Sprite Catch

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 20 October 2026 · Effective: 20 October 2026

Sprite Catch is a free app made by one person, and everything the app does is free to use. The Trading feed may show a few sponsored cards, each marked Ad; nothing about you is used to choose them, and advertisers are told totals, not who you are (section 2). The app has its own currency, called Gems, earned by using it. It does collect a limited amount of information about how the app is used, so that it can be made better — you can turn that off. It can also ask you to answer a questionnaire about the games you play. Those answers are read by me and go nowhere else — nothing about you is sold to anybody, and nothing ever has been. This page explains what is collected, why, and what you can do about it. It covers the iPhone app, the Android app and the web version at spritecatch.com.

1. What this policy covers

Sprite Catch is made and operated by Mateo Duran, an individual developer based in Uruguay. For the purposes of the GDPR, I am the data controller. This policy applies to the Sprite Catch iPhone app, the Android app, the web version at spritecatch.com, and the public pages on spritecatch.com and app.spritecatch.com.

Privacy questions, access requests and deletion requests: privacy@spritecatch.com

2. What information we collect

The categories below describe what the service collects. Most of it is optional, and how much exists depends entirely on how you use the app: an anonymous collection tracker generates almost none of it.

Account information

Identifiers that let the service recognise you and restore your collection: a random device identifier the app generates for itself, a randomly generated account ID, and — if you choose to sign in — the identifier your sign-in provider returns, from Sign in with Apple or from Google. That identifier is meaningless outside the service: it identifies you to this app and to nothing else, and it is what lets you sign back in on a new phone and find your collection waiting.

Your username is different from all of those, because you choose it. It is the short handle other collectors type to find you — shown on your profile, used by search, and part of your profile's web address. Two things follow from your having picked it rather than the service: it can be recognisable, and if you reuse a handle you use elsewhere, somebody may connect the two. Pick one you are comfortable being public, and change it in Settings if you would rather not be findable under it. It can be changed once every fourteen days, and the service records when you last changed it so it can tell you when you may again.

The account ID is the random code that used to do that job. It still identifies your account to the service, and it is still what a support conversation quotes — but it is now shown only to you, in Settings, rather than on your profile. Older links and older versions of the app still work with it.

Signing in is optional for the collection tracker and required for the community features. Tracking your collection, scanning, exporting and keeping it in sync all work on the device identifier alone; posting, replying, reacting, following, messaging and trading do not, because that content belongs to a collector other people can find, and a device identifier cannot follow you to a new phone.

The device identifier is created by the app. It is not an advertising identifier, not Apple's or Google's, and it is not connected to your Apple ID or your Google account unless you sign in. On iPhone it lives in the Keychain, so it survives deleting the app; on Android it lives in the app's private storage, which the system erases on uninstall.

Signing in from a browser creates no device identifier at all. The one described above belongs to the two apps. The web version has never had one, cannot make one, and the server refuses to give it one — which is also why there is no such thing as a guest account on the web: you either sign in there or you are nobody, tracking a collection that stays in your own browser. What being signed in is, in a browser, is a token your browser holds; section 3 says what it looks like and signing out throws it away.

Turning notifications on creates a second identifier, and it is not mine. To deliver a notification at all, a phone has to be registered with the notification service its platform provides — Apple's on iPhone, Google's on Android — and that service issues a token for your device which the app stores so it knows where to send. On Android, from a future release, this also means Google's messaging service creates an identifier for that installation of the app. Both exist only while notifications are on, both go away when you turn them off or uninstall, and neither is an advertising identifier or can follow you into another company's app. Section 6 says exactly what each service receives.

The account also records the country your requests come from, so that I can see which countries the app is used in and decide which languages to translate it into. Four things about it are worth stating plainly, because they are what keep it as small as it is:

• It is the country and nothing finer. It is worked out from your internet address by the service that hosts the app, the same way the usage information below already records one. Nothing anywhere in this app reads a city, a region or coordinates, the app asks for no location permission, and it never uses your phone's location. The one other thing the service keeps that is about where you are is how far your clock is from UTC, which is read from the clock your phone is already set to rather than from any location service, and which section 4 describes in full.
• It is recorded once and then left alone. The first time your account is seen from a country it can work out, that is what is kept — travelling, or using a VPN, does not change it afterwards.
• No other collector ever sees it. It is not on your profile, not on the shareable web page described in section 4, and not sent to anybody else's app. The language above is the thing other collectors can see; the country is not. The flag some collectors wear beside their name is a separate thing entirely — one they picked themselves, described in section 3 — and this recorded country is neither the source of it nor changed by it.
• It can be blank. If it cannot be worked out, nothing is recorded rather than something guessed.

The account also records which version of Sprite Catch you use — the iPhone app, the Android app or the web version — so that I can tell whether a launch on a new platform is reaching anybody, and how many of the people already here are on each one. There are two of these and they answer different questions: the version you signed up in, and the version you last opened. It is the same shape of thing as the country above, and the same four things are what keep it small:

• It is the app and nothing finer. Not your phone, not its model, not which version of Android or iOS it is running — one of three words, worked out from something every request the app makes already says about itself.
• One is fixed and one follows you, and neither keeps a history. The version you signed up in is written once, when the account is created, and never changes — it says where you joined and never where you are now. The version you last opened is rewritten when you open the app somewhere else, and it is one word, overwritten in place: there is no list of the devices you have used, no record of when you switched, and nothing left behind when you stop using one.
• No other collector ever sees either of them. Neither is on your profile, on the shareable web page described in section 4, or sent to anybody else's app.
• Either can be blank. If it cannot be worked out, nothing is recorded rather than something guessed. The one you signed up in is blank for every account that existed before today; the one you last opened is blank until the next time you open the app.

Contact information

There are three ways the app can end up with your email address, and all three are your choice.

If you sign in with Apple, Apple offers to share your address with the app, and the app asks for it. Apple's sign-in sheet lets you share your real address or hide it behind a private relay address that forwards to you; either way the choice is yours, made in Apple's screen rather than in mine, and Apple only offers it the first time you authorise the app.

If you sign in with Google, Google shows you which address it is about to share before you agree, and the app asks for that address and nothing else — not your name, not your profile picture, not your contacts, and nothing about your other Google activity. The app keeps the address only if Google confirms it belongs to you; an address Google has not confirmed is discarded on arrival. Unlike Apple's, Google's sign-in offers no way to hide the address behind a relay, so the address the app receives is the real one. Where you pick the account differs by phone — on iPhone it happens in your browser, and on Android, from a future release, in a chooser Google's own software draws inside the app — but either way it is Google asking, not me, which means Google learns that you signed in to Sprite Catch and handles that under its own privacy policy — see section 6.

If you choose instead to sign in with an email address and a password, you type the address yourself. The app then emails you a short code to confirm you can read that mailbox, and you pick a password. The code is good for a few minutes and is stored scrambled, so it cannot be read back out. Your password is never stored as you typed it: what is kept is a one-way scrambled version that can be checked against a later sign-in but cannot be turned back into your password — not by me, and not by anyone who ever ended up with a copy of the database. Nobody at Sprite Catch can see it, and I will never ask you for it.

An address is used for account and service purposes — sending you a sign-in code, reaching you about something important to your account, security, or a support conversation. It is not used to send you news or promotional email unless you separately turn that on in Settings → Privacy & Safety, and you can turn it back off at any time. Having your address and having permission to market to you are two different things, and the app treats them that way.

So that nobody can use the code screen to flood a stranger's inbox, or to guess their way into an account, the service keeps a short-lived count of recent attempts. That record holds a scrambled, shortened form of the network address the request came from — never the address itself — and it is erased within a couple of days.

Before a code is sent, the address is checked for whether mail can reach it at all. The service looks at the part of your address after the @ and asks the public internet directory whether that domain exists and is set up to receive email, and it recognises a handful of well-known misspellings of the big providers. Only the domain is looked up — the part of your address before the @ is not sent anywhere for this, and the directory it asks is Cloudflare's, which already runs everything else described in section 6. If mail could not possibly arrive, you are told so on the spot, with a suggestion where there is an obvious one, instead of waiting for a code that was never coming.

If a message that is sent comes back rejected — most often because the mailbox does not exist — the service records that the address bounced, with the reason and the date, and stops sending to it. It is worth saying plainly why that record exists, because it is the one thing on this page kept for the service's benefit rather than yours: email providers cut off a sender whose messages keep bouncing, and a sender who has been cut off cannot deliver anybody's sign-in code. The record holds the address, the reason and the dates and nothing else — no name, no account, no network address, and nothing about anything else in this policy. A temporary failure is forgotten within a day. A permanent one is kept for as long as it stays true, which for a mailbox that does not exist has no natural end; if an address of yours is being refused and you have fixed the cause, write to privacy@spritecatch.com and I will clear it.

The app asks for no other contact details: no real name, no phone number, no postal address. If you use the app without signing in, it holds no address for you at all.

Telling you when Android is ready

The website has a box you can type your email address into so that you hear when the Android app is released. It sits in the footer of the web version at spritecatch.com, and it is the one thing anywhere on the website that asks you for something with no account behind it. It works differently from everything else on this page, so it is worth being exact about.

What is stored is your email address, where on the site you typed it, and the language the page was in, along with the date. There is no account attached to it, because you do not need one — nothing links the address to a collection, to a profile, or to anything else this policy describes. Your network address is not stored: the count that stops one computer signing up thousands of addresses is worked out at the moment you press the button and is never written down beside your address.

It is used for exactly one email, on the day the Android app comes out. Your address is deleted as that email is sent, and the email itself says so. There is no second message, no newsletter, and nothing to unsubscribe from afterwards, because by then nothing of yours is left. If the release slips, or if the email is never sent at all, the whole list is erased automatically 30 days after the announced date — so this ends with an empty list either way, without depending on me remembering.

You can change your mind before then and I will take the address off the list — email privacy@spritecatch.com, or use the same box on the website, which offers to remove an address as well as add one. It is not shared with anyone: the only company that ever sees it is Cloudflare, which sends the email, and which is already described in section 6.

You should be 13 or older to use this box, and the page says so beside it. It is also the one thing here that is asked for outside the app, so the app's age question — described below — has no answer for it.

Signing in with Epic

You can sign in with your Epic Games account to have your Fortnite name confirmed. It is optional, it is not a way to sign in to Sprite Catch, and it does nothing on its own except put a verified name on your profile — which exists because this is a trading app, and “is this really the person they say they are” is currently answered by a name anybody can type.

It cannot see what you own in Fortnite, and neither can we. The only thing Epic offers an app like this one is your basic profile — who you are. There is no way for any app, at any level of access, to read your locker, your V-Bucks, your stats or your purchases, and Sprite Catch asks for none of those because none of them exist to ask for. Nothing this app does can grant, change or take anything in the game.

What is stored is the identifier Epic uses for your account, the display name it had when you linked it, and when you linked it. That name replaces the Fortnite name on your profile and becomes what other collectors see and search for, which is the point of it. Nothing else arrives: no email address, no friends list, no password. Sprite Catch never sees your Epic password — you type it on Epic's own website, in a window this app cannot read — and it never asks for one anywhere else. Anybody who does ask you for your Epic login is not us.

Epic is told you signed in. That is unavoidable and is what signing in means: to confirm who you are, Epic has to be asked, so Epic learns that an account of theirs was used to sign in to this app. The permission you are shown before it happens says what is being shared. Nothing about your collection, your locker, your messages or anything else in Sprite Catch is sent to Epic, then or ever.

This only happens because you asked for it, and you can undo it. Nothing about an Epic account is recorded before you finish signing in, and unlinking removes the record. The verified name stays on your profile after you unlink — it was your name, and removing a link is not a statement that it was wrong — and you can change it once the link is gone.

Linking your Discord account

Sprite Catch has a bot on Discord, and any server can add it. If you type /link or /login — in a server the bot is in, or in a direct message with the bot itself — you are offered a private link that connects that Discord account to your Sprite Catch account, and taking it stores the identifier Discord uses for your account, the username it had at the time, and when the link was made. Two other things reach this app, and only from the Sprite Catch community server: whether your linked account is a member of it, and whether you are one of the people helping run it, both described further down. Nothing else does — not your messages there, not who else is in your servers, not your friends.

The roles below happen in the Sprite Catch community server and nowhere else. The bot is a guest in every other server: it asks for no permission to hand out roles there, and so it cannot, whatever happens to your standing.

This only happens because you asked for it. Being in the server does not link anything; clicking a link to the server does not either. The command has to be typed, and the page or screen it opens has to be finished. Nothing about your Discord account is recorded before that.

Finishing a link does five things on Discord's side, and four of them only in the community server. The app sends you a direct message from its bot confirming the link, which repeats your display name and account ID so you can see which collection it landed on, and says how many Sprites you had already marked with the bot; it gives your Discord account a Verified Collector role in the community server; it gives you the trader role matching your trading standing in the app — Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond and the rungs above them — if you have earned one; it gives you a season role for any past season whose Sprites you have all mastered; and, if your Discord account is a member of the community server, it may give your Sprite Catch account a profile decoration, which is a reward rather than anything stored about you. Disconnecting takes every one of those roles away again. The decoration is yours to keep.

The link's reward is for members of the community server. The app may check whether your linked Discord account is in the Sprite Catch community server, when you link and, for a while after a recent link, once a day, and give your Sprite Catch account a decoration if it is — today the Pumpkin skin for your character. Only the answer for your own linked account is used, and what is kept is the decoration itself, which records that you were a member when it was given. Like any decoration it is yours to keep if you leave the server later; if you were not in the server when it was checked, joining and linking again is how to get it. Decorations earlier links gave stay with the accounts that have them.

None of that happens at all if your profile is private. A private profile keeps your collection and your trading record to yourself — that is what section 4 promises and what the app does when another collector tries to look you up — and a Discord role is that same information, shown to everyone in the server. So a private profile is given no trader role and no season role, and if you make your profile private after being given one, it is taken away the next day. Verified Collector, which says nothing about you except that you linked, is the only one that stays.

The trader role follows your trading standing, and it is checked once a day. That standing is worked out from the same trades, ratings and reports the app already shows on your public profile — it is the badge under your name, put on Discord — so a role you hold can go up, go down, or come off entirely as your record changes. Collectors with no trades yet get no role, and neither does anyone whose record carries a warning: a warning is never published to Discord.

The season roles work the other way round: they are earned once and kept. A season role says you have mastered every Sprite of a past season — the same achievement the app shows you — and because it is a record of something you did, it is not taken away if your collection changes afterwards. Going private does take it away, because that is a different question from whether you earned it.

Alongside both, the only thing stored on this side is which roles the server was last told to give you, so that a role which has not changed does not have to be set again. It is worked out from the collection and the trading record already described above; nothing extra is collected for either.

If you help run the community server, that is written down here, and it changes two things about your Sprite Catch account. The people who moderate and answer questions in the server wear a role saying so, and once a day the app looks at who is wearing one and records the name of it against the linked account — nothing else about the server, and nothing about anybody who is not wearing one. So while you hold one of those roles: the automatic safety checks in section 4 will not act on you on their own, and a person has to look instead; and if your profile carries no mark of its own you are given the verified badge, which says the team vouches for you. Reporting you, and leaving a public scam mark on your profile, work exactly as they do for anybody else — both are written down, both reach me, a mark shows on your profile and counts there, and nothing about these roles stops either or counts against the person who filed it. Until 13 September 2026 a mark aimed at one of these accounts was quietly discarded instead; it is not any more, and section 13 says so. The reasoning is the same either way round: the point of the roles is that people trust the person wearing one, so being able to say, publicly and privately, when one of them is in the wrong matters more here than anywhere else. What the roles still do is keep that from becoming a punishment applied by a machine on its own — a person decides. Losing the role in Discord takes the protection back, usually within a day, and so does leaving the server or disconnecting your account. The verified badge may be taken off with it, whether the daily check put it there or I did by hand — it is the mark that says you are one of the people helping, so it goes when that stops being so. Before it removes anything the check asks Discord about your account by name, and if it gets no answer it changes nothing. It applies to the verified mark and to accounts recorded as helping run the server; I also give marks out by hand for other reasons, and I may give or remove one by hand at any time. Deleting your account removes everything, badge included, along with the rest of the account.

Some of the server's roles are thanked by name on the website. If you wear one of them — today the admins, the moderators, the mod apprentices, the Happy Helpers and the Kindness Krew — the Thanks page at spritecatch.com/thanks may list your Sprite Catch profile under that role: your name, handle and picture, and how many trades you have made, which is what your public profile already shows anybody who looks at it. Once a day the app looks at who in the community server wears those roles and writes down which linked accounts do, and nothing else about the server, so the list follows the role: somebody given one appears, and somebody who loses it or disconnects drops off, within about a day. Being listed changes nothing else about your account — it is not the arrangement described in the paragraph above. A private profile is not listed, and neither is an account the app has established is under 13. The list does not name your Discord account. Separately, a few people who help run the server are thanked in cards of their own, written by hand, and a card like that may show the name and picture they use on Discord beside their Sprite Catch profile.

Six things about the link are worth stating plainly:

• The point of it is that I can tell who is who. It exists so the person asking a question in the server and the collector whose account it is about are recognisably the same person — which is what makes it possible to answer them, and to deal with someone causing harm in both places at once rather than in neither.
• No other collector sees the link itself inside Sprite Catch — it is not on your profile, not on the shareable web page in section 4, and never sent to anybody else's app. The one thing the website says about it is the Thanks page above, whose list names a team member's Sprite Catch profile and role but not their Discord account — the hand-written cards it describes are the exception. But both roles are visible on Discord to everyone in the server, which is what a role is. Verified Collector says only that your Discord account has linked a Sprite Catch account — not which one, and not your name, account ID or collection. The other two say more than that: the trader role tells everyone in the server roughly how much trading you have done and how well it has gone, and a season role tells them you finished that season. Both are things a public profile already shows any collector who looks at it, and linking is what carries them across — which is exactly why a private profile is given neither.
• The confirmation message goes to your Discord inbox. It contains your display name, your account ID and the name of any role you were given, it is delivered by Discord, and it stays there under Discord's own retention until you delete it — the same as any other message you receive there. Nobody else is sent one.
• It is one account each way. Linking a second Discord account replaces the first, and pointing a Discord account at a different collector releases the one it was on.
• You can undo it yourself, at any time, without asking me. There is a Disconnect button on the same page and the same screen that made the link, and using it deletes the record. Deleting your Sprite Catch account deletes it too.

Proving the account is yours works exactly the way signing in already does: in the app there is nothing to do, because you are already signed in; in a browser you sign in with Apple, with Google, or with a code emailed to you — described in the two sections above, and adding nothing to what they say. Signing in on that page does not leave you signed in. It makes the link and nothing else, and the browser is left holding no way into your account. And it never creates an account: an address with no Sprite Catch account behind it links nothing rather than quietly starting a new one.

Tracking your collection with the Discord bot

You do not need a Sprite Catch account to use the bot, and using it does not make you one. Typing /sprites in a server the bot is in, or in a direct message with it, opens a panel only you can see where you tick off the Sprites you have caught. Those ticks are saved against the identifier Discord uses for your account — that and nothing else. No Sprite Catch account is created, you get no profile, no Account ID and no place in the app's search, and nothing you do here appears anywhere in the app.

Three things are stored, and this is all of them: which Sprites you have marked caught or mastered; which servers you have used the bot in and roughly when you last did; and, if you open a trade room, the fact that a room exists between you and one other person and whether each of you has marked the trade finished. Nothing else about Discord is read or kept — not your messages, not who else is in those servers, not your other activity there, not anything the bot was not directly asked to do.

