iOS adds to every web request. The file is signed, and the app shows only content whose signature matches. With this switched off, the app makes no network connections at all.

The switch is in the app under Settings → Privacy → Fetch featured.

The files at featured.backstapp.com are served by GitHub Pages (GitHub, Inc.), whose privacy statement is here: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-general-privacy-statement.

What is stored on your phone

Your name, your language, sound and game settings, and the history of the games played on this phone: when they were played, the other players’ names, the results and the moves or hands. Also the crash log if the app has crashed (the error, where in the code it happened, and the app version), a short-lived token that lets you back into a game you were cut off from, and the featured items fetched last. None of it is sent anywhere except what the next section lists, and the phone’s own backup (below) may hold a copy.

What is sent over Bluetooth

When you create or join a game: your name, the game you chose and its settings, and the moves of that game. They go to the other phones in that game, directly from phone to phone and unencrypted. While you host, your phone also advertises the game to everyone nearby, and the advertisement carries your name: any Bluetooth device in range can read it for as long as your game is open, also while you wait in the lobby or the app is in the background, until you end it, for example with End game in the game menu. It is sent from a rotating random address, not from your device’s permanent identifier.

Why permissions are asked for

Bluetooth permissions are needed to find nearby games and connect to them. On Android 10 and 11 the system additionally requires location permission for Bluetooth scanning — the app neither reads nor stores your location.

Deleting your data

Uninstalling the app deletes all of it from the phone. On an iPhone the app’s data can be part of the phone’s iCloud or computer backup, like any app’s, so a backup made earlier keeps a copy until it is replaced or deleted; Android backups do not include it. The game history and the crash log can also be cleared on their own pages, and switching off Fetch featured deletes what it fetched. No request to us is needed, because none of it ever reaches us. The other players’ phones keep their own history of the games you played together, with your name in it, and only their owners can clear it.

Contact

Backstapp is published by PopGrow Oy. Questions about this policy or your data: info@backstapp.com.

E-mail sent to info@backstapp.com is used only to answer you and is kept until the matter is closed; on request we show or delete it. The app stores’ crash reports reach us only from users who chose to share them, and without a name. You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Ombudsman (Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman, tietosuoja.fi).

In effect from 2026-11-08. A changed policy is published on this page and in an app update.