Other members of a server you have used the bot in can find you, and that is the point of it. Typing /whohas there lists the people who have marked the Sprite being looked for — by their Discord name, with what they have and what they are missing — so that two collectors who can help each other can find each other. It only ever looks at the server the command was typed in, it only lists people who have used the bot there, and your marks are never shown to a server you have not used the bot in. There is no search across servers and no way for a stranger to look you up from outside one. And if you have linked a Sprite Catch account and made your profile private, you are not listed at all — the same rule that keeps a private profile out of search, Discover and the "who has this" lists in the app, and off Discord's roles, applies here too.

If you have linked a Sprite Catch account, you can also be listed in a server you are simply a member of, without having typed anything there. This is new, and it is the one part of the bot that reaches you rather than waiting for you. The bot reads the member list of a server it has been added to, matches it against the Discord accounts that have linked, and adds those collectors to that server's list. It does this at most once an hour per server, it stores only that you are a member of that server and roughly when it noticed — not the rest of the member list, not who else is there, not anything about people who have not linked. Three things limit it, and they matter more than the mechanism: a private Sprite Catch profile is still never listed, so this cannot show a collection you have kept to yourself; it only ever affects servers the bot has been added to and you are in; and /spritecatch privacy hides you from any server's list, or deletes everything the bot holds, from inside Discord and without asking me. If you have never linked an account, nothing here applies to you at all — the bot only knows you if you have used it.

A server can also give you one role for finishing a season. If that server's admins have chosen a role for it, completing the current season's Sprites gives you that role there, and no longer having them takes it back. It is one role, chosen by that server's own admins, and the bot cannot touch any other — it does not create, delete or reorder roles, and it can never give itself or anybody else a permission. Like every other role in section 3, a role is visible to everyone in the server, which is what a role is: it says you finished a season, and nothing else about you.

Two smaller things about that list. It marks which of the people on it have linked a Sprite Catch account, because that is what decides whether the two of you can finish the trade in the app and rate each other; it is the same single fact the Verified Collector role publishes in section 3, and it says nothing about which account, your name, your ID or your record. And it is drawn from the people who are in that server now — if you leave, you stop being listed there, and what the bot remembered about your being a member of it is deleted the next time somebody looks.

You can switch that off, and you can delete all of it, from inside Discord. Typing /spritecatch privacy shows what is stored, offers to hide you from that server's search while keeping your marks, and offers to delete everything the bot holds about you — the marks and every record of which servers you used it in — which takes effect immediately and cannot be undone. Deleting your Sprite Catch account deletes it too. It does not work the other way round: telling the bot to forget you leaves the collection in your app alone, because that is yours.

A trade room is a private conversation on Discord, not in this app. When two people agree to trade, the bot opens a private thread in a channel that server's administrators chose and adds the two of them to it. Everything said in there is on Discord, under Discord's rules and that server's moderators, and this app neither stores it nor reads it — Sprite Catch's own blocking and reporting tools do not reach into it, which is why the bot's opening message says so and points at both. The bot writes one message at the start listing what each of you could swap, and one at the end when either of you closes the room. Either of you can close it at any time, without the other agreeing. A trade agreed in a Discord room changes nothing about your trading record in the app; that only moves through the app's own rating step, which both people have to take.

If you link your account, what you marked with the bot comes with you. Running /link moves those ticks into your Sprite Catch collection, and the bot's own copy is deleted in the same moment — from then on there is one collection, and marking something on your phone or in Discord changes the same thing. Where the two disagree, the more recent mark wins. Disconnecting does not send your collection back the other way: the bot starts again with nothing, because publishing what you built in the app to Discord is not something disconnecting should do.

The server itself is told nothing about you. Adding the bot stores the server's identifier, its name, who added it and which channel trade rooms should open in — facts about the server, not about its members. The bot holds no permission to read messages, to see a member list, to give out roles, or to create or remove channels in any server but the community one.

Posting a picture of your collection to Discord

Once your account is linked, you can type /missing, /collection, /mastered, /unmastered or /rating in a Discord channel and the app answers in that channel, where everyone in it can see it, with a picture: the Sprites you are still hunting, the ones you have caught, the ones you have mastered, the ones you have caught but not mastered yet, or your trading record in stars. The picture carries your display name and your friend code, so it says whose it is — it is the same image the app's own share button has always made, drawn on the server instead of on your phone.

It happens because you typed the command, and only then. Nothing posts on its own, nothing is posted when your collection changes, and there is no version of this that runs while you are not looking.

You can ask for another collector's, and only if their profile is public. Naming somebody or typing their Account ID draws their picture instead of yours — but only under the same rule that decides whether a stranger can look them up in the app or open their shareable web page in section 4. A private profile refuses, and the refusal is shown to the person who asked and to nobody else, so asking about somebody tells the channel nothing about them. Your own is the one exception: you may post your own picture whether your profile is public or private, because posting it is your decision about your own collection.

The picture then belongs to that conversation. It is drawn on demand at a web address that stops working after about an hour, but Discord copies it onto its own network as soon as the message appears and keeps that copy under its own rules — so a message you posted stays a picture of the collection you had at the time, even after your collection changes, and removing it is something you do on Discord. Nothing new is stored here to make it: it is drawn from the collection and the trading record already described above, and no record of having drawn it is kept beyond the ordinary server records described in section 13.

Your collection and the content you create

Which sprite variants you mark as owned, mastered, or as needing a rebuy — the point of the app — the level you mark each one at, and the day you first marked each one caught, and the day you first marked it mastered, so your own collection can be shown back to you as the story of how it was built, plus anything else you choose to add: a display name, a Fortnite tag, the character you design as your profile picture, a flag and a small badge you pick to sit beside your name, a community's tag if you choose to wear one (section 4), the saved looks described below, a short description you write for your profile, trade listings and their notes, the trade offers you send and receive — which Sprites are offered and asked for, the level each one was offered at and the lowest level asked for it, the order of preference they were put in, which one was agreed and at what level, and whether that answer was later changed, whether the offer was a gift and who gave, and what became of the offer, including a counter offer that answered it or an edited offer that replaced it — how many of your trades have counted towards the level of each community you are in (section 4) — posts and the photo you can attach to one, and, for a post in a community, its title, the kind of post it is, and a longer body that may include headings, lists, several photos, Sprite cards, short tips and links to YouTube videos, or instead a video you upload, with its sound and the still picture shown before it plays — replies — including which reply a reply is answering, and who it was addressed to — likes (on a post or on a reply) and reposts in the community feed, the up or down vote you give a post in a community, the reactions you leave — on a post, on a reply, or on a single message in a conversation — the short note you can leave above your name for a day, and the likes left on one, direct messages and any photo or voice message you send in one, the groups you are in — their names, their pictures, who is in them and how far you have read — settings you choose for a conversation, such as muting it, the star ratings and any written reviews you give a trade, including one you give when you ask the other collector to confirm it (held where nobody else can see it until they answer, and deleted if they decline or the ask is withdrawn), the replies the two of you can write under a review of a trade you were both in, which reviews of your trades you have pinned to the top of your profile, reports you file, and messages you send to support along with any photo — usually a screenshot of whatever went wrong, or of something you are claiming a reward for — you attach to one of those.

Every post and trade listing carries the language it was written in, so collectors looking for that language can find it, and other collectors can see it. Your phone works that out from the words you typed, before the post is sent — it uses the language recogniser built into iOS, nothing is uploaded to do it, and what leaves your phone is the answer ("Spanish"), never an analysis of what you wrote. When there is too little to go on — a few words, a link, a row of Sprites — nothing is guessed, and the label falls back to the setting below.

The flag beside your name is one you pick, and it is public. You choose a country from a list, or none at all, and you can add one small badge beside it. From a future release a badge is a small picture I publish — such as a pixel drawing of the app's own mascot — and the badges I publish may be reserved for collectors who have supported the app in some way, such as by using its creator code in Fortnite and claiming the reward; wearing one then says publicly that you did, which is the point of it, and it is entirely your choice to wear it. Which of those badges you can wear may depend on how often you have done it — the set I publish may be arranged as a ladder, where each badge is unlocked by another settled claim and stays yours afterwards — so the badge somebody chooses to wear can also say roughly how many times they have supported the app. That is worked out from claims the app has already settled with you; nothing new is recorded to do it, and a badge you have unlocked and choose not to wear says nothing to anybody. The badge shows anywhere your name shows: the feed, a conversation, a profile, the website. Two things about it are worth saying plainly. It is chosen, never worked out — nothing about your internet address, your phone's settings or your phone's location has any part in it, and picking a flag says nothing about where you actually are. And it is a different thing from the country in section 2, which is recorded from your internet address, is seen by no other collector, and does not change because you picked a flag. You can change either the flag or the badge whenever you like, or take both off, and what you last chose is what is stored.

Some badges are given rather than picked. I may give a badge to an account by hand, one account at a time — for example to the people who help as the community server's Kindness Krew. When your account has one, it is shown beside your name wherever your name shows, in the place where an account mark such as verified would otherwise sit, and it is public, which is what it is for. The service records which one your account was given; nothing new is collected from you to decide it, and any account mark you already had stays on your account and is still named to anybody who taps the badge. Today it cannot be put on or taken off from inside the app — ask me and I will take it off — and I may give or remove one by hand at any time.

That setting is which language you read the community in. It narrows the feed, the trade board and the list of collectors who own a Sprite when you ask it to, it is the fallback label described above, and it decides which language an announcement written by me is sent to you in. Choosing one is optional — if you never do, the app uses the language it is already displaying itself in, and your feed shows every language, which is how it behaves for everybody until they say otherwise.

The profile description is a few lines about yourself, and it is optional and empty until you write one. Other collectors can read it on your profile if that profile is public — in the app or in the web version, which draws the same profile — and it is screened for banned content like every other thing a stranger can read. It is deliberately left off the shareable web page described in section 4.

From a future release you can also leave a note: one short line — up to eighty characters — that sits above your name at the top of the Chats screen, for the collectors you already talk to. It is meant for the thing that is true today and not next week — what you are hunting, that you are trading this week, what you have spare — so it is deleted twenty-four hours after you write it, by the app, without anybody asking. Writing a new one replaces the old one and starts the day again; you can take yours down at any moment, and there is never more than one. What is stored is the line itself, when it was written, and the likes other collectors leave on it — who left one, and when — with no history of what you wrote before and no record of who read it. It is screened for banned content like every other thing a stranger can read, and the same rule that keeps real-money offers out of the feed applies to it. Who sees it is described in section 4.

Somebody who can see your note can open it, like it, or answer it. A like is seen by you, when you open your own note, and by nobody else; it is not announced to you, and it goes when the note does. An answer is a direct message to you, and it carries a copy of the note it answers — the way a reply to a message carries the message — so those words stay in that one conversation after the note itself is gone, like the rest of what was said there.

From a future release you can also save a look: the whole of how you have your profile set up at that moment — the character you designed, the decorations you have on, the flag and badge beside your name — kept under a name you type, so you can put the lot back on later with one tap. Up to ten of them, kept in whatever order you arrange them in. Nothing new is worked out about you: a saved look is a copy of choices already described in this section, and giving it a name is optional. Nobody else can see one. A saved look is not on your profile, not on the shareable web page in section 4, never sent to another collector and never published to Discord — the only thing anyone else sees is the look you actually have on, which is what they would have seen anyway. Because they are yours alone, the names you give them are not screened the way something a stranger can read is. You can rename or delete one whenever you like, deleting one changes nothing about how you currently look, and they all go with your account (section 9).

The app also keeps a checklist of the codes Fortnite hands out. Fortnite publishes codes you type into its own Admin Panel for rewards, and Fortnite does not tell you which ones you have already entered — so the app lets you tick them off, and remembers the ticks against your account so they are still there on a new phone. What is stored is only which codes you ticked, nothing else: not when you ticked one, not whether the code actually worked, and nothing at all from Fortnite. A tick is a note to yourself — it redeems nothing, it is checked against nothing, and you can untick anything at any time. No other collector ever sees it: it is not on your profile, not on the shareable web page described in section 4, and never sent to anybody else. The list of codes itself is published by the app for everybody and is not about you.

Different from that, and worth keeping apart: the app has its own codes — a short word or two given out on a stream, in a Discord post or on a card, which you type into the Shop tab to be handed a profile decoration, some Gems, or both. What is stored is which of those codes you used and when, and how many Gems that code paid you, because that record is what your Gems are counted from and what stops one code being used twice by the same account. These are the app's own codes and have nothing to do with Fortnite: they hand over things inside Sprite Catch, and the app still cannot grant, transfer or change anything in the game. A code is always free — there is no way to buy one, and they are never sold or bundled with anything. No other collector ever sees which ones you used, and all of it is deleted with your account (section 9).

Separately from the sprite collection, the app keeps a locker: a list of the Fortnite cosmetics — outfits, back blings, pickaxes, emotes and the rest — that you tell it you own, and which styles of each. What is stored is which items and styles you ticked and when you last changed each one, so the list survives a new phone and stays the same on every device you sign in on. The app is not connected to your Fortnite account and cannot see it. It has no way to check what you actually own and never tries; every tick is something you told it, the same way the code checklist above is. Your locker is private — it is not on your profile, not on the shareable web page described in section 4, and no other collector can see it. A future release may add a setting that lets you choose to show it on your profile; until you turn something like that on yourself, it stays private. The catalogue of cosmetics the app lists comes from a public Fortnite community database and describes the game, not you — we fetch it on our own servers, and nothing about you or your locker is sent there or to Epic Games.

From a future release you can fill that list in by pasting one, instead of ticking every item by hand. If you already keep your Fortnite locker on a community site, you copy the address of your locker page there and paste it into Sprite Catch. Four things about that are worth saying plainly. Your phone does the reading — the pasted text is decoded on the device, matched against a list of cosmetics the app publishes, and shown to you before anything is saved. The app does not visit that site, then or ever, so nothing about you reaches it and it is not told you use Sprite Catch. Only the cosmetics are kept: what is saved is the same list of items a tick would have made, and nothing about where it came from — the address you pasted is not stored, and the one other thing those links carry, the date the Epic account was created, is discarded without being kept or sent. It only ever adds, so importing cannot clear anything already in your locker. This is still not a connection to your Fortnite account: importing does not ask you to sign in to Epic and never asks for an Epic password, and the optional Epic sign-in described above confirms your name and nothing else — it cannot read a locker either.

From a future release the iPhone app can also fill the list in by scanning your locker — photos of it on a screen, or screenshots you pick — and section 3 says how that works on your device. What it saves is what you confirm and nothing more: the same list of items a tick would have made, and like importing it only ever adds.

Locker scans can help the scanner get better, if you agree. When you add items from a locker scan, the app may share, for the tiles it read: a small cut-out of each tile, the measurements the scanner took from it, the items it thought each one might be, and what you confirmed, corrected or left out. These are used to improve, test and develop the scanner — for example to teach it what a real tile of an item looks like, or which items get mistaken for one another — and may be looked at by the people who build it. Your whole photos and screenshots are not part of this; only accounts run by the Sprite Catch team send their own whole screenshots, to tune the scanner on real screens. You are asked the first time you add items from a scan, nothing is shared before you answer, and you can change your answer at any time with a switch on the scanner, on the scan's review screen and in Settings › Privacy & Safety; turning it off stops anything new being shared. A sample that cannot be sent straight away — no connection, or the scanner's learning paused on my side — is kept on your phone and sent later, in as many pieces as it needs; it is deleted from the phone once it has arrived, or if your account is deleted. Nothing is ever collected this way from an account under 13. The samples are kept with your account so that they can be deleted with it (section 9).

Beside the locker the app keeps a wishlist: the cosmetics you tap a heart on because you want them. What is stored is which items you hearted and when. It is there for one purpose, and the purpose is a notification — once a day the app checks which of the things you hearted are in Fortnite's item shop, and if any are, it sends you one notification saying so. Nothing is sent until you heart something, that notification is never sent more than once a day, and there is a switch in Settings that turns it off without un-hearting anything. A wishlist is as private as the locker it sits beside: it is not on your profile, not on the shareable web page, and no other collector can see it. The list of what is in the shop is published by the app for everybody, is fetched from the same public community database, and is not about you — nothing about you or your wishlist is sent there or to Epic Games.

There is a second shop notification, and it is not about you at all. It tells you once a day what has gone into the item shop, whether or not you hearted any of it — the same sentence sent to everybody who asked for it, built from the public list of what is on sale. It needs nothing from you, it reads nothing about you, and the only thing stored is the fact that you switched it on: it is off unless you turn it on, which you can do when the Skins screen first offers it or at any time in Settings, and turning it off stops it. The wishlist notification above and this one are separate switches, so having one does not mean having the other.

From a future release you can also build loadouts out of the locker: named sets of Fortnite cosmetics put together the way you would wear them — an outfit with its back bling, pickaxe and glider, the emotes on your wheel, your wraps, your lobby music and so on, with the style you picked for each. What is stored is what you put in each place and in which style, the name you give a loadout if you give it one, the order you keep them in, and when each was made and last changed, so they survive a new phone and stay the same on every device you sign in on. A loadout can include cosmetics you have not ticked as owned — it can be a plan as much as a record — and, like every tick in the locker, it is something you told the app: building or changing a loadout changes nothing in Fortnite, because the app has no way to equip anything in the game. Your loadouts are as private as your locker: they are not on your profile, not on the shareable web page described in section 4, and no other collector can see them, which is why the names you give them are not screened the way something a stranger can read is. You can rename, reorder or delete one whenever you like, and they all go with your account (section 9).

You can also react to a Fortnite cosmetic — one of five faces, saying whether you like the look of it. What is stored is which item you picked a face for, which face, and when. Two things happen with it, and they are worth separating. Your own reaction is private in the same way your locker is: no other collector is shown that it was you, and it is not on your profile or on the shareable web page. The count is public — how many people picked each face for a given item is published for everybody and used across the Skins screen, for example on the shop's tiles, on an item's own page, and to put the items people like most first and show each one's place among them, because that number is the whole point of reacting. You can change your reaction or take it back at any time, and taking it back removes it from the count.

One consequence is worth stating plainly rather than leaving to be discovered. If you delete your account, your reactions are deleted with it, but the public counts are not reduced. Once several people have reacted to an item, the number is a count of opinions and no longer points at anybody — nothing in it identifies you, and it cannot be traced back to you once your reaction row is gone. If you would rather not be part of a count at all, take your reaction back before you delete the account, which removes it from both.

All of it is optional except the collection itself, and each piece is stored so the feature it belongs to works — your collection survives a new phone, your conversation is there when you come back, your review counts towards the reputation other collectors see. Section 4 explains which of these are visible to other people.

Usage information

So that the app can be improved, it records how it is used: which screens are opened, which features are used, when a flow is abandoned, whether the scanner succeeded, along with your app version, device language, and the country your request came from.

Three limits on this are worth stating plainly, because they are what make it different from what "analytics" usually means:

• It stays with Sprite Catch. There is no third-party analytics SDK, no advertising SDK and no crash reporter in the app. Usage information goes to my own server and nowhere else — not to an analytics vendor, not to an ad network, not to a data broker. This is about usage information specifically, and it is a different thing from questionnaire answers, which are described two headings below and are shared.
• It uses no tracking identifiers. Events are not recorded against your account directly. They carry a scrambled stand-in worked out from it, plus a session identifier regenerated every time you open the app. The stand-in cannot be turned back into your account, and deleting your account destroys the only thing it can be worked out from — so what is left behind can no longer be tied to you, by me or by anybody else. There is no advertising identifier, and nothing here can follow you into another company's app or website.
• It records actions, not content. An event says "the collection screen was opened" or "a sprite was marked as owned" — never what you wrote, who you messaged, what you searched for, or which sprites are in your collection.

You can turn this off in Settings → Privacy & Safety → Share Usage Data. When it is off the app stops producing this information at all, so nothing leaves your device — it is not collected and then discarded, it is never created. The rest of the app works exactly as before.

The web version produces none of this, signed in or not. Everything in this subsection is the two phone apps; the web version sends no usage events of any kind, and the only thing it counts is the visit described below. So the switch above has nothing to switch off there, which is why you will not find one.

Separately, the app can show promo cards — an invite to the community Discord, a link to Sprite Catch's own page on another service. They appear in the side menu and on the Shop tab. Tapping one tells the server which card was tapped and nothing else: the request carries no account and no device identifier, and the server simply adds one to that card's running total. No record of who tapped exists anywhere.

Sponsored cards in the Trading feed. From a future release, the Trading feed on iPhone and Android may show a few cards paid for by somebody else — a game, an app or a creator, for example. Each one is marked Ad, carries the advertiser's name, and carries a check mark when I have confirmed who the advertiser is. Everyone who opens the Trading feed is shown the same cards: nothing about you — your collection, your trades, what you do in the app or where you are — is used to choose one. The one thing checked is your age, because an account under 13 is shown none. The server keeps running totals of how many times each card was shown, tapped and reported; like the promo-card count above, those totals carry no account and no device identifier, and they are what an advertiser may be told. Reporting a card sends the reason you pick and nothing about you. Tapping a card leaves the app for the advertiser's own website, whose address is on the card before you tap, and what happens there is covered by that website's policy rather than this one. About this ad, on every card, says all of this without leaving the app. The web version shows no sponsored cards.

The web version counts visits, and it does it without storing anything on your device. spritecatch.com records that a visit happened — the screen you arrived on, your language, the country the request came from, and which release of the site served it — so I can tell whether anyone is using it. It is deliberately the narrowest thing that answers that question, and four limits define it. Nothing is written to your browser: no cookie, no stored identifier, nothing added to what your browser already keeps for you. Instead, so that ten page loads from you are not counted as ten people, the visit is filed under a scrambled stand-in worked out from your IP address, your browser's description of itself, and today's date — and because the date is part of it, the stand-in is a different one tomorrow, so what is stored cannot be used to follow a browser from one day to the next, by me or by anyone else. It carries no account, and that is now a choice rather than a consequence: the web version has accounts, and this count deliberately does not send yours, so a visit is not attached to you even when you are signed in — and it holds nothing about which sprites you ticked off. And the screen is recorded as a category — that you opened a sprite's page, someone's profile, your messages or your settings — never the address, so whose collection you looked at, and whose conversation you opened, is not in it. Two honest consequences: two people sharing a connection and the same browser count as one, and one person on two networks counts as two. It is a count of visits, not of people, and it is not capable of becoming one without storing something on your device, which it does not do. There is no switch for it, because there is nothing in it tied to you to switch off; the app's Share Usage Data switch is separate and unaffected. The marketing page at app.spritecatch.com counts nothing at all — it is five files and no program, so there is nothing there that could.

Daily rewards

The app offers a small reward for coming back. To do that it keeps four things: how long your current run is, the longest run you have ever had, the date of the most recent claim, and how many Gems the streak has paid you in total.

Missing a day's reward does not end your run. From 21 September 2026 a day you do not claim costs you that day's reward and nothing else — the run carries on where it left off. What ends a run is being away from the app, and only after more than a whole day away. The app works that out from the single when you were last using the app time described in section 4, which it already keeps and which it overwrites each time rather than adding to. So opening the app is enough to keep a run alive even if you never tap anything, and there is still nothing anywhere that records which days you opened it.

Unlike the usage information above, this is kept against your account rather than against a scrambled stand-in — a streak that could not be tied to you would not be your streak. Three things follow, and each is deliberate:

• Only claiming adds to it. Opening the app does not move the counter; tapping the reward is what does, and the reward appearing is not a record of anything. A day you opened the app and did not claim leaves no trace of that day: the only thing opening the app touches is the single "last used" time in section 4, which is one value overwritten each time and not a list of days.
• It is yours alone. Your streak is shown to you and to nobody else: not on your profile as other collectors see it, not on the shareable web page in section 4, and not to anyone I share information with. It is not used to decide what you are shown, offered or charged.
• They are counts and a date, not a log of your visits. What is kept against your account is the current run, the best run, the date of the last claim and a running total of Gems — never a record of every day you have opened the app, which is the promise that did not change when the rule above did. Working out that you have been away needs one time, not a history, and it is the same one time section 4 already describes. A decoration the streak hands you is recorded the same way as any other decoration you own, together with which day of the run paid for it, so that the app can show you the run you have actually lived.

What a day pays depends on how far into the run it is. The first days of a run each hand over a fixed, published decoration — a colour for your name, a look for the character you use as a profile picture. Every seventh day draws one prize at random from a small published pool. Any other day pays Gems instead: a day past that first week, or one whose decoration you already hold. The app says which kind of day it is before you tap and what it gave you afterwards, and a day pays a decoration or it pays Gems — never both. Where it pays Gems the amount is worked out from how long your run is, so a longer streak is worth more per day up to a ceiling, and every seventh day is worth a multiple of that day's figure. Nothing about any of it costs money, nothing can be bought or spent to change what a day pays, and Gems cannot be paid into it either.

About the draw specifically, because "random" and "loot box" are not the same thing and this is not the second one. It cannot be paid into: nothing that the app can draw is ever put in the shop, and that is enforced by the app rather than remembered — a decoration that sits in one of those pools cannot be given a price at all. It cannot miss: a prize you already hold is removed before anything is drawn, so every draw gives you something you did not have, and once there is nothing left to win that day pays Gems instead. The odds are shown in the app, on the screen that does the drawing and before you choose to draw, and they are calculated from the same numbers that decide the result rather than typed in beside them. And nothing won this way can be traded or sold.

Between 11 and 13 September 2026 the daily reward paid Gems and nothing else, and the decorations described above were on sale in the Gem shop instead. The streak hands its own days' decorations over again and those have come off sale. Five did not go back: they filled a second week of the cycle that no longer exists, so no day is left that could hand them over, and from 19 September 2026 they carry a Gem price instead. None of the five is in the seventh-day pool or in any box, so nothing about what the app draws changes. Anything you were given or bought in that time is still yours, and the total of Gems described above is a record of what the streak has paid you rather than something the app spends or re-prices.

From a future release, a reward can also arrive as a box — given to you after a person has checked something you did, and opened by you to reveal one decoration out of a published set. The same things are true of it: nothing about it costs money, nothing can be bought to change your chances, nothing in it can be bought with Gems and nothing in it is ever put in the Gem shop, a decoration you already hold is never drawn again, and the whole set and your real odds are shown before you decide to open it. Nothing won this way can be traded or sold. A box may also pay some Gems when it is opened — a fixed number the app shows on the box before you open it, the same for everyone and whatever decoration comes out, so it is never part of the draw; those Gems are counted from the record of which box you opened, exactly as the rest of your Gems are counted from what you have done. What is kept is only which decorations you own and which box gave you one, which is part of the decorations described above and is not shared with anyone.

Where a reward that a person checks pays a box, you may be offered a choice instead: name one decoration from a published list and be given exactly that one, with none of the box's Gems. If you choose that, the request you send records which decoration you asked for, beside the photo and the message, so that the person settling it hands over the right thing; it is readable by the same people as the rest of that request and by nobody else, and it is kept for as long as the request is.

From a future release, opening a box also lets you choose. It shows you one decoration, and you can ask it to show you another a small fixed number of times — the app tells you how many before you start — and then keep whichever of the ones you were shown you like best. Every one of those extra looks is free and comes with the box: there is nothing to buy, nothing to earn, no way to spend Gems on one and no way to get more of them, and asking for another never takes away one you have already been shown. While you are deciding, the app keeps a short-lived note of which decorations it has offered you, so that closing the app and coming back brings you to the same ones rather than a fresh set. That note is kept only until you choose, and it goes when you do — it is deleted the moment you keep one, and with everything else if you delete your account.

Invites

You can invite friends by sharing your username, and unlock decorations as more of them join. Two things are kept for that: who invited you, if somebody did, and — worked out from that — how many people you have brought in.

This is the first thing in this policy that records a link between two accounts, so it is worth being exact about what that link is and is not:

• Only using a code records anything. Sharing your own code, and other people opening your invite link, write nothing at all. The record is made once, when somebody enters a code in the app. It can be done at any time — there is no longer a deadline after signing up — but only once ever, and it can never be changed to somebody else afterwards.
• Your invite count is yours alone. It is shown to you and to nobody else: not on your profile as other collectors see it, not on the shareable web page in section 4, and not to anyone I share information with. Nobody is told that you invited them, and nobody is shown a list of who they invited.
• It is not a history. What is kept is the single fact of who invited you — not when you tapped a link, not which link, not where you were.
• It disappears with either account. If you delete your account, the record goes with it; if the person who invited you deletes theirs, the link to them is cleared and your account simply stops having one.

The decorations this unlocks cannot be bought and nothing about it costs money. They are fixed and published, at set numbers of friends, and there is one more for entering somebody's code yourself — so both sides of an invite get something. One of them is a box, of exactly the kind described above: it opens into one decoration out of a published set, nothing can be bought to change the chances, a decoration you already hold is never drawn again, and the set and your real odds are shown before you open it. Nothing you win this way can be traded or sold.

An invite link is a page on this website that names nobody. It shows the username or account ID it was made for and an install button, and it says nothing else about the person who sent it — not their name, not their collection, not even whether their profile is public.

Playing the arcade

The Shop tab (called Rewards until September 2026) has a small arcade on it — five short games, every one of them drawn by the app itself out of its own artwork and the sprites you already collect: flying the character you designed through a run of pipes, guessing which of two sprites is the commoner catch, naming a sprite as it fades in from its shadow, stacking blocks, and finding matching pairs. What is kept, separately for each game, is your best score and the date you set it, plus your best inside the current day, the current week and the current month. Not every game you play, not how many times you tried. Each of those is only rewritten when you beat it, so a hundred losing games in a row leave nothing behind at all, and there is no history of when or how often you played.

A finished run also says how long it took. That is used to check the score is one the game could actually have produced, and then it is thrown away — with one exception worth naming: in one of the five games the score simply is how quickly you finished, so a faster board is a higher number. Nothing else about a run is kept, and nothing about a run you abandon is sent at all.

The three shorter records exist because each game has a leaderboard for each of them (section 4). They are not a diary: a day's best is simply replaced the next time you play in a new day, and the same for the week and the month, so nothing accumulates and yesterday's number is gone the moment you start a run today. The day, week and month are counted in UTC, the same clock for everybody, so that two collectors are always being ranked against the same window.

One game a day is spotlit on the arcade screen. That is a signpost and nothing else: it is the same game for everybody, it is worked out from the date rather than from anything about you, and it changes nothing about what is stored, what is earned or who can see it.

Like a streak, and unlike the usage information above, each of those scores is kept against your account rather than against a scrambled stand-in — a high score that could not be tied to you would not be your high score. Unlike a streak, it is not yours alone: if your profile is public, your best score can appear on a leaderboard other collectors read. Section 4 says exactly what that shows and who is on it.

You can challenge somebody you already chat with. Finishing a game offers to send that score into one of your conversations, and the message composer can start one from scratch; either way what lands is a card that stays in the conversation and keeps a scoreboard on it. What is kept for one of those is who opened it, which game, which conversation, when — and one best attempt per person who plays it. Again not every attempt: a worse run writes nothing, so playing the same card ten times leaves one number behind.

Two things about that are worth being plain about. A challenge can only go into a conversation you already have, so nobody can be challenged by a stranger. And the number on the card is one you chose to put there — it is either the record you already hold at that game or a run you played on the card, and the app will never show a higher number than the one it already holds for you. So a private profile, which is off every leaderboard, still shows a score to the people in a conversation it played a challenge in, and only to them. A challenge run counts on the leaderboards exactly like any other run at that game, under the same rules as the rest of this section. Nothing is won by beating somebody: a run earns what it would have earned played alone, and the card itself pays out nothing at all.

From the version going out on 7 September 2026 somebody in a conversation can also ask it a question — a poll with a few answers to pick from. A poll is a message like any other, so everything in section 4 about where a message is stored, who can read it and how long it stays applies to the question and its answers. What I store beside it is each person's own pick: which answer they chose, on which poll, and when. Everybody in the conversation sees how many people chose each answer, and nobody — not the person who asked, not whoever runs a community — is shown who chose what. Your own picks are shown back to you and to nobody else. Whoever asked can end the poll early, and in a community room so can the people who run it; a poll can also end on its own after up to a week. If you delete your account, your picks are removed and the totals go down by exactly what you had chosen, the same way a reaction to an item in the shop is handled; a poll you asked goes with your messages.

Each game's screen also shows a short Friends list — collectors who follow you and whom you follow back, with their best score at that game. It publishes nothing a leaderboard does not: it holds only the accounts a leaderboard would already list, so a friend whose profile is private simply is not on it, and the app says nothing about them either way.

Playing earns you nothing today. The arcade was built with a way of handing out profile decorations for a score — reaching a number published on the screen before you play for it, or being first on one of a game's four leaderboards — and it is switched off. No decoration has ever been given out for a score, and none is being given out now; the games keep your records and rank them, and that is all they do. Nothing about the games costs money, and nothing that can be bought changes a score or a place on a board. If it is ever switched back on, this page changes with it, and what would return is the arrangement just described: a published number beside a published decoration, with no draw, no odds and no crate in it, and nothing won that could be traded or sold. The games pay no Gems either, and that is deliberate: a score is the one thing here a person can sit and repeat, so it earns nothing but the score.

Gems

Gems are the app's own currency. They are earned by using the app, or given by a code — and a code that pays them is itself always free and never sold. They buy profile decorations from a small shop.

How many you have is worked out, not stored. The number comes from things the app already knows about your account — how many different people you have completed a trade with, how much you have posted, the longest daily streak you have run, how much of your collection you have filled in, how long you have been here, and whether you have taken part in a creator-code campaign. There is one exception, and it is the daily reward described in section 3: what a streak has paid you is written down, because it is the only part of the sum the app could not work out again afterwards — what a day was worth depends on the rules of the morning you claimed it. Nothing else new is recorded to make the number, and no overall tally of it is kept. A consequence worth saying plainly: because it is worked out from the current state of your account rather than banked, it can go down — un-marking sprites you had ticked off, or having a post taken down for breaking the rules, lowers it. Anything you have already bought stays yours.

What is kept is what you spent them on, and what was handed to you. When you buy a decoration the app records that this account bought that decoration, what it cost and when — and that record is what makes the decoration yours, so it stays after you reinstall. The same goes the other way: when you redeem one of the app's own codes, it records which code and how many Gems it paid, and that record is what those Gems are counted from. Three further numbers are kept against your account: anything I have handed you by hand (for example putting right something that went wrong), a one-off adjustment made when Gems were introduced so that a long-standing collector's whole history did not pay out at once, and the running total your daily streak has paid you. All of it is deleted with your account (section 9).

Nothing random can be paid into with them. The seventh day of a streak, a reward box — anything the app draws at random — can never be bought with Gems, and nothing that can be drawn is ever put in the shop. That is enforced by the app rather than remembered: a decoration that sits in any of those pools cannot be given a price at all, which is what took the streak's own decorations back off sale on 13 September 2026 when it began handing them over again. The same test read the other way round is why five decorations that belong to no day of the streak, and to no box, may carry a Gem price: what decides it is whether a thing can be drawn, not what it used to be given for.

The shop is the same for everybody, and everything in it is always in it — every decoration that has a price is on sale, all the time. Nothing in it is chosen for you, none of it depends on anything about you, and nothing about what you look at in it is recorded.

Buying a decoration — removed

The app was once built able to sell profile decorations through the App Store. It was switched off before it ever opened; no decoration was ever listed, nobody ever bought anything, and no payment information ever reached me. On 1 September 2026 the ability itself was removed — from the app, from the server, and from this policy. Earlier versions of this page described what a purchase would involve, on the reasoning that the ability still existed and could be switched back on. It no longer exists, so the description has gone with it.

What this means for what is kept: nothing about payments is held, because none was ever taken. There are no purchase records, no transaction references, no refund messages from Apple and no record of anything bought — not held, not shared, and nothing for a deletion request to reach. The App Store is no longer a recipient of anything for this app (section 6). If decorations are ever sold for money again it will be a new version of the app, and this page will say so on the day, before it happens.

Questionnaire answers and rewards

The app can offer you something to do in exchange for a decoration for your profile — answer a short questionnaire, or open a link. These are always optional, always free, and skipping one costs you nothing but the decoration.

If you complete a questionnaire, the answers you choose to give are stored and I read them. Whatever you type into a free-text question is kept exactly as you wrote it. It is never shown back to anyone in the app, and it is deleted when you delete your account. Nothing is submitted until you tap through — closing a questionnaire sends nothing at all. Please treat a free-text box the way you would any other: don't put anything in it you would not want read.

Questionnaire answers are not sold, and none ever has been. What you answer is read by me, to work out what to build next. It goes nowhere else: not to game companies, not to studios, not to anybody outside the service.

Until 31 August 2026 the app carried the ability to run a questionnaire whose answers were sold as market research, and this page described it at length. It was never used — no such questionnaire was ever offered to anybody and no answer of yours was ever sold to anyone — and on that date the ability was removed from the app and from the server, together with the consent screen it would have shown. There is nothing left here to agree to, and nothing left to switch off. Section 13 records the change.

About the iOS tracking permission. While you are setting the app up, iOS asks whether Sprite Catch may track you, and you can put the same question to yourself at any time in Settings → Privacy & Safety → Tracking. Nothing in the app tracks you, and nothing reads your answer. There is no advertising identifier, no ad network, and nothing that follows you into another company's app or website. The permission was added on 1 August 2026 for the questionnaire described above; when that was removed the permission was deliberately kept, so that the choice is already yours before anything could ever need it. If anything ever does, this page will say so before it collects a thing. Saying no costs you nothing — every part of the app works exactly the same either way — and nothing is recorded by your answering at all.

Completing one of these is recorded against your account — which offer, and when. This is a different thing from tapping a promo card in the paragraph above, and the difference is deliberate rather than accidental: a promo tap is an anonymous counter, and this is not, because the service has to know who has already earned a decoration in order to give it to them once and to stop asking. Where a decoration came from is recorded too, so I can tell a reward apart from one I handed out by hand when somebody writes in asking why they have it.

The decorations themselves — which ones your account holds, and which ones you have chosen to show on your profile — are stored with your account. The artwork is mine, not yours: there is no way to upload a picture, and nothing in this feature asks for your photo library or your camera.

Achievements are still worked out on your device, from your own collection and the counters already on your profile, so for nearly all of them the service keeps no record of which ones you have earned. Two things about them are kept with your account. The first is your choice of which few to display: pinning an achievement to your profile stores that choice, so it follows you to a new phone and so other collectors see the ones you picked. The second is newer and applies to a small number of badges that no rule could work out — a badge for helping test the app, for being here early, for telling me about something broken. Those are handed out by me, one account at a time, so the service does record which of them your account has been given. Both are visible to anyone looking at your profile, which is what a badge is for.

Device and connection information

The service runs on Cloudflare. Like any web server, it logs standard request metadata — your IP address, the time of the request, your device's user agent — to route traffic, block abuse and defend against attacks. This is not used to build a profile of you and is not joined to your collection.

From 5 September 2026 the network address is also written down against your account, and kept for 90 days. Until that date it never was: it was scrambled into a form nobody can read back, and the address itself was thrown away. That changed, and it is worth being plain about why, because it is the one thing on this page that is stored for somebody else's benefit rather than yours. When child sexual abuse material has to be reported (section 6), the report is only useful if it says where the person was connecting from — without an address, the authorities have nothing to act on. A device and an email address do not answer that question.

It is recorded when you create an account, sign in, upload a photo, a video or a voice message, post, or send a message, and one record covers a whole hour of doing any of it, so using the app more does not write more. After 90 days the address is erased and only the scrambled form is kept — enough to tell that two things came from the same place, never enough to say where. If you delete your account, the addresses go with it (section 9). The one exception is a legal preservation, which is described in section 6 and stops that clock like every other.

Two things are unchanged. The short-lived count that protects the sign-in code screen still holds only the scrambled form and never the address itself, and the Android waitlist still stores no address at all.

Each request also carries the app's version and build number, so the server can tell an out-of-date release that it needs updating. That describes the release you installed, not you.

Age information

Both apps ask, and from 21 August 2026 answering is required. This used to be an iPhone-only question, and the Android app asked nothing — that is no longer true, and it changed for a reason worth stating plainly: by that date most accounts had never been asked at all, and the age is what decides an account's privacy defaults and which safety reminders it is shown. So the question is now put to everybody, on both apps, and — this is the part that changed — it has to be answered before the app continues, including by people who had already been using it for months without ever being asked. There is an explanation on that screen, behind the ⓘ, saying exactly what the answer is used for.

To set age-appropriate privacy defaults the app establishes whether you are over or under 13 — through Apple's Declared Age Range service where the device supports it, through Google Play's age range on Android where you agree to share it, or by asking how old you are if neither answers. Your date of birth is never asked for and never stored, on either app: a birthday identifies you far more precisely and would tell me nothing extra, because everything behind this is a comparison against a whole number of years. Apple's service reports a range rather than a birthday or a number, so on an iPhone that answers through it the app holds a result and never an age.

On Android, from the version going out on 9 September 2026, Google Play is asked first. Google holds an age range for a signed-in account — set by you, or by a parent for a supervised account, or established by Google in some other way — and Play can pass that range to an app. It only does so if you agree: the request puts Google's own screen in front of you, and saying no is a complete answer that costs you nothing. If a range comes back, the app takes it as the answer and does not ask you the question again; if none comes back, for any reason at all, you see the same age screen as before. What is stored is what was always stored — the lowest whole number of years the range allows, and no range, no birthday and nothing about how Google established it. Nothing new is sent to Google by this: the app receives an answer rather than reporting one, and it is used only to set the age-appropriate defaults described here, never for advertising, marketing or working out who you are. This exists because Brazil's Digital Statute of the Child and Adolescent requires an app that under-18s are likely to use to take the age range from the app store rather than only ask, and it is switched on everywhere rather than in one country because a rule that makes the answer better does not become worse by crossing a border.

From 2 September 2026 the app also works out whether you are 18 or over, and from 7 September 2026 that answer reaches me too. It comes out of the same question: on an iPhone, Apple's service is given both boundaries in the one request, so there is no second prompt and still no age; everywhere else it is the number you already gave. Until 7 September 2026 it stayed on your phone and decided one thing — whether you are shown the short safety note that appears above a conversation with somebody you have not spoken to before (section 3), which it still decides, on the phone, exactly as before. From the version going out on 7 September 2026 the same yes-or-no is also stored with your account, and on my server it decides exactly one thing: whether you can start, be invited into, or join a community its owner has marked for collectors aged 18 and over (section 11). Nothing else reads it. It is a yes or a no, never a date of birth and never a number on the accounts Apple answered for; it is shown to no other collector, and it is erased with your account (section 9). An account I was never told about is treated as under 18 on both sides: the note stays, and a community marked 18+ says no — and tells you that redoing the age check in Parental Controls is how to answer. Over or under 13 remains the only age result that changes how your account is treated everywhere else.

In the app version going out from 28 August 2026, the ages that screen offers start at 13, because the social side of Sprite Catch is a 13+ product, and under the list there is a button saying My age isn't listed. It opens an explanation and one offer: Safe Mode, a limited version of the app — the collection, the scanner, the Shop and your own profile, with the community, direct messages and news switched off. Choosing it records the account as under 13 and stores no number at all, because none was given. It can be switched off again from Parental Controls, where a parent can also set a passcode so that it cannot be.

The answer itself still takes nothing away. Whatever age you give, every part of the app still works — what an age changes is the defaults described below, never what you are allowed to do. The two things that do switch features off are both choices somebody makes: Safe Mode, chosen on that screen by a collector under 13, and Parental Controls, where a parent switches off the community, messages or news for a child of any age.

Where the app does ask — during setup, right after you choose a display name, or once over the app itself if your account predates this — the age you give is stored with your account, alongside the over/under-13 result, and both are sent to the server. Where the answer was My age isn't listed there is no number to store and none is invented: the account carries the under-13 result and nothing else. I keep the number to understand the ages of the people using the app, so that decisions about what it offers and how it behaves are made with that in mind. It is never shown to other collectors: it appears on no profile, no post, and not on the public web page, and no feature in the app displays it. You can redo the age check from Parental Controls whenever it stops being right — unless I have fixed the age myself, as the next paragraph describes — and your age is erased with your account (section 9).

From 28 September 2026 I may fix the age on an account myself, where I have good reason to believe the age it holds is wrong. The usual reason is that the account holder has said they are younger than the age the app has for them — for example in a message I read while looking into a report or a safety concern (section 4 explains when I may read one). I can then set the account to the age they gave, and while it is set that way, redoing the age check does not change it, from any device. The fixed age does what the same age would do had it been given in the app: under 18, spaces marked for adults are closed to the account; under 13, the under-13 defaults below apply. Fixing an age takes the account out of nothing it has already joined, and it does not count up by itself — I lift it by hand, for example once the account holder shows me they have come of age. You can ask about it, or ask for it to be lifted, through Support. The fixed age is stored like any other age on the account and is erased with it (section 9).

Some accounts hold an age nobody actually gave, and from 29 August 2026 those are asked again. Until 21 August 2026 the age list opened already resting on a value, and the button underneath it could be pressed without moving the list — so an account whose owner simply pressed straight through was recorded at that resting age rather than at a stated one. That is a large share of the accounts currently recorded as under 13, and the honest fix is not to quietly correct the number or to delete it, but to ask the question properly. Those accounts see the age screen once more, on the version that will not accept an answer until the list is moved. Nothing about the account changes while it is being asked, and nothing changes because of the answer either.

From 2 September 2026 that question is only put to accounts collecting as a guest. An account signed in with Apple, with Google or with an email address could be shown the screen but had no way to send the answer back — so the question came round again, and for some people it came round every few seconds. That is fixed by not asking: those accounts are left alone, the answer they last gave stays on their phone, and it reaches the server the next time they sign in. They keep exactly the protection they had while they were being asked — an age nobody gave is still not treated as an age anybody gave, so nothing is switched off for them on 1 October on the strength of it.

Accounts that did state an age under 13 are told what is coming, and when. Rather than a re-ask — an age somebody deliberately chose is an answer, and asking again would only be asking for a different one — the app shows a notice naming the date from which the community, direct messages and news will be switched off for that account, and saying what does not change: the collection, the scanner, the Shop, the arcade and your own profile. That date is 1 October 2026. It is held on the server rather than built into the app, so that if it moves, every installed copy of the app learns the new date instead of continuing to show an old one.

What happens on that date is that three switches move, and they are switches you can see. The community, direct messages and news are switched off using the same Parental Controls on the settings screen that a parent can already use for a child of any age — so they can be switched back on in that same place, unless a parent has set a passcode there, which is what a passcode is for. The app does not refuse to work: nothing on the server starts rejecting this account, and the collection, the scanner, the Shop, the arcade and your own profile carry on exactly as they are. It is applied once, and if you turn the three switches back on the app does not keep turning them off again.

The notice offers two answers and either one ends it. If the age is wrong you can redo the check there and then; if it is right you can say so, after ticking a box confirming the age on the account is your real age. When you confirm, the app records that you confirmed it and when — and that record is the whole reason it stops asking. It says only that the question was answered: it is not treated as proof that the answer is true, it is never shown to other collectors, it changes nothing about what your account can do, and it is erased with your account (section 9). You can still redo the age check whenever it stops being right, from Parental Controls.

The over/under-13 result has to reach the server: a protection that runs only on the device is one the device can be changed to skip, and the server cannot withhold things from a child's account without knowing which accounts those are. When the result is under 13:

• No usage information is collected — the server discards it rather than recording it, even if a device sends it anyway.
• No email address is kept, even when Apple or Google offers one during sign-in. It is declined at the moment it arrives rather than stored and then cleaned up later. Signing in with an email address and password is refused outright — that way in needs an address to work at all, so rather than take one from a child the app closes the door and says so. Collecting as a guest and signing in with Apple or Google all still work completely.
• The profile starts private, so the collection and display name are not published as a web page or shown to other collectors unless someone turns that on.

What the age result does not do is switch features off by itself. The community feed, trades, other collectors' profiles and direct messaging are controlled by a person: a parent, on the Parental Controls screen (Settings → Parental Controls), where each one can be switched off independently and a 4-digit passcode keeps a child from switching them back — or a collector under 13, choosing Safe Mode on the age screen, which switches off all three at once and is undone on that same Parental Controls screen. The passcode and those choices are stored only on your device and never sent to the server.

3. What stays on your device

Several things people reasonably assume are collected, and are not.

Daily reward reminders. If you leave them on, the app asks your phone to remind you about an unclaimed reward — once in the afternoon and once before midnight. These are set by your phone, for your phone. No reminder is sent from a server, nothing about when you are reminded is recorded anywhere, and the app does not need to know your time zone to do it — your phone already does. They keep working with no signal, and they stop the moment you turn them off in Settings → Notifications, which is a switch stored on that device rather than on your account.

Sponsored cards you hide. Hiding a card in the Trading feed is remembered on that phone, for that phone — the list of cards you hid is not sent anywhere, so a card hidden on one phone can still appear on another.

What you searched for on the Skins screen. From a future release, the iPhone and iPad app keeps a short list of your recent searches there, so you can run one again with a tap. The list is kept on that device, for that device — it is not part of your account and does not follow you to another phone. You can remove a search from it, or clear it, on the search screen, and it is cleared when you sign out or switch account.

Your answers in Quick add, and what your locker is worth. From a future release, the iPhone and iPad app can offer Quick add on the Skins screen, which shows cosmetics one at a time and asks whether you have each one. A yes adds the item to your locker like any other tick. A no is remembered on that device, for that device, so the same item is not asked about again — that list is not part of your account, does not follow you to another phone, and is cleared when you sign out or switch account. The estimate of what your locker is worth, shown on the same screen, is worked out on your phone from the items in your locker and the published Item Shop prices; it is shown to you, and working it out sends nothing new to the server.

A copy of your loadouts, on your phone. From a future release, the iPhone and iPad app keeps a copy of your loadouts on the device, so the Loadouts screen opens at once and a change you make without a connection is kept until it can be sent. That copy belongs to the account that made it, is left out of the phone's backups, and is deleted when you sign out or switch account; apart from changes still waiting to be sent, it holds nothing the service does not already have (section 2).

Which posts this phone has already shown you. So that scrolling past the same post twice is not two views, the iPhone and Android apps remember, for a day, which posts they have already told the server you saw (section 4). That short list is kept on the phone and cleared when you sign out. When the app asks the Communities feed for posts, it may send the list along with the request, together with the posts already on your screen, so that what comes back is posts you have not seen yet; the server uses it to answer that request and does not keep it.

Videos, on your phone. From a future release, whether a video in the feed starts playing by itself — always, only on Wi-Fi, or never — is a setting kept on that phone rather than on your account, and the app also follows your phone's own settings for playing videos automatically, reducing motion and saving data. When you post a video, the trimming, shrinking and stripping described in section 4 happen on your phone before anything is sent, and the video in your photo library is left as it was. The app may also keep its own copy of a video you posted on that phone for a few days, so that it plays straight away without being downloaded again; that copy is of something you already posted, and it stays on that phone.

The screen scanners, on iPhone. The iPhone app can fill in your collection by photographing the Sprites screen in Fortnite, and, from a future release, your locker by photographing it or reading screenshots you pick. Those photos and screenshots are never uploaded and never saved by the app (a screenshot you pick stays in your own photo library, as it was). Recognition runs on your device, against artwork, and descriptions of that artwork, that the app downloads from our own servers; on a phone with Apple Intelligence the locker scanner may also ask Apple's model on that phone to compare a tile with the items it most resembles, and that question does not leave the phone. Your photos and screenshots exist in memory for the length of one scan and are gone when you close the scanner. From a future release, a locker review you leave before adding its items may be kept on that phone as a draft, so that you can pick it up again: the small cut-outs of the tiles it read, the scanner's measurements of them, its guesses and what you ticked, corrected or marked as not an item — not your photos or screenshots. A draft stays on the phone, is not uploaded and is left out of the phone's backups, and it is deleted when you add its items or discard it, when you sign out or delete your account, or 30 days after you last changed it. Nothing is marked without your approval, and what you confirm is the same "I own this" mark you could set by tapping it yourself. The Sprites scanner sends nothing else. A locker scan may also send the small tile cut-outs and the labels described in section 2, unless you have turned that off.

There is one other place the camera is used, and that one does send the picture. When you claim a reward that a person has to check, you can photograph your proof rather than going hunting for a picture you took earlier — which is what you need if the thing you are proving is on a television. That photo is attached to your message and read by the small group who answer support, exactly like a photo you pick from your library, and it is covered by everything section 4 says about support photos. It is the only photo the camera takes that is ever sent anywhere, it is sent only when you press send, and the app resizes it first, which strips the details a camera records alongside a picture — including where it was taken.

The two apps reach the camera differently, and on Android the app never touches it. On iPhone the viewfinder opens inside Sprite Catch, and your phone asks you for camera permission the first time. On Android the app hands the job to your phone's own camera app and gets back only the one picture you chose to keep: Sprite Catch asks for no camera permission on Android and has none, so there is no way for it to open a camera you did not open yourself. Taking a photo is never the only way to answer either — picking one from your library sits beside it, and on both phones the app still asks for no access to your photo library to do that.

The microphone works the same way, and it is only ever the microphone. It is used for one thing — recording a voice message to send in a conversation — and it is off until you start a recording yourself, at which point your phone asks you the first time. There is no listening in the background, no recording while the app is closed, and no camera involved: a voice message is sound only. A recording you cancel, or one too short to be a message, is thrown away without leaving the device; the rest is in section 4. If you would rather not decide from inside a conversation, the same switch is under Settings → Privacy & Safety.

The warning on a photo somebody sends you. If your iPhone's own nudity detection is switched on — either you turned on Sensitive Content Warning, or a parent turned on Communication Safety in Screen Time — Sprite Catch uses it to cover a photo somebody sends you until you choose to see it, and on a child's phone it also asks before one is sent. The check is your iPhone's own, it runs entirely on your device, and its answer never leaves that device. No photo is uploaded for it, nothing is stored about what it decided, and I am never told that a photo was covered, or that anyone chose to look — that last part is not my choice but a condition Apple attaches to letting an app use the check at all, and it is what makes this a warning for you rather than a report about anybody. Two things follow that are worth being blunt about. It is switched off unless somebody switched it on, which most people have not — so a photo arriving with no warning has not been found to be fine, it has only not been checked. And it changes nothing about how the photo is stored or moderated: that is section 4, and it is the same for a photo that was covered and one that was not.

Siri, your device's search, and the Shortcuts app. On iPhone and iPad, from a future release, you can ask Siri or a Shortcut what you are still missing, how far along you are, to open a Sprite, or to mark one as caught or mastered — and Sprites turn up in your device's own search beside your other apps. To make that work the app writes a small index into the search index iOS keeps on the device: each Sprite's name, style and rarity from the catalogue, a small picture where the app already has one, and whether you have caught or mastered it. That index is on that device and nowhere else — the app writes it, iOS reads it, and it is removed with the app. A request you make to Siri is handled by Apple the way any Siri request is, under Apple's own terms; what the app itself does with it happens on the device, against the collection it already holds, and no part of asking reaches my server.

Hunt Advisor. From a future release, and only where I have switched it on, the app can show you which of the collectors you follow, or who follow you, own Sprites you are still missing — and what you could offer them back. That list is worked out from the same public collections the trading screens already compare, on the device, and no language model is involved in it. On a device that can run Apple Intelligence the app can then draft a message to one of them, or a trade post for the feed, by handing a few names to the language model built into the device: that collector's display name, the names of up to a handful of Sprites of theirs you are missing, and up to a handful of yours you could offer — or, for a post, the names of the Sprites you are closest to finishing. Nothing else goes in: no messages, no other collectors, no prices, and nothing that names you or your account. If the model is not available the app writes the same message from a fixed template instead, and either way you read it and change it before anything is sent. Nothing about a draft is sent to me, and the names it is written from are kept nowhere; once a drafted message is in a conversation's box it is like anything you type there, so leaving without sending it keeps it on that device as that conversation's draft (section 4). If you turn on Use Apple's Private Cloud under Settings → Privacy & Safety — it is off unless you turn it on — those same few names go to Apple's Private Cloud Compute instead, which Apple builds so that what it receives is used to answer and is not kept or readable by Apple afterwards; section 6 says more.

Your activity list. The Activity screen — new followers, reactions, replies, trade matches, message alerts — is stored only on your device. The server keeps no copy and no record of what you have read. The list is capped, old entries are discarded, and deleting the app removes it.

Message notifications that show who wrote. On iPhone and iPad, from a future release, the notification for a message can show the sender's character and name where the app's icon was, the way a messaging app's does. Two things on your device make that work. The app keeps small pictures of the characters it has drawn on that device — pictures of a look, not of a person, so one picture stands for everybody wearing it — where the part of the app that receives notifications can reach them; it is a cache with a limit on how many it holds, and it is removed with the app. And when the notification arrives, the app describes the message to iOS as a message from a person: the sender's display name and account ID, the conversation or room it belongs to, and the preview the notification was already carrying. iOS uses that to draw the notification, and may use it the way it uses any app's messages — reading one out, for example, or deciding what a Focus lets through — under Apple's own terms and your device's Siri & Search settings. None of this is sent to me, and the app does not read your contacts to do it. The app asks iOS to forget a conversation when you delete it, leave it or block the person in it, and to forget all of them when you sign out or delete your account.

What each day's reward paid you. A day of the daily reward pays either a decoration or Gems, and how many Gems depends on how long your streak is and which day of it you are on — so tapping your balance shows you what the rate is, which of the days ahead pay which, and what each day you have already claimed actually handed over. That last part is kept on your phone. Your account carries the running total of what the streak has paid you, because that is what your balance is made of; the day-by-day record underneath it is written on the device as you claim, holds a few months at most, belongs to the account you are signed in to and does not follow you into another one, and signing out, starting over or deleting the app removes it.

Where your rewards stand, so the Rewards tab is ready when you open it. From a future release on iPhone and iPad, the app keeps a copy of your own rewards on the device — such as your daily streak, your Gem balance, your level, your invites, the decorations you hold and what is on offer to you — so that it can show them, and know whether today's reward is waiting, before it has heard back from the server. It is a copy of what your account already holds: nothing extra is collected or sent to make it, and the server's answer replaces it a moment later. It belongs to the account you are signed in to and does not follow you into another one, it is left out of the phone's backups, and signing out, starting over or deleting the app removes it.

The collectors you were just looking at. The search screen opens onto a short list of the people this phone has recently been in front of — whose profile you opened, whose post you read or reacted to, whose conversation you answered — so getting back to somebody does not mean remembering their name. That list is built and kept on your device and is never sent to me: I have no record of whose profile you read, and nobody on it is told they are on it. It holds about twenty names at a time and the oldest drop off; it belongs to the account you are signed in to and does not follow you into another one; blocking somebody takes them off it at once; and the list carries a Clear button, with any single name removable on its own. Signing out puts it away with the account it belongs to, starting over or deleting the app removes it, and your phone may clear it by itself to reclaim space.

The web version, until you sign in. You can use spritecatch.com without an account, and used that way it is the same promise it has always been: the sprites you tick off are saved in your own browser and never sent to me, along with a display preference or two and a note the page leaves itself when it has just reloaded onto a newer version of the site. Nothing identifies you, because there is nothing to identify. Clearing your browser data, using private browsing, or switching browser or device loses that collection permanently — there is nothing for me to restore, because I never had it. Visits are counted, in the narrow way section 2 describes, and that counting stores nothing on your device either.

The web version once you sign in, and what your browser then keeps. Signing in is the point at which the web version stops being local and starts being your account: your collection syncs to the server, exactly as the app's does, and everything sections 2 and 4 describe applies to what you do there. Your browser keeps a working copy so the site is quick and survives a reload, and this is all of it:

• The token that keeps you signed in, and a copy of your own profile — your name, handle, avatar and settings — so the page can draw itself before it has asked the server anything. Signing out deletes both.
• Your own collection, and any marks you have made that have not reached the server yet. The unsent ones are what make the site work on a bad connection; they are sent within a minute, or when you close the tab.
• The conversations you have already read — the messages themselves, and a copy of your conversation list — so that opening one is instant instead of fetching it again every time, and so the list is still there when the connection is not. Nothing new is collected by this: it is a copy, kept on the computer that read them, of messages the app and the website already show you. It belongs to the account that is signed in, and signing out deletes it, as does signing in with a different account on the same computer — so what one person read is never left behind for the next person to open the browser.
• Messages you started and did not send — the words you left in a conversation's box, kept as a draft of that conversation so they are waiting when you come back, as they are in the app. They belong to the account that is signed in: sending one removes it, signing out deletes all of them, and so does signing in with a different account on the same computer. A few dozen are kept at most, the oldest going first.
• Display preferences — how you sorted and filtered the grid, the language you chose, the theme for a shareable image, and a trade name if you set one.
• Small notes about what the site has already done in this browser: which announcements you have dismissed, that you have closed the bar about the Android app, that the invitation to join the community Discord and the offer to add the Discord bot to a server of your own have each been made once, and the moment the page last reloaded itself onto a newer version of the site. None of them is ever sent to me — they exist so the site does not ask twice, and does not reload twice.
• A cached copy of the sprite catalogue, which is the same public list of sprites and artwork everybody gets and holds nothing about you.
• While a sign-in is actually happening, three short-lived values that make it safe — a random value each for checking the reply really came from where you were sent, and the page to return you to. They are read once and thrown away, and they do not survive closing the tab.

None of that is a cookie. The web version sets none, and neither does any written page of the website — the single exception anywhere is the Discord linking page, which runs Apple's and Google's own sign-in code and is described on the Cookies page. None of it is an advertising identifier, and none of it is readable by anybody else's website. It lives in your own browser's storage, for your own browser, and clearing your browser data removes every bit of it — the Cookies page explains how. Doing that while signed in signs you out, and loses nothing except any marks that had not reached the server yet — the collection itself is on the server by then, and so are your conversations, which come back the next time you sign in. Doing it while signed out is, as above, permanent.

The one thing the web version can send me without an account is an email address, and only if you type one into the Android box described in section 2; it is stored apart from all of this, it is attached to nothing here, and it is deleted on release day.

The web version can build a link that carries your collection into the iPhone app. Your collection is encoded after the # in that link, and browsers never send that part to any server — so it reaches your phone without ever reaching me. The flip side is that anyone you send the link to can read the collection in it, and the links do not expire. It contains only which sprites you ticked: no name, no account, nothing else about you.

4. What is public and what is private

This section describes both apps. The Android app used to be collection-only, and this page used to say so. That stopped being true during the August 2026 parity work: the Android app now has the same community surfaces as the iPhone app — the feed, trades, direct messages with photos and voice messages, trade reputation and reports — so everything below applies to it as well. Two things are still iPhone-only, and neither is a community feature: signing in with Apple, and buying a decoration.

A new profile is public by default, so collectors can find you and match trades, and posting a trade, writing a post or replying to one turns a public profile back on, telling you before you confirm. Public means anyone using the app can see — and reading does not need an account, so that includes people who never signed in — your display name, Fortnite tag, the character you designed as your profile picture, the description you wrote for your profile, any decorations you have chosen to show on it, any community tag you have chosen to wear (see Communities below), the achievements you pinned to it and which achievements you have earned, your collection, trade listings and notes, posts and the photos attached to them, replies — which reply each one answers, and how many likes it has — reactions, likes and reposts, and your trade reputation — the star rating from completed trades, together with written reviews, which of them you have pinned to the top, the replies under them, and a scam warning if the account carries one. Other collectors can also search for you by your username, your display name or your Fortnite tag, and can search the text of recent posts. Search covers public profiles and posts and nothing else — never your direct messages. You can go private at any time in Settings, which hides you from search, from Discover, from trade matching and from the "who has this" lists.

Going private hides what you made, not who you are. From 21 September 2026 a private profile still shows the things that say which collector you are to somebody who has already met you in the app: your display name and username, the character you designed and any decorations on it, your Fortnite tag if you set one, any community tag you wear, the official mark if your account carries one, how long you have been here, and your trading record — the star rating, the number of trades and any scam warning on the account, including a mark left by a moderator. It also shows numbers where it withholds the things behind them: how many Sprites you have caught and mastered, how many collectors follow you and how many you follow. What it withholds is what you made and what you chose — your collection itself, your posts, the description you wrote, the written reviews on you, the achievements you pinned, and the lists of who follows you and whom you follow. Before that date a private profile would not open at all, which meant your name and character were already on every post, message and chat row you appeared in and then disappeared on the one screen somebody opened to find out who you were. Everything in the paragraph above still holds: a private profile is off search, off Discover, out of trade matching and off the "who has this" lists, so the people who can reach it are the ones who already came across you in the app or were sent the link. None of this applies to an account the app has established is under 13 — a child's private profile goes on showing nothing at all, not even a name, in the app and on the web alike, which is the promise section 11 makes to a parent and which this change deliberately leaves standing.

Your profile also gathers what you have written. A collector's profile has a Posts tab listing everything that collector has posted, newest first, and anyone who can see the profile can read it — which, as above, includes people who never signed in. Nothing new is stored for it and nothing appears there that was not already public in the feed; what changed is that it is in one place instead of scattered through a timeline, so assume that anything you post can be read as a list of everything you have posted. A private profile withholds that list, along with everything else it withholds — see the paragraph above for what a private profile does still show — a post you delete disappears from it the moment it disappears from the feed, and someone you have blocked cannot reach it at all.

A review can be answered, and only by the two people in the trade. From 17 September 2026 a written review carries a short conversation: the collector it is about can reply to it, the collector who wrote it can reply back, and nobody else can write there at all. What you write is public on that profile exactly as the review above it is — anyone who can see the profile can read it, including people who never signed in — and it goes through the same automatic check as every other public string, so a reply that trips it is refused rather than posted. It is stored with the review it answers, it is deleted when either account is deleted, and it goes with the review if the review is retracted or taken down. Each reply is attributed, so a reader can tell which of the two of you is speaking. The reason it exists at all is that a review used to be the last word: somebody could describe a trade however they liked and the person it was about had no way to say anything back anywhere the reader would see it.

A review can be reported, and the collector it is about can ask for it to come off. From 29 September 2026 each review has its own menu. Anyone reading it can report it, which files a report about the collector who wrote it with that review attached, exactly as reporting a post does. The collector a review is about can instead ask me to take it off their profile: the app sends that as a support request which names the review, adds whatever you choose to tell me about the trade, and is answered in Support like any other ticket. I read the review and the trade it was left on and decide. If it comes down I may remove only its words, so it is no longer shown while its star still counts towards your rating, or the review and its star together. The request itself is between you and me — it is not shown to the collector who left the review.

From 4 September 2026 your trading record travels with your posts. The star rating from your completed trades — and the warning an account carries once enough scam marks have been left on it — now appears beside your name on your posts and your replies, not only on your profile. Nothing new is stored and nobody new can see it: it is the same record the paragraph above already describes as public, shown where somebody is actually reading rather than one tap away. The reason for moving it is that the feed is where people decide whether to start a trade, and a warning that only exists on a screen nobody opened first is a warning that arrives too late. Two things about how it is drawn are worth saying plainly. It is not shown on your own posts — everyone else sees it and you do not, because it is there to inform a reader and you are not the reader; the marks and reviews other collectors have left you are on your own profile, and anything a moderator decided is on your Account Standing screen, where it comes with a reason and a way to appeal. Two things are on neither: the warning I put on an account, which since 11 September 2026 is not shown to that account at all, and, since 8 October 2026, a pause on filing reports against other collectors — see Moderation below. And it changes nothing about what your posts do: a post from an account carrying a warning is still readable, still repliable and still reportable by anybody, and choosing not to see those accounts in the trading feed remains a filter you switch on yourself.

From 11 September 2026 you can rewrite a post for an hour after you write it, and the post says that you did. A collector asked for it, in as many words: they forget to add something and the only fix was to delete the post and write it again, which threw away every reply and reaction it had already collected. So for the first hour a post of your own can be edited — the words, and the topic chips on a general post — and after that hour it is settled. Four things about it are worth saying plainly. Everybody who can see the post is shown that it was edited: an Edited mark sits beside your name, for exactly the readers who could already read it, which is the honest half of being allowed to change words other people have replied to. What you wrote before is not kept. There is one copy of a post and a rewrite replaces it, so the earlier wording is gone rather than stored somewhere you cannot see — what is recorded is that it was edited and when, and a count used for nothing except stopping the same post being rewritten without end. An edit does not move the post: it stays where it was, which is why editing cannot be used to put an old post back at the top of the feed. And an edit is checked exactly as a new post is — the same content rules, the same refusals, the same limits on what may be offered for real money — because otherwise it would be a way around them. The photo on a post, the community card under it and the post it passes on cannot be changed at all; those stay as they were published. One consequence is worth being blunt about rather than leaving to be discovered: because the earlier wording is not stored, a post that is reported and then rewritten reaches me as it stands now, not as it stood when somebody reported it.

From 1 September 2026 a post can carry a photo, and a photo in the feed is public in a way a photo in a message is not. The feed changed on that date: it was only about Sprites — the ones you had caught and the ones you were hunting — and it now has a general Fortnite and Sprite Catch half alongside the trading one, where a post can be words, a picture, or somebody else's post you have passed on. A photo you send in a message goes to one person. A photo you put on a post goes to everyone, including people who never signed in, because reading the feed needs no account. It is stored on the server the way a message photo is, it is not on the public web profile page and it is not indexed by search engines, but treat putting one on a post as publishing it. The photo is stripped of the details a camera records with it, such as where it was taken, before it leaves your phone — the same as a message photo, and the web version does the same thing in your browser before anything is sent. Choosing one uses the picker iOS runs outside the app, which hands over the single image you pick and nothing else, so this feature by itself asks for no access to your photo library.

From 2 September 2026 a photo you attach to a post is checked before it is published, and that check is the one thing in this app that sends a picture to another company. When you pick a photo for a post, it is sent to Google's Cloud Vision service, which answers how likely it is to be explicit or graphic, and nothing else. If the answer is a confident yes the upload is refused: you are told the photo cannot be posted, you can pick another, and nothing is stored or shown to anybody. Everything about the boundary here is deliberate and worth reading, because it is narrower than it sounds. It happens to the pictures that are shown to people rather than sent to them: a photo on a post, a community's picture and its banner, and a group's photo. The still picture shown before a video on a post plays is a photo on a post, and is checked the same way; the video itself is not sent. Not a photo in a direct message, not a photo attached to a support ticket, not a voice message, not anything you write. Until 6 September 2026 it was post photos alone, a community's banner joined on 29 September 2026, and the next paragraph is about why the others joined them. A photo you send to one person is still not sent to Google, and is not going to be. Google is asked one question and is not asked to recognise anybody: the request asks for the explicit-content answer and for no other kind of analysis, and in particular it never asks Google to detect or match a face. Google handles it as a service provider, does not keep it and does not use it to train anything. The picture is not kept on my side either. What is written down is the five scores that came back, a fingerprint of the file, and whether it was refused — never a copy of the photo, and a refused photo is never stored at all. And if Google cannot be reached, or answers with an error, the photo is published rather than held back: a failure on their side is not allowed to stop you posting. Two things this is not. It is not a check for illegal images of children — it cannot do that, it is never treated as though it could, and reports remain how that reaches me. And it does not decide anything about you: a refusal is about one picture, it is not a strike, it is not recorded against your Account Standing, and it does not restrict your account in any way.

From 6 September 2026 the same check also looks at the picture you put on a community and the photo you put on a group — and, from 29 September 2026, the banner across the top of a community — and there it does refuse. The line is not public against private — it is that a picture like that is shown to people rather than sent to them. It is drawn next to a name in a list, for everybody in that place, whether or not they opened anything: a community's picture is public to every signed-in collector browsing for one, and a group's photo is in the list of every person in that group, up to 255 of them in a community room. Nobody there chose to look at it. So when you set one, it is sent to Google the same way a post photo is, asked the same single question, and if the answer is a confident yes it is turned away — you are told, the picture you had before stays exactly as it was, and you can pick another. Two things are worth being exact about. It is checked at the moment you make it the picture, not when it is uploaded, which is what keeps every ordinary photo sent inside that group away from Google. And a picture that is turned away is not kept, not shown to anybody, and not held against you: as above, a refusal is about one picture and is never a strike, a mark on your Account Standing, or a restriction on your account.

On posts, today it still refuses nothing. There the check is running and every answer is being written down, but it is set to record rather than to act while I find out how it behaves on real photos, so right now no photo is being turned away from the feed by it. That is the one difference between the two: a refused post throws away something you wrote, and a refused community picture costs you picking a different one. This page will say plainly on the day the feed half starts refusing too.

The measure that stops keeping an account's photos now covers posts as well as messages. Section 4 describes it below: where the problem is the pictures themselves, I can stop keeping an account's photos altogether. Until this date that covered messages only. It now also covers a photo attached to a post — the picture is discarded rather than stored, and the post carrying it reaches nobody, though its author still sees it in their own feed. A photo attached to a support ticket is still always kept, and that remains the one exception, for the reasons given there.

You can tag any collector with a public profile in a post, not only the people who follow you. Until 1 September 2026 a tag only worked if that collector followed you, and it silently did nothing otherwise. Tagging someone puts their name in your post, gives readers a way to open their profile, and sends them a notification unless they have turned mentions off in Settings — that switch has always been there and is what this widening leans on. Tagging cannot reach a private profile, and it cannot reach somebody who has blocked you or whom you have blocked.

Who follows a public profile, and who that profile follows, are lists anybody can open. The two numbers have always been on it; from 4 September 2026 the names behind them can be read as well, by anyone who can open that profile — and since reading needs no account, that means anybody at all. Each row shows what a collector row anywhere else in the app shows: the display name and username, the character used as a profile picture, any decorations chosen for it, the official mark where an account carries one, how much of the collection has been caught and mastered, and the trading record shown beside a name everywhere else. Following somebody has never been private — they are told when you do it, and it is what puts their posts in your feed — but until now the list itself could only be read by the person it belonged to.

Only public profiles are on either list, which is the rule the leaderboards below follow and it is here for the same reason: a list of names a stranger can read holds only accounts that already agreed to be found. Going private takes you off every copy of both lists, exactly as it takes you off search, Discover, the owner lists and the boards, and an account belonging to somebody under 13 starts private (section 11), so it is never on one unless that has deliberately been changed. The two numbers count the follows themselves, so they can be larger than the names shown. A collector you have blocked is not on your copy of a list and you are not on theirs. And the lists carry nothing about whoever is reading them: they never say whether you follow any of those people back.

You can ask to be told when somebody you follow posts. From a future release, the bell on the profile of a collector you follow lets you choose to get a notification when they post, or when they post or reply. That choice is stored with your follow of them and is yours: it is not shown to them or to anybody else, and they are not told you made it. It goes when you unfollow them, when either of you blocks the other, and when your account is deleted. The notification names them and may carry the first words of what they wrote, and it is sent about something you could open yourself — a post in a community you cannot read, or one that has been hidden, sends you nothing.

A handful of accounts carry an official mark beside the name — the person who makes the app, moderators who help run it, accounts the app itself runs, and collectors the team has vouched for. It is put there by hand and nothing in the app can give it to an account on its own: it cannot be bought, won, equipped or asked for, which is the whole point of it. It exists so you can tell a real one from somebody who copied the name, and it is shown wherever that account's name appears. It gives that account no power over yours and no access to anything of yours.

The language a post or a trade listing was written in is shown with it, so a reader can tell before answering whether the conversation that follows will be one they can have. It is worked out on your phone from the words in that post, so it describes the post rather than you — writing in English labels it English whatever language you read the app in. Your language is never written beside your name anywhere else. Your setting does decide one thing beyond that: whether you are among the names another collector sees when they narrow a list of the people who own a Sprite to the language they read, so that a first message is one you can both read. Nothing else about you is shown there that a public profile does not already show. The country your requests come from, described in the same section, is not public: it is not on your profile, not on the web page below, and never shown to another collector.

Your profile description is shown on your profile — in the app, and in the web version, which draws the same profile. It is not on the shareable web page below and not on any of the written pages on spritecatch.com. Anyone who can open your profile can read it, and opening a profile needs no account in either place, so write it as something a stranger will see.

Collectors who follow you can also see the sprites you caught in the last week, read out of your collection when they open that screen. The Share My Catches switch turns that off. What you have caught is never public on its own — a private profile keeps your collection to yourself, apart from what the answer to a trade offer may tell the collector you are trading with (see trade offers below) — and which sprites you marked as needing a rebuy is never shown to anyone, either way.

From a future release the Friends view of the Social tab brings those things together for the people who follow you: your face and name, the sprites you caught this week, what a trade between the two of you could be (worked out from your public collection and theirs), the wants you have posted, whether you are active, and, where the note rules below allow it, your note. Everything on it is something those collectors can already see about you elsewhere in the app, under the same switches; a private profile appears there without its collection.

A trade offer you send may be shown to other collectors who could take it. When you send one with Show to other collectors who match left on — the default, and always off for a private profile — collectors who have something you asked for and are missing something you offered may be shown what you offered and what you asked for, with your name, as a suggestion in the Trading feed and on the trade board. It does not say who you sent the offer to. Trading posts and wants on the trade board, which are already public, may be suggested the same way. Suggestions come from collectors whose profile is public, who show when they are active and who have been active recently; which ones you are shown is worked out from your own collection, and working that out shows your collection to nobody.

Collectors you are talking to can also see when you were last using the app — drawn as "Online" while you have it open, and otherwise as how long ago it was. This is the same "last active" time that has always been shown on a public profile and used by the "active this week" filters — the one on the trade board, and the one on the Trading feed; what is new is that on the messaging screens it is now accurate to the minute rather than to the hour, and that there is a switch for it. Only the most recent time is kept — there is no history of when you have opened the app, just the last time you did — and it records that you were there, never what you were doing. Opening a conversation in the web version counts exactly the same way: it makes you "Online" to the person you are talking to, under the same switch, because it is the same account doing the same thing from a different screen.

In a conversation, the people you are talking to are also shown while you are typing — the indicator every messaging app draws. In a one-to-one conversation that is the other person. In a group or a community room it is the members who have that room open on their screen at the time, who may see your name and picture beside it. It is passed on as it happens and never written down: there is no record of when you were typing, of what you were typing, or of a message you started and did not send. So that the service knows who to tell in a group or a room, while you have one open the app tells the service which one, and the service holds that in memory for a minute or so after the app last said it — it is not stored, and it is not shown to anybody. It follows the same switch as the time above, in both directions, so a collector who has turned that off neither shows this nor sees it; and once either of two collectors has blocked the other, neither is shown it.

From a future release, a one-to-one conversation may also show the person you are talking to whether you are in the middle of a trade: a line above the box they type in saying “In a trade” while a trade or a gift you have agreed with somebody else is still waiting to be done and confirmed — typically no more than a day. It says that you are trading, not with whom and not what. If they have sent you a trade offer you have not answered yet, it may also tell them its place among the offers waiting on you, oldest first — “you're next”, or a number — which tells them how many arrived before theirs, and nothing about who sent those. It is worked out at the moment it is shown from the trade offers the service already holds, so nothing new is kept for it. It is shown only to somebody you already have a conversation with, and it follows the same switch as the time above in both directions, so a collector who has turned that off neither shows it nor sees it, and accounts under 13 start without it.

Separately from that, and never shown to anybody: while the app is open it holds a live connection to the server so that messages arrive as they are sent rather than when you next look. The web version does the same while a messaging screen is open, and closes it when you leave. The service notes that this connection is open, and forgets it when the app is closed. It is one flag with a time on it, it exists only so the server knows whether there is anything to deliver a message to, and it is not shown to other collectors, not used for the "Online" time above, and not kept as a history. It is erased with your account (section 9).

The Show When I'm Active switch, in Settings → Privacy & Safety, turns it off, and it works both ways on purpose: with it off nobody is told when you were last active, and you are not told about anybody else either. It also takes you out of every "active this week" filter — on the trade board and on the Trading feed — and out of the trade suggestions described above, because a list of people who were around this week would otherwise say the thing you asked not to show. Accounts under 13 start with it off, alongside the private profile described in section 11. Switching it off stops the time being shown, not noted at all: the service still records when it last saw you, because that is how an abandoned anonymous account is recognised as abandoned (section 9) and how I can tell how many people are still using the app. What it stops is any other collector being told.

In a conversation, and nowhere else in the app, the person you are talking to is shown what time it is where you are — a clock above the box you type in, so that two collectors can work out when they are both awake without either of them saying where they live. What the service keeps for it is how far your clock is from UTC, and nothing more: not a country, not a city, not a place name of any kind. That number is shared by dozens of countries at once, it is never turned into a location, nothing else in the app reads it, and it is not shown on your profile, in a community room, in search, or on your profile's web page — only inside a one-to-one conversation, to the person you are talking to. The app works it out from the clock your phone is already set to and sends it when it changes, which for most people means when the clocks go forward and back.

The Show My Local Time switch, beside the one above in Settings → Privacy & Safety, turns it off, and it works both ways for the same reason that one does: with it off nobody is shown your clock, and you are not shown anybody else's. It differs from the switch above in one way, and it is the stronger of the two: turning it off does not merely stop the time being shown, it deletes the number the service was holding and stops your app sending it at all. Accounts under 13 start with it off, alongside the private profile described in section 11.

On a public profile, "your collection" means which sprites you have, the level each one is at, and which of them you have mastered, not only how many of each. Another collector sees them as a comparison against their own — what you have that they are missing, what they have that you are missing, and what you have finished, or have at a level that could finish theirs, that they have not — and the app shows the same comparison in a conversation with you. The level is the one you mark in your own collection, so a Sprite you mastered and then got again can show a lower level under its crown. From a future release the same level may also be shown beside your name where other collectors look for a Sprite you have, such as its list of owners, the trades suggested to them, and what a Trading post of yours shows a reader you have that they are missing, which may be listed with your highest levels first. It is worked out from the collections themselves; nothing extra is collected for it, and going private takes it away along with the rest.

The leaderboards

Each of the arcade games in section 2 has four leaderboards — the best today, the best this week, the best this month, and the best of all time — which is twenty in all. Within a game they are the same list drawn four ways: the same people, the same information beside each name, ranked on a different one of the scores section 2 describes. A place on one of them earns nothing, for the reason section 2 gives. A game's boards are its own: a score at one game never appears on another's, and the games are not added up or compared anywhere.

Each lists the fifty highest scores, and beside each one it shows what a collector row anywhere else in the app shows: the display name, the character used as a profile picture, any decorations chosen for it, and the official mark where an account carries one. Plus the score. Nothing else travels with it — not your collection, not your streak, not how many people you have invited, and not the country your requests come from.

Only public profiles are on them. Go private and you can still play, still beat your own record and still see it; you simply are not listed, and the app says that is why rather than leaving you to wonder. A leaderboard is a published list of names, so it holds only accounts that already agreed to be found. This matters most for the people who never chose it: a profile belonging to somebody under 13 starts private (section 11), so those accounts are off the boards unless they have deliberately made their profile public. Being off the boards costs nothing beyond the listing itself.

A challenge card is the other place a score is shown, and it is a much smaller one: it sits inside a single conversation, it is seen only by the people in that conversation, and it shows the game, who opened it, and one number for each person who has played it. It is the one place a score belonging to a private profile can be seen by somebody else — and only because that person sent it there, or played the card themselves. Section 2 describes it. The short Friends list on each game's screen holds only accounts that are on the leaderboards anyway, under the rule in the paragraph above, so it shows nothing this section has not already described.

They are read in the app and in the web version, and nowhere else — not on the shareable web page below, and not on any of the written pages on spritecatch.com. A collector you have blocked is not on your copy of one and you are not on theirs, which is why the numbering can skip a place. And an account I have flagged for scamming is taken off every one of them, because a leaderboard is somewhere the app puts a name forward.

There is a second kind of board, about collecting and trading rather than about the games, and it can be read without an account. It ranks public collectors against each other — by collection, by mastery, by completed trades, by the star rating those trades left, and by an overall score built from those — and each row shows the same things a public profile already shows: the handle, the display name, the Fortnite tag if you set one, the avatar, and the counts. Nothing new is stored about anybody to build it; it is those published numbers, sorted. It began in the web version and, from a future release, the trading half of it is in the app as well — the paragraph below describes what that half adds. The rule that decides who is on it is the same one as above and is the whole of its privacy: a private profile is not ranked, an empty collection is not ranked, an account carrying a scam warning is not ranked, and making your profile private in Settings takes you off it. A profile that starts private because the account is under 13 (section 11) is therefore off it from the beginning without anybody having to do anything.

The trading board can be read over a day and over a week, and that is the one thing here that keeps something new about you. How many trades you have completed has been on your profile all along; when you completed them has not been. To rank a day or a week I keep, for each collector, a count of the completed trades that fell inside the current day and the current week, and the best week they have had. It is worked out from trades you and another collector both confirmed, it counts exactly what your profile already counts, and it is used to draw these boards and to tell you where you stand on them. The counts keep no history: the day's is replaced the moment a trade lands in a new one, the week's likewise, and only your best week outlives the week it was set in. Everything else in this section applies to it unchanged — only public profiles are listed, an account carrying a scam warning is not, a collector you have blocked is not on your copy and you are not on theirs, and going private takes you off it while leaving your own count showing to you. The board can also be narrowed to the collectors you follow or to a community you are in; narrowing shows you nobody the full board would not, and a community's is shown only to people who have actually joined it. Deleting your account removes these counts with everything else.

How many collectors you have helped is shown the way your trade count is. Your trade record may show how many different collectors you have given a Sprite to as a gift, counted once per collector and only where the two of you confirmed the trade, and anyone who can open your profile can read it there. From a future release that number can also be worn on the profile itself as a Helper badge, whose design changes as the number grows — but only if you choose to wear it. That choice is stored with your account, so it follows you to a new phone and other collectors see the badge, and you can take it off at any time; deleting your account removes it. The trading board may rank public collectors by it as well — over a day, a week and all time — and to do that I keep the same kind of day and week counts for it as for trades, with the same absence of history. It shows a number, never who the gifts went to, and everything else in this section applies to it unchanged: only public profiles are listed, an account carrying a scam warning is not, blocking hides you from each other's copy, going private takes you off it, and deleting your account removes the counts.

Your profile as a web page

Every public profile has a shareable web address — spritecatch.com/u/<your username> — showing what another collector sees in the app, minus written reviews, scam-report text, the description you wrote, the character you designed, the official mark described above and which sprites you have mastered, all of which stay inside it. It still says how many you have mastered, as it always has — just not which. The page draws the app's own mascot for everybody rather than your character, so no choice you made about how you look leaves the app. No account is needed to open it, so treat it as public to the whole internet. Two things limit it: search engines are asked not to index it, and a private profile publishes only who you are — the name, the mascot, how long you have been here and the same four numbers the card has always carried — with the Sprite pictures and the progress bar taken off it, matching what section 4 describes for a private profile in the app. Until 21 September 2026 that page showed nothing at all, not even a name, and it still shows nothing at all for an account the app has established is under 13 — see section 11. Going private changes the page within minutes; deleting your account removes it.

That address used to contain a random code and now contains the username you chose, and that is a real difference. A random code was unguessable and told a stranger nothing; a handle you picked may be guessable, may be memorable, and may be one you already use somewhere else. The page itself shows no more than it did — but who can find it, and what it says about you before it is opened, is now partly your choice. The old code-based address still works, so nothing already shared has broken.

The same address can also be shared as an invite, and that version of the page deliberately shows nothing about you at all — not your name, not your collection, not even whether your profile is public. It carries only the handle or code the link was built from and an install button, and that is all, which is why it works the same whether your profile is public or private. See Invites in section 2.

The web version can look a profile up the same way, by username or by account ID, under the same public/private rule, and it can do it without an account. It shows more than the shareable page above does — it is the profile as the app draws it, so it includes the description you wrote, your reviews and your character — because it is the app, in a browser, rather than a card built for sharing. The public/private rule is the only thing deciding what it shows, and it decides there exactly what it decides in the app: a private profile shows who you are and your numbers, and withholds the collection, the posts, the description, the reviews and the follower lists. What you type into the search box is sent to the server to be answered, and I do not log who looked up whom.

Your posts on the web

The web version shows the real feeds, live, and a reader does not need an account to see them. The community feed, the trading feed, replies, reactions, likes and public profiles are the same ones the app shows, arriving the same moment they arrive in the app, under your real handle and display name. So a post you write in the app is readable in a browser by somebody who never downloaded anything and never signed in, and deleting it removes it from both at once. This is the same publicness section 4 has always described — it is not a new audience so much as a second door on to the same one — but it is worth stating plainly, because the honest test for anything you post is now "would I put this on a web page", and the answer to that has not changed since the day your profile got a web address.

What still needs an account is writing, and everything private. Posting, replying, reacting, boosting, trading, messaging, following, blocking, reporting and marking somebody all require you to be signed in. So do the lists that are not public in the app either — who owns a particular sprite, your own conversations, your own settings. Direct messages are never on the web at all, in the sense that matters: they are behind your sign-in, exactly as they are behind it in the app, and the paragraphs below apply to them identically wherever you read them.

An earlier version of this page described a fixed sample of about twenty real posts, published on the old web page with every author's name replaced by an invented one. That page is gone: no page of the web version shows that sample any more, and nothing reads the file it was built from. Section 13 records it. Nothing about it survives into what is described above, which is the live feed under real names.

A post in a community is on the web only if the community is open to everyone — listed, free to walk into and not for adults only. A post in any other community is behind the same sign-in and membership it is behind in the app.

Direct messages and groups

Who can write to you is your choice, and by default a stranger has to ask first. Someone you have not met sends a request with a short note, and it waits in Chats until you accept it — until then there is no conversation and they cannot write to you. Two things open that door, and both of them are yours. A collector you follow can write to you straight away, because following somebody is already saying you want to hear from them. And from a future release you can turn requests off altogether — Let anyone message me, among the app's chat settings and in Settings → Privacy & Safety — so that anybody's first message arrives in your inbox as a conversation instead of as an ask. Turning it on also takes the requests already waiting and makes them conversations, which is what the screen says before you do it. Turning it back off stops new ones; it does not close the conversations that were opened while it was on. Nothing else moves: blocking still works in both directions, closing a conversation still ends it for both of you and cannot be undone by the other person, the safety rules below are still shown before your first conversation, and messages are screened and may be reviewed exactly as this section describes either way. Accounts the app has established are under 13 cannot turn requests off, and if an account is later found to be one the switch goes back off with it — the same one-way rule that governs the public profile, presence and the local clock.

You can also turn away requests that only ask for a follow. From a future release, Block follow-for-follow requests, beside Let anyone message me, checks the words of a first message to you — a request's note, a first message through an open inbox, a reply to one of your notes — for the ways people ask to be followed or followed back, such as “f4f” or “follow me back”, and refuses the ones that match before they reach you. It is off until you turn it on, it applies whether or not anyone can message you, and it does not apply to a collector you follow. The check is automatic and happens as the message is sent, on words that are screened at that moment anyway: a refused message is not kept, and its sender is told it was not delivered so they can say something else. Turning it on also declines the follow-for-follow requests already waiting, just as declining them yourself would — their senders are not told.

A trade offer is a request with the trade written on it. From a future release you can send a collector a trade offer — the Sprites you would give, and the ones you would like in return in order of preference — instead of a note. Somebody you have not met receives it the way they receive a request, in a Trades list beside their requests, and answers it the same way: accepting it opens a conversation that starts with the offer, and declining it tells you nothing more than an unanswered request would. Somebody you already talk to finds it in that conversation. The two of you can see the offer and what became of it; a block, or closing the conversation, ends any offer still waiting. An offer is not a trade: accepting one changes nobody's trading record, which only a confirmed trade does. An older version of the app, and the web version, show an offer as a sentence the service writes from it, in English, and the service keeps that sentence with the offer for them.

An offer says what level each Sprite is at. From a future release an offer may carry the level of each Sprite you offer — the one your app has for it, or else the one in your collection on the service — and the lowest level you would take for each Sprite you ask for, and accepting one records the level of the Sprite given in return. Both of you see these on the offer, and the sentence an older version of the app is shown names them. A Trading post or a want on the trade board may also say the lowest level it asks for. Levels are the ones each collector marks in their own collection, not something the app reads from the game.

You choose the levels you would like an offer to be at. From a future release the Trade Offer Levels settings say the lowest level of a Sprite you are missing that you will take in a trade, and whether — and from what level — you will take a copy of a Sprite you have but have not mastered. They are shown to collectors who can open your profile, a private one included, so that what they offer you fits them. An offer below them may still reach you: its sender may be warned first — by their app, or by the service for an offer below the lower of the two, which tells them your setting and nothing about your collection — and may choose to send it anyway, and the offer you receive may then say which of its Sprites are below your levels.

An offer can be a gift. From a future release you can send a collector Sprites and ask for nothing back, and a collector who receives a trade offer can accept it by giving their side as a gift and taking nothing for it. A gift reaches its recipient, is answered and ends exactly as an offer does, and the service records which of you gave. When the two of you then confirm the trade, that confirmation also counts towards the giver's helped count, described under the trading board below.

An offer can be countered, and an answer can be changed. From a future release a collector who receives a trade offer can answer it with a counter offer of their own, and a collector who accepted one can change their answer for a while afterwards — picking another of the Sprites asked for, or switching between trading their side and giving it as a gift. The other collector is told each time, in the conversation and possibly with a notification. Countering an offer from somebody you have not talked to yet opens a conversation with them, as accepting it does. The collector who sent an offer nobody has answered can edit it, and the collector it was sent to then sees the edited offer. The version that was countered or edited is kept with the conversation or request it belongs to, marked as answered or replaced, like any other finished offer.

The app on your phone may answer an offer for you. From a future release, when no Sprite an offer would give you would add anything to your collection — because you already have it at that level or a higher one, or have mastered it — the app may decline it for you; when you already have every Sprite an offer you sent asks for, at the level you asked for, it may take that offer back; and while an offer waits, the Sprites in it you already have may be left out of what you are shown. An offer that is only below your Trade Offer Levels is shown to you with a note saying so, for you to answer, though a version of the app from before this change may still decline one for you. This is worked out on your phone from your own collection and your settings, and nothing more is collected or sent to do it. The other collector sees the answer as they would see one you gave yourself: somebody you have not talked to yet sees no answer at all, but somebody you already talk to sees the offer declined or taken back — which may tell them you already had what they offered, or had mastered it, even if your profile is private.

The app on your phone may update your collection after a trade. From a future release, once the two of you have confirmed a trade that began as an offer, the app may ask whether to mark the Sprites you received as owned in your collection, at the level they were traded at — or, if you choose that in your chat settings, do it without asking, or leave your collection alone. This is worked out on your phone from the offer and your own collection, and nothing new about you is collected to do it. The marks are saved to your account like any you make by hand and are shown wherever your collection is; Sprites you already had are left as they are, and the app offers a way to undo an update when it makes one.

The note above your name reaches the collectors you already talk to, and nobody else. From a future release the top of the Chats screen may show a row of faces with each collector's note above it, and the Friends view of the Social tab may show it beside your face — and who sees it is worked out from your side, every time they look, from two relationships you already have: collectors who follow you and whom you follow back, and collectors you have an open conversation with. A note is not on your profile, not on the shareable web page described above, not in a post, not on Discord, and not visible to a stranger or to somebody signed out. Blocking cuts it in both directions, as it cuts everything else. Nothing is sent to anybody when you write one: a note is something people come across, not something they are told about. Nor when somebody likes it: the likes are shown to you, the note's author, when you open it, and to nobody else. And because it is deleted after a day (section 9), the longest anybody can see one on the Chats screen is a day — except the copy that rides along with an answer to it, which stays in the conversation between the two of you like any other message.

Private from other users — not private from me. No other collector can read them. But I run the server, so I can access anything stored on it, including messages, attached photos and voice messages, and I may review that content where I need to: investigating a report, dealing with abuse or a safety problem, answering a support ticket, or fixing a bug. Written messages are also screened automatically for banned content, the same way public posts are, and there is a safety program that can read whole conversations looking for strangers approaching children — though that program has been switched off since 30 August 2026, so no program on my server is reading your conversations as conversations today. Both are described under Moderation and safety below. A voice message is not — nothing listens to it or writes down what was said, which is the other half of the same promise: no machine of mine turns your voice into words, and no machine of anyone else's does either. It is reviewed only if it is reported, and then by me.

Before your first conversation the app shows you the safety rules — don't share where you live or go to school, don't send pictures of yourself, people can say they are someone they are not — and asks you to tick a box saying you have read them, or to close the screen for good if you have met it before. That you have done so is stored on your account, so that reinstalling the app or signing in somewhere new does not put you through it again; the date is all that is kept. The phone you did it on may remember it too, alongside which account it was, so that a moment offline does not bring the screen back — that copy stays on the device and is cleared with the rest of the app's storage. It takes nothing away: you pass through it, and reporting and blocking are never behind it.

A short version of it appears again above each conversation with somebody new, and from 2 September 2026 you can turn it off. Closing it asks whether you mean this conversation or all of them, and offers the rules again; whichever you pick is remembered on the phone and nowhere else — no part of it reaches my server, and it is not part of your account. Turning it off comes back on from Settings → Privacy & Safety → New Chat Reminders, which is the row that also says what it is. Collectors of 18 and over are not shown it at all, worked out as described in section 4. None of that touches anything: reporting, blocking and closing a conversation stay in the ⋯ menu at the top of every chat, identically at every age and whether the note is on or off.

You can record a voice message instead of typing one. The app asks your phone for the microphone the first time, and your phone asks you — say no and everything else works as it did. Recording runs only between the moment you start it and the moment you stop — on iPhone by holding the record button, or after deliberately locking it so you can put the phone down; on Android by starting and then sending or cancelling. Either way nothing is sent until you choose to send it, and a recording you cancel never leaves the device at all. A sent voice message reaches the conversation you sent it to and nobody else — one collector, or everybody in that group — and it is deleted from my server after 30 days, unless the child-safety preservation in section 6 has stopped that clock — longer than the conversation needs and much shorter than a written message, because a recording of somebody's actual voice is not a screenshot. Your own phone keeps its copy of anything you have played, so an older message still plays for you after mine has gone.

You can delete a conversation — from the Chats list or from inside the conversation itself. It leaves your app, and your copy of the messages and photos in it goes with it. What it does not do is reach into the other collector's app: a conversation belongs to two people, and one of you deleting it cannot take the other's copy away — that would hand anyone who had just been reported a way to erase what they said. So the messages remain on the server as the other side's, until they delete the conversation too or delete their account. If they write to you again the conversation comes back, carrying only what is sent from then on.

You can also close a conversation, which is a different thing and reaches both of you. Deleting clears your own copy and the next message brings the conversation back; closing ends it. Neither of you can send anything into a closed conversation — no message, no photo, no voice message, no trade confirmation — and both of you keep everything that was already said. It is meant for the ordinary end of a trade, or for deciding you no longer want one, without having to block somebody to make the messages stop. The other collector is told: a line appears in the conversation for both of you saying it was closed and by whom, and both apps show it as closed from then on. I store when it was closed and which of you closed it, because that second fact is what decides who can undo it — only the collector who closed a conversation can reopen it, and the other has no way to, not even by asking to chat again. If you both close it at different times, it is whoever closed it last. Closing takes nothing else away: they are still on your feed and in search, you are still on theirs, and you can still report them or mark them as a scammer from inside the closed conversation. There is no notification for it — nobody needs a banner about a door that shut — and it does not delete anything. Whose list a closed conversation sits in, and where, is still yours to choose: it moves to Archived, and you can move it back.

You can archive a conversation — one with a single collector, a group, or a room in a community — which moves it off your main Chats list onto an Archived shelf, and you can move it back whenever you like. From a future release, an archived conversation does not send you notifications for its messages, in the app or outside it, while it still counts what is waiting in it and shows that number on the shelf; some notifications that are not an ordinary message, such as one for a message that mentions you by name in a community room or a request to confirm a trade, may still arrive. To do that I store whether, and since when, you have archived each conversation, which also lets the shelf follow you to another phone. It is your setting about your own copy: archiving somebody is not shown to them, and it changes nothing about what they can send you.

You can mute a conversation — one with a single collector, a group, or a room in a community, or a whole community at once. Muting one stops its messages from sending you notifications and keeps it out of the unread numbers the app shows you, while the conversation itself still shows how many messages are waiting in it; a message that mentions you by name in a community room may still notify you. I store whether, and since when, you have muted each conversation, so that the setting follows you to another phone. It is your setting about your own copy: muting somebody is not shown to them, and it changes nothing about what they can send you.

A conversation can have more than two people in it. A group carries a name and, if somebody sets one, a picture — both chosen by the people in it and visible to all of them. Since 6 September 2026 that picture is checked for explicit content before it becomes the group's photo, and can be turned away; section 4 describes that check, including the fact that it is the one thing here that sends a picture to Google, and that it does not touch the photos sent inside the group. What I store alongside it is who is in the group, when each person joined, whether they have muted or archived it, and how far each of them has read. The thing worth being blunt about is the reach: anything you send to a group — a message, a photo, a voice message — goes to everybody in it, which can be up to thirty-one other collectors rather than one, and up to 255 of them in a community room. Everything else on this page still applies to it, including that I can read what is stored on my server.

Anyone in a group can add other collectors to it, so a group can grow to include people you have never met. Nobody can remove anybody else from a group — leaving is always your own decision there, and when you leave, the conversation carries on for everyone still in it. If you are the last one out, the group and its messages are deleted. Communities work differently on that one point, and the section below says how.

Who can add you is your choice, and a stranger never simply appears in your list. Collectors you follow, or already have a conversation with, can add you to a group straight away; you can turn that off in Settings so they have to ask first. Someone you do not know always has to ask, whatever that setting says, and the invitation waits in Chats until you answer it. Until you accept, you are not in the conversation and cannot read any of it. When you do accept, you see the group from that moment forward — never what was said before you arrived. A community room is the one place that can work differently, because a room is somewhere you walk into rather than somewhere somebody puts you; the section below says exactly when, and what it can never do.

Deleting your account does not delete the group. Your messages, your photos and your voice messages in it are deleted with everything else, and your place in it goes; the conversation itself belongs to the other people in it and stays theirs. If you were the last member, it goes too.

Communities

A community is a public place, and that is the point of it. Anyone can start one, and by default anyone can find it and walk in. From the version going out on 7 September 2026, what is public about it is public to anyone who has its link, signed in or not: its name, what it is for, its picture, how many people are in it and how joining works. A community can also carry a banner — a wide picture across the top of its screen, chosen by whoever runs it — and it is public in the same way as its picture. Every community has a web address — spritecatch.com/communities/ followed by its id — that shows exactly that and nothing else, so a link somebody pastes into a Discord server reads the same as the card inside the app; a community that is not listed in Find a Community still has that page, but it asks search engines not to index it. Who is in it is different: the member list is shown only to a signed-in collector who opens the community in the app, and never on the web page. If you would rather not appear on a list like that, the answer is not to join, and leaving takes you off it. From the same version the directory can also show you which of the people you follow are in a community — a count and a few of their faces on its card, and a short "suggested for you" list of communities where people you follow already are. It reads nothing new: who is in a community was already visible to anyone who opened it, and who you follow was already yours. Nobody is told that they appeared on your card. Three more things arrive with the same version. A want can be posted into a community you are in: it is the same post on the same board, with one more place it is listed — the community's own Wanted list, which only people in that community can open — and leaving the community does not take the want off the board. Inside a community you are in, the app can tell you how many of its members hold a Sprite you are missing and how many are missing one you own, and name them beside each Sprite; that is the same comparison the trading feed already makes for one collector at a time, made for the community's members at once, and it reads only collections that are public — a member whose profile is private is counted in neither number and named nowhere — and is shown to members only. And a post in the feed can point at a community its author is in: readers see a card with the community's name, purpose, picture and size and a Join button that does exactly what it does in the directory, and a post about a community that has since been closed keeps its words and loses the card. Because the picture really is public to all of them, since 6 September 2026 it is checked for explicit content before it becomes the community's picture and can be turned away — the same check, described in section 4.

From 11 September 2026 a community can hand out a tag, and wearing one says publicly that you are in that community. Whoever runs it chooses up to four letters or numbers and one Sprite, and anybody in the community can choose to wear that badge beside their name — on posts, on replies, in chat, on member lists and on their profile, so everywhere their name appears to anybody who can see it. That is the whole point of it: a community grows by the people in it being seen to be in it. Nobody is given one. It is off until you turn it on, it is one tap to take off, and you wear at most one at a time. I store which community's tag you are wearing, together with a copy of the letters and the Sprite so it can be drawn. It comes off by itself when it stops being true — if you leave the community, if you are removed from it, if whoever runs it takes the tag back, or if the community is closed — and nobody is told that it happened. Two things it is not: it is not a decoration and nothing about it is bought, earned or granted; and nothing about it decides what your account may do — it says where you are, not who you are. The letters are checked before they can be used, the same way a username is, so a tag cannot be made to look like Sprite Catch staff.

From the version going out on 7 September 2026, whoever starts a community can mark it for collectors aged 18 and over. The mark is part of what is public about the community — it is drawn on its card for everybody browsing — and it is the one place in the app where the 18-or-over answer described in section 3 decides anything: my server refuses to let an account it does not know to be an adult start such a community, be invited into it, or join it, and says so rather than failing quietly. That is the server's decision off the answer it holds, never the app's off a number on the phone. It removes nobody who is already in — marking a community afterwards changes who may join from then on, and the room is told — and it permits nothing: the Terms, the rules and every way of reporting are the same inside a community marked 18+ as anywhere else.

What I store is the community itself, who is in it and when each of them joined, what each person is allowed to do there, which of its rooms each person has joined, how each person wants that community to notify them, and how its channels are arranged. A community holds an Announcements channel everybody in it is in, and any number of smaller rooms. Whoever runs a community may choose some of those rooms as the ones a newcomer starts in, so joining the community can put you in them as well as in Announcements; you can mute or leave any of them, and every other room is one you join for yourself. Choosing a room this way changes what joining does from then on. Everything above about a group applies to each of those rooms, because that is what they are.

From a future release, anybody in a community can look into one of its rooms before joining it. They can read it, and open the photos and voice messages in it, but cannot write, react or vote there until they join. What they see is what they would see if they joined at that moment — the room's messages from the point it began keeping them, without anybody either of them has blocked — so looking shows nobody anything joining would not. Looking is not joining: it does not put them on the room's member list, and nobody in the room is told. The plain consequence is that what you say in a community room can be read by anybody in that community, not only by the people who have joined that room.

Four smaller things arrive from a future release. You can tag somebody in a room by name, which stores their tag in the message the way tagging somebody in a post already does and may send them a notification if they have those switched on; only people in that room can be tagged. A post in Announcements may be copied into the community's other channels, so it reaches people where they are reading — the same words, by the same author, marked as having come from Announcements, and whoever runs the community can switch it off. A community can show a list of who has traded most inside it, counted from trades where both collectors were members at the time; it is built from the same confirmed trades your profile already counts, it names public collectors only, and collectors carrying a scam warning are not ranked. And a channel can be given a background chosen by whoever runs the community from the decorations they own, which everybody in that channel then sees.

A community has a level, and its members' trades are what raise it. From a future release, every trade a member confirms after joining a community counts towards that community's level — the same confirmed trades your profile already counts — and the level, with how many trades the community has reached, can be seen by anybody who can open the community. A level does not go down: leaving a community, or deleting your account, takes nothing away from it. The service keeps how many of your trades have counted towards each community you are in, so other members can see your number if you are among the community's top contributors, on a list that names current members with a public profile only and leaves out collectors carrying a scam warning; you always see your own. When a community reaches some levels, a line saying so may appear in its Announcements channel, and a community's level may help decide where it appears when collectors browse communities.

From a future release a collector's profile can say which communities the two of you are both in — a few names and a count, and listed communities only. It reads nothing new: who is in a community was already shown to anybody who opened it, and an unlisted community is not named. Nobody is told that they appeared on somebody else's profile this way, and leaving a community takes you off it.

A community's rooms keep their past messages for people who join later. It is the one exception to the rule in the section above, and it is here for an ordinary reason: somebody who writes down what their community is for should not have to post it again every few days for whoever has arrived since. It arrived on 7 September 2026 as something whoever ran the community switched on, and from 15 September 2026 it is simply what a community room does — there is no longer a setting, and the rooms that were still waiting for somebody to find one were started that day.

It never reaches backwards, and that is the part worth being exact about. Each room began keeping its history at a particular moment — the day it was made, or, for a room that already existed, the day this reached it — and anything said in a room before that moment stays visible only to the people who were already in it. Nobody who joins afterwards can read it, and there is nothing anybody can turn on that changes that, which is why starting the rooms that were waiting showed no one a single thing that had already been said. Two things are untouched: a room you have cleared off your own list stays cleared, and none of this changes who is allowed into the room in the first place. Every room was told, in the room, on the day it began, so nobody's messages quietly started being read by a wider group than they were written for.

From a future release, somebody can invite you into a community — and an invitation does not put you in one. It is an offer: I store that it was made, who made it and when, and you are sent a notification saying so if you have notifications switched on. Joining is still something you do yourself, and until you do you are in none of its rooms and on nobody's member list. What an invitation actually does is stand in for the community's own front door — if it is one that would otherwise ask somebody to approve you, or one only invited people can enter, the invitation is that approval, given in advance. Turning one down leaves nothing behind at all: the offer is deleted, the person who sent it is not told, and you can still walk into that community yourself later if it is open. An invitation you simply ignore looks exactly the same to them, which is deliberate. Nobody can invite you if either of you has blocked the other, and being invited is not something anybody but you and the person who sent it can see.

The person who starts a community can hand out the ability to run it, and people who can run it can take somebody out. This is the one place in the app where a decision like that is made by another collector rather than by me, so it is worth being exact about what it is and what it is not. Being removed ends your place in that community and all of its rooms, and stops you joining it again unless whoever removed you undoes it. You are told — the community stays visible to you, saying that you were removed and which of a short list of reasons was given. The reasons are a fixed list I wrote; nobody can type a sentence onto your screen.

Being removed from a community takes nothing else away. It is not a warning on your account, it does not touch your posting, your messages or your trading, and it changes nothing anywhere else in the app. It specifically does not close any door to reporting: you can still open that community, see who runs it, and report them — and you can write to support if you think it was a mistake. Nobody who runs a community can hide anything from you, ban you from the app, or reach anything outside their own community.

From a future release the people who run a community can do more inside it, and the paragraph above holds for all of it. They can quieten somebody for a while, which stops you writing in that community's rooms and nowhere else; I store that it was done, by whom, why — from the same fixed list of reasons — and when it runs out, which is at most a week. They can take a message down in one of their rooms. They can lock a channel so that only they can write in it — for a while, or from the moment they start it — close one so that it leaves the community's list, or put the channels in a different order. And they can pin a few messages to the top of a room, where the people reading it see them first; I store which messages are pinned and when. A pin shows a message only to people who could already read it in that room, and a message that is unsent or taken down stops being shown as pinned. You are told when you are quietened, the same way you are told when you are removed: the community says so, with the reason and when it ends. None of it reaches your account, your posting, your messages or your trading anywhere else in the app, and none of it closes any door to reporting.

A message that is taken down is hidden, not erased — the same as a message you unsend yourself, described in the section above, and for the same reason: a report about what was said has to stay answerable afterwards. I also record which of the community's people took it down, so that the record and the room agree. Closing a channel erases nothing either: what was said in it is kept the way everything else on this page is kept, and stops being reachable, which is not the same thing.

From a future release you can report a community itself, or one message in one of its rooms, as well as reporting a collector. A report still reaches me, and what I store is what is described in section 10. What is new is that the people who run that community are also shown the reports filed about it — what was reported, when, how many different people reported it and which of the fixed reasons they chose. Who filed a report is never shown to them. That is deliberate and it is the whole shape of it: the people who run a community are not vetted by me, and telling them who reported somebody is how a report turns into a reason to remove the person who filed it. Deciding a report is still mine; what they can do is use the powers described above. Reporting a community is a report about the place, and I treat it that way rather than as a mark against whoever started it.

What a community keeps a record of. Every time somebody uses one of those powers — handing out the ability to run it, taking it back, removing somebody, quietening somebody, taking a message down, pinning one, letting somebody in, turning somebody down, inviting somebody, changing the settings or the channels — I record who did it, to whom, and when, including the times it was refused. Turning an invitation down is the one thing in that list I keep no record of, because it is your decision about yourself rather than a power somebody used over you. It exists so that a power one collector holds over another can be looked at afterwards, which is the only thing that makes handing it out reasonable at all. It is deleted along with everything else when either person deletes their account.

From a future release that record is also shown to the people who run the community, rather than to me alone as it was until now. The reason is the one above, read forwards: a power that can be looked at afterwards is only useful if somebody is actually in a position to look, and whoever runs the place is better placed to notice a pattern than I am. What they see is the same short entries — the action, who did it, who it was about, when, and the reason chosen from the fixed list. It is not public: it is shown to the people who can use those powers, and to nobody else in the community.

The person who started a community can close it, and nobody else can — not a moderator, and not anybody they have handed anything to. It is the only way a community ends from inside the app, and it cannot be undone. Everyone in it loses it and all of its rooms, at once and without being told: there is nothing anybody else could do about it, and a notice would only be an announcement of somebody else's decision. Nothing is erased. What was said in its rooms is kept exactly the way every other message on this page is kept — it stops being reachable, which is not the same thing — so a report about something that happened there can still be looked at afterwards, and your own messages in it go when you delete your account, along with everything else of yours.

From the version going out on 7 September 2026 the person who started a community can also hand it to one of its moderators, by typing its name to confirm; they stay in it as a moderator, the community itself and everything said in its rooms are untouched, and the Announcements channel is told in one line who runs it now. If instead they delete their account without closing or handing it on, the community carries on and passes to whoever they had made a moderator longest ago; if there was nobody, it is closed rather than deleted, because deleting it would take other people's conversations with it.

Communities are off when Community or Messages is off in Parental Controls, and both of those are already what they sound like. Nothing about a community is exempt from the rest of this page: what is said in its rooms is stored the way every other message is, and I can read it.

You can delete a request to chat — one you sent, once it has been answered or has gone quiet, from the list of them in the app. It clears your copy of that list, and where the request never got an answer it takes the request back as well: it leaves the other collector's app and they can no longer accept it. Unlike deleting a conversation, then, this one does reach them — but only the ask, never a chat: a request somebody accepted leaves the conversation it opened exactly where it is, for both of you. Because taking a request back also closes it, you cannot ask that collector again for a day. The record that you sent it stays on the server, and that part is deliberate. It is what limits how many times one person can be asked, and what holds someone's answer of "not again today" — so a delete that erased it would turn tidying your own list into a way around both.

You can unsend a single message — hold it and choose Unsend. This one does reach the other collector's app: the message disappears from both conversations, and neither of you can open it, read it or see its photo again. What it leaves behind on both sides is a line saying a message was unsent, so the other person can see that something was taken back rather than finding a silent gap in a conversation they were reading. A voice message in it is deleted outright.

What unsending does not do is erase it from the server. The words stay, and since 24 August 2026 so does the photo. Both are kept where neither of you can reach them and I still can. That is deliberate, and it is the same reason deleting a conversation cannot reach your copy: without it, unsending would be a way for someone who has just scammed you to strip what they promised out of your app before you could report them — and when the thing they sent was a picture, the picture is usually the whole of what happened. This is a change from what this page said before, which was that an unsent photo was deleted for good; that was true until 24 August 2026, and photos unsent before then really are gone. A kept photo is read for the same narrow reasons kept words are, listed above. It is never shown to the other collector, never published and never used for anything else, and deleting your account removes it along with everything else (section 10).

Your reading copy is kept on the device you read it on, and your conversations follow your account. Messages, the photos in them and any voice message you have played are saved on the device, so a conversation opens instantly, works offline, and does not have to be fetched from the server every time you look at it. A message you write that does not reach the server — you were offline, or the connection dropped — is kept there too, so that it is still waiting to be sent when you come back rather than quietly disappearing. So is a message you start and leave without sending: the words are kept on that device as a draft of that conversation, its row in your list says "Draft", and they are back in the box when you return. A draft is not sent to me or to the other collector, and it goes when you send it, when the conversation leaves your list, or when you sign out. Signing in on a new phone, or on the web, brings your conversations with you: opening one downloads it from the server, and there is a button at the top of it that loads the rest, back to the first thing either of you said. This is a change from what this page said before, which was that everything above the last message stayed on the phone it arrived on and was not downloaded onto a new device. That was true of the apps until 6 September 2026 — never of the server, which has kept every message throughout — and what it meant in practice was that changing phone left you looking at your own conversations with the words missing. The saved copy is still deliberately left out of device backups: the server is what your history survives on. You can see how much space it is using on the device in your hand, and delete all of it, under Settings → General → Storage. That clears that device only: it does not close a conversation, delete your account, or reach the other collector's copy — and because the conversation is on the server, opening it again downloads it again.

I access message content when there is a reason to, not as a routine — but I am not going to promise you a technical limit that does not exist. Nothing you send is encrypted in a way that would stop me reading it. One other company handles it: if the person you are writing to has notifications switched on, the notification that tells them about your message carries the message, so it passes through Apple's push service on its way to their phone — the same route every notification on an iPhone takes, and the reason the message is waiting for them rather than being fetched when they tap. Nobody else receives it. Please do not put anything in a display name, Fortnite tag, trade note, post or message that you would not want a stranger to read.

Posts in a community

From a future release a community has posts as well as rooms — guides, questions, discussions and the like — written by the people in it and shown in an order that depends on things such as how new they are, the votes they get, how many people answer them and what kind of post they are. A post in a community is written by you and shows your name, exactly as a post in the feed does. It may carry a title, a longer body with headings, lists, several photos, Sprite cards and short tips, and links to YouTube videos — or, from a future release, a video of its own in place of the photos, described below.

Who can read one depends on the community it is in. A post in a community that anyone can find and walk into is public in the same way a post in the feed is — to any collector, signed in or not, in the app and on the web version — and it may be suggested to collectors who are not in that community, or shown as the day's featured guide. A post in a community that is not listed, that you have to ask or be invited to join, or that is for adults only is shown to that community's members and to you; it can still be read by me, for the moderation reasons described in this section, and a post there that carries a video can also be seen by the people who review videos, described under Videos below. This page used to say such a post was shown to nobody else using the app; that stopped being true of posts with a video on 15 October 2026 (section 13). If a community changes how it works later, who can read its posts changes with it. The General feed becomes a community run by Sprite Catch, and the posts already written there move into it, readable exactly as before.

Votes. You can vote a post in a community up or down. Your vote is stored against your account, so the app can show you how you voted and so nobody votes twice; what anybody else sees is the post's total and nothing more — nobody, the post's author included, is shown who voted or how. Voting a post up is the same as liking it, and a like given before is counted as an up vote. Votes help decide the order posts are shown in and help pick the day's featured guide. Votes earn nothing, and neither does being featured.

How posts are ordered. The Communities feed's usual order, and a community's own most-popular order, weigh how new a post is against the votes it gets, how many different people have replied to it (the author's own replies are not counted), and what the post itself is like. A post with substance — a guide with headings, steps or pictures, for example — may start higher, and one that only says hello, asks people to follow or add each other, or is a word or two long may start lower. That last part is worked out by the server from the post's own words, layout and pictures; it may be kept with the post, and it is worked out again when the post is edited. It applies to everybody's posts alike, and being placed higher or lower earns or costs nothing. The newest-first order still shows every post in its place.

Views. From a future release, a post — in a community or in the feed — shows how many times it has been seen, to everybody who can see the post. When the iPhone or Android app has shown you a post for a moment, or you open it, the app tells the server, at most once a day for each post, and the server adds one to that post's total. Who saw a post is not kept: what is stored is the total, and the post's author is shown the same number everybody else is. Your own posts are not counted when you look at them, an account that belongs to somebody under 13 is not counted, and the web version does not count views. A view earns nothing, for the reader or the author.

The Communities feed learns what you like. The app works out which communities, and which kinds of post — guides, questions, discussions and so on — you are interested in, from the posts in communities that you open, vote on, react to, reply to and write. It uses that to order the Communities feed for you: for example, putting posts from a community you read a lot higher up, and choosing which posts from communities you are not in to suggest. What it keeps is a short list of communities and kinds of post with a score for each, which fades over a few weeks once you stop; it is stored against your account, is not shown to anybody else, and may also be used to make the feed and its suggestions better. It is not used to choose an ad. You can switch it off with Personalize Communities (section 10): that deletes what has been learned, stops any more being worked out, and the Communities feed goes back to the order everybody else sees. It is never worked out for an account that belongs to somebody under 13. The newest-first order is never affected by it.

Posts you have already seen. When the iPhone or Android app asks for more of the Communities feed — opening it, pulling it to refresh, scrolling further down — it may tell the server which posts it has already shown you: the ones on your screen and the ones it remembers from the past day (section 3). The server leaves those out of what it sends back, so a refresh brings posts you have not seen yet and puts them above the ones you have. The list is used to answer that request and is not kept; it is not part of what the feed learns about you, it applies to every account alike, and it earns nothing. The newest-first order shows every post, seen or not.

Links to YouTube videos. A post can link a YouTube video. The picture shown for it is taken by the author's phone when they add the link, and stored like any other photo in a post, so reading the post sends nothing to anybody else; tapping it opens the video on YouTube, outside Sprite Catch, where YouTube's own policy applies. An account that belongs to somebody under 13 cannot add a YouTube link, and one is not opened from it.

Videos. From a future release a post in a community can carry a video of its own, with its sound, of up to a little over two minutes — a video or photos, not both. You choose it with the picker your phone runs outside the app, which hands over the one video you pick, so this asks for no access to your photo library. Your phone prepares it before anything is sent: it cuts it to the part you choose, shrinks it, and strips the details a camera records with it, such as where it was taken. It is then stored in Sprite Catch's own storage on Cloudflare, where post photos are kept, and played from Sprite Catch's own server through links that stop working after a few hours; no video service is involved in storing or playing it, and watching one sends nothing to anybody else. In the feed a video may start playing silently as you scroll past it (section 3 says how to change that). The still picture shown before a video plays is taken by your phone and uploaded as the post's photo, so it goes through the same explicit-content check as any other photo on a post (Moderation and safety, below); the video itself and its sound are not sent to Google, or to any artificial intelligence service, to be checked. Who can watch a video is who can read its post, with one addition and one wait, both in the next paragraph.

People look at videos, and a video from a newer account waits for one of them. A video posted by an account that has not yet built a good trading record is shown to its author, marked as waiting for review, and to the people who review videos — and to nobody else until one of them approves it. An account with a long, good trading record, and the moderators and video reviewers described next, publish a video at once, and it may still be looked at afterwards. The people who review videos are the collectors I have trusted to moderate (Moderation and safety, below), collectors those moderators or I appoint to review videos, and the people who run the community a video was posted in, for that community's videos alone; each of them must be an adult as far as the app knows, and nobody reviews their own video. Because review has to cover every community, the app-wide reviewers can also watch videos posted in a community you have to ask or be invited to join, or that is for adults only — otherwise a closed community would be a way to post a video nobody checks. If a video is approved, its post is published and you may be told. If it is rejected, the post is removed and kept the way a removed post is (section 9), and you are told, with a reason from a fixed list, and can still read it; a reviewer may add a private note, which goes into the record and is never shown to you. A rejection is about that video, not about you: it is not a strike and does not appear on your Account Standing. The one exception is a video rejected because it may harm a child: then the author is not told, and it is kept for longer so that it can be reported as the law requires (sections 6 and 9). Being appointed to review videos, and every approval and rejection, are recorded — who, on what, when and why — the same way moderators' decisions are, and a reviewer may be sent a notification that videos are waiting, with a note kept of when they were last sent one so it does not come too often. An account that belongs to somebody under 13 cannot post a video, and is shown only videos a person has approved; any other shows its still picture and a note that it has not been checked yet.

What the people who run a community can do with its posts. The powers described above reach its posts too: they can remove a post from their community and put it back, stop new replies under it, pin a few posts to the top, and — if they are adults — approve or reject a video posted in it, as described under Videos above; a video they approve may still be looked at by the app-wide reviewers afterwards. If your post is removed you are told, with a reason from the same fixed list, and you can still read it; nobody else can. A removed post is kept the way a deleted one is (section 9), and it changes nothing about your account anywhere else in the app. Each of these is recorded the way the rest of their powers are.

Support conversations

When you write to support, the ticket is read and answered by me — and, since 9 September 2026, with the help of a scheduled assistant that works the queue alongside me and is described in full a few paragraphs below. It is never published, never shown to other collectors, and never used to decide what you see in the app. You can attach a photo to a message, which is what most people do when something is broken: a screenshot says in one picture what a paragraph struggles to. It is stored with the ticket, and it is not published anywhere. Who can open that photo depends on why you sent it. On an ordinary ticket — a bug, a suggestion, a question, an appeal — it is readable by you and by that same small group and by nobody else, and nothing automatic looks at it. On a ticket claiming a reward, where the picture is the whole proof and the assistant is what settles the claim, the assistant can open it too; that is the one kind of support photo it may ever see, and the paragraph below says why. Photos are optional — a ticket with no picture works the same way — and the app resizes the one you send before it goes, which also strips the details a camera records with a photo, such as where it was taken. You can pick a photo from your library or take one on the spot; either way it is the same picture going the same place, and nothing is sent until you send it.

The app asks to see your recent photos, and that is all it does with them. When you attach a picture anywhere — a message, a support conversation, a reward claim — the app shows the most recent ones on your phone in a strip, so picking a screenshot does not mean hunting through a whole library. Those pictures are read on your phone to draw that strip and for nothing else: the app reads the full picture only for the one you tap, sends nothing until you press send, and never adds anything to your library or removes anything from it. It does not look at, index or upload the rest. You can refuse and lose nothing important — the picker that has always been there is one tap away in the same place, and it hands over only what you choose without the app seeing your library at all. iOS also offers to share selected photos only: the app treats that as a yes, shows what you shared, and gives you a way to change the selection.

There is one exception to being answered, and it is about repetition rather than about you. If somebody writes in again and again about something I have already answered in full, I can set that person's tickets aside for a while so the queue is not one collector deep while everybody else waits. Nothing else changes for them, and I mean nothing: they can still open tickets on the same daily limit, the automatic reply still answers what it can, the conversation still stays open at their end for the usual thirty days, and nothing anywhere in the app is deleted, hidden, restricted or held against them. Their tickets are stored exactly as everyone else's are. What I keep is a note to myself — the account, why, the date, and the date it ends. It always ends — three months is usual and a year is the longest — because writing to support is what I ask you to do when you think something has been done to your account quietly, and I am not willing to close that door for good. And it never covers a report about somebody's safety: a ticket filed through Report someone reaches me in the ordinary order whoever sent it.

Support does not pass through Discord, and never has. An arrangement for volunteer moderators to answer part of the queue from a private staff channel was described here in August 2026 and then dropped; it was never actually switched on, no ticket ever reached that channel, and the connection between support and Discord has since been removed from the app altogether. Nothing you write to support has ever reached Discord or a moderator — it comes to me and to nobody else. See section 13.

An automatic reply answers some questions straight away. A lot of what arrives is a question the app's own help already answers — how to unfollow somebody, how to get a profile frame, how to move a collection to a new phone — and waiting a day for me to type that out helps nobody. So the first message of a new ticket is checked for a handful of phrases, and if it matches one of the questions I have written an answer to, that answer is sent back within seconds. There is no artificial intelligence in this one and nothing about it is sent anywhere to be read: it is a list of words and a list of answers, both written by me, on the same server that already holds the ticket. (The scheduled assistant described below is a separate thing, and it is not this.) It is not a chatbot you talk to — it looks at one message once, when the ticket is opened, and never again.

Five things about it are worth stating plainly, because they are the reasons it is safe to have. Its replies are labelled — an automatic one says so on the message, so you always know whether you are reading me or a machine. It never decides anything about your account. It cannot warn you, suspend you, lift a warning, hand out a decoration, change a setting or touch your collection; the only thing it can do is send one of the answers I wrote. Whole kinds of ticket never reach it at all: appealing a warning, reporting someone for a scam or for safety, claiming a reward, anything with a photo attached, and anything from an account carrying a warning — those go straight to a person, by design, because they are decisions a person should make. So does anything mentioning money, a refund, a ban or your own account, whatever else is in it. And when nothing matches, it says so and hands the ticket over; the ticket stays open and waits for a person, exactly as it would if none of this existed. A ticket you attached a photo to is the one it does not write to at all — it is passed on without a word, because those tend to arrive in bulk and a form letter would only get in the way. Either way the app confirms on screen that your message was sent, and nothing is waiting on a reply from a machine.

A ticket the automatic reply answers is then closed, and that is worth knowing before it happens rather than after. Those answers are complete, so the conversation has nothing left in it — but it does mean you cannot write again in that same thread. The reply says so at the bottom and tells you what to do instead: open a new ticket, and it comes to me. Nothing about that loses anything you sent, and every message either of us wrote stays in the app for you to read.

There is one kind of support conversation where the photo is the point rather than an extra. Some rewards ask you to do something outside the app — using a creator code in Fortnite's item shop is the first of them — and since nothing here can check that for you, the app asks you to send a screenshot of it and I look at the picture myself. That conversation records which reward you are claiming, so that I can give it to you once and the app can stop offering it. Three things follow from it being a screenshot of another app: it may show your name or tag in that game, so send only the part that shows what you did; it is read by me and by the scheduled assistant described below, and by nobody else; and it is never sent to Epic Games — the only thing this app ever asks Epic is whether an account you chose to link is yours, which section 2 describes. Claiming is entirely optional — the reward is a decoration for your profile, nothing in the app is behind it, and ignoring it costs you nothing.

A claim screenshot may also be compared with the ones you have sent before. Alongside a picture sent as proof of a reward, I keep a short mathematical summary of what it looks like — a few dozen numbers, from which no picture can be rebuilt and which say nothing about who or what is in it — so that the same screenshot filed twice for two different rewards can be recognised as the same screenshot. It is only ever compared with your own earlier claim pictures, never with another collector's and never with a photo you sent for any other reason. It is never used to recognise a person or a face. And it settles nothing on its own: where two of your claims look alike, whoever is working the queue is shown both pictures and decides by looking at them, which is also why being asked for a fresh screenshot is not an accusation and costs you nothing but the time to take one. These summaries are kept for as long as the pictures they describe, and they go when your account does.

The scheduled assistant

Since 9 September 2026 an assistant works through the queues on a schedule, and it reads what is in them. This is the one genuinely new thing on this page, so it is set out plainly rather than folded into a sentence somewhere. Support is one person in one time zone, and the cost of that has always been paid by whoever was waiting: a reward claim sent on a Friday could sit until Monday, and a review somebody had been marked with unfairly stayed on their profile until I got to it. So every few hours a session of Claude, made by Anthropic, PBC, opens the same queues I do and works them.

What it reads. Three things, and nothing else: the messages on a support ticket; the screenshot on a ticket claiming a reward; and a conversation that the safety measures further down this section have already singled out. It reads one of those at a time, by name, because a queue handed it that one — it cannot search, cannot browse and cannot go looking through anybody's messages. It may open a photo in one of those conversations, and when it does it may write down a short record of what it saw — whether there is a real person in it, roughly how old they look, and whether it is sexual — with a fingerprint of the file, never a copy of the picture and never a description of it. That record is shown beside the photo the next time the conversation is read, so the same picture need not be opened twice, and it is what the one permanent restriction below is checked against. Since 29 September 2026 the assistant is what makes that record: the check that used to look at every photo as it was sent is switched off, as the next part of this section explains. Anthropic processes what it is shown on my behalf, as a service provider: it does not keep it and does not use it to train anything. Section 6 names them alongside everybody else who handles information for me.

What it does not read, and these are the limits rather than the defaults. A voice message is not read by it, and nothing anywhere turns one into words — the promise made further up this section is exactly as absolute as it was. A photo on a support ticket that is not a reward claim is not readable by it at all: a screenshot of a bug, a picture attached to an appeal, anything else you send me stays between you and me, and that is enforced rather than intended. It is never asked to recognise a face and cannot be. And it is not given a conversation because somebody reported it or because it felt like looking — only the safety measures below put one in front of it.

What it can do, and what it deliberately cannot. It can do the things that would otherwise be waiting for me: give you a decoration you claimed, write you an answer, close or set aside a ticket, and take down a review or a scam mark where an appeal holds up. Everything on that list is something I can undo in under a minute, and that is the test for being on it. It can pause an account, and in two kinds of case stop it for good. Where it thinks an account should be paused it records that as a request, and whether anything happens is decided afterwards by the same unchanged rules that decided it before — which refuse to overturn a decision a person made, and make a pause decided this way expire on its own unless it is one of the two below. The first is a picture of yourself, since 28 September 2026. If an account sends another collector a photo of themselves and asks for one back — or sends one with no reason given while it has little or no trading record — the assistant may stop that account messaging, posting, sending photos and filing reports, permanently, without a person deciding first. Since 2 October 2026 the rule leaves two adults swapping pictures alone when the account has a long trading record and the look found an adult in each person's own picture. And where any picture in a direct conversation looks like it shows a child, the assistant may stop both people in that conversation sending photos, permanently, whichever of them sent it. These are fixed rules I wrote, not the assistant's own sense of what is acceptable, and they apply only where a look at the pictures, recorded as described above, found a real person and nothing sexual — the age that look estimated is part of what decides them; they never replace a decision a person made. The account is shown the restriction like any other, every one is recorded with its reasons for me to review, and an appeal through Support is read by a person, who can lift it. It exists because this app is used by children, and a picture of yourself sent to a stranger is where the harm this section is about usually begins. The second is that harm itself, since 20 October 2026. Where the assistant has read a conversation and found an account grooming somebody — pursuing someone who has said they are a child, or drawing them towards another app, a phone number or a meeting — asking somebody for pictures of themselves or their body, sending sexual messages or pictures, or posing as different people to reach children, it may stop that account messaging and posting, permanently, without a person deciding first — and where a picture is part of it, a sexual, pornographic or fetish picture sent to anybody or asked of anybody, a support ticket included, sending photos and filing reports as well. It may make that pause last only a while instead, where the account itself looks like the child at risk or the case is not clear, and a pause of that kind still expires on its own. This one rests on the assistant’s reading of the conversation against the kinds of conduct named here, which is why every one is recorded with its reasons for me to review; it does not replace a decision a person made, the account is shown it like any other restriction, and an appeal through Support is read by a person, who can lift it. It has no way to hide or shadow anybody. It cannot delete an account or anything in one, and a report about somebody's safety is never answered or closed by it: those reach me, always, and the app refuses to let it answer one at all. One thing files under that same heading and is not a report about anybody — tapping Appeal this review on a review another collector left you, where the app writes the message for you rather than you typing it. From 11 September 2026 the assistant settles those on its own: it takes the review off your profile and tells you so, and nothing happens to the person who left it. It is allowed to do that, and only that, because it can tell that one message apart with certainty — the app composed it word for word, in your language. Anything you write in your own words still reaches me, and so does a request made from a review's own menu to take it off your profile: the app writes that one as well, but it is a different message, and it is left for me.

Its replies say so, and there is a record of what it opened. A reply it writes on a support ticket is labelled Automated reply, exactly as the automatic answer above is, so you are never guessing whether you are reading me or a machine. A message it sends in a conversation carries no such label — there is nowhere to put one — but it comes from the Sprite Catch Team account and never from a person's. And each time it opens a ticket, a claim screenshot or a conversation, a line is written down saying which one it opened and when — not a copy of it, the same way the safety records described in section 9 keep what was looked at rather than the thing itself. That record exists so that this is reviewable rather than something you have to take my word for.

If any of this is not something you want, support is not the only way to reach me: the address in section 14 goes to a person and to nothing else.

Moderation and safety

Because people can post, trade and message, the app has to be moderated. Text posted publicly or sent in a message is screened automatically before it sends. Web addresses are refused everywhere except inside a conversation two collectors have already agreed to have — not in a post, a display name, a profile description, a trade listing, a group's name, or the note attached to a message request — and tapping one in a conversation shows you where it goes, and a warning that nobody has checked it, before anything opens. The app has no browser of its own: a link you choose to follow opens in your phone's browser, outside Sprite Catch, and nothing about the visit comes back here. Photos attached to messages are looked at automatically as of 29 August 2026, which is a change from what this page said before — until that date they were never scanned on my server, only stored as sent and moderated when somebody reported them. What changed is described a few paragraphs below, under the safety program, which looks at pictures only for the small number of accounts something else has already singled out, and looks for one account showing different faces to different children. From 5 to 29 September 2026 a second, separate check looked at every photo sent in a conversation or a group, as it was sent, and it is switched off today. It asked one question — whether the picture is sexual and whether the person in it appears to be a child — on Cloudflare's own service, turned nothing away, and wrote down two words about each picture and a fingerprint of the file. While it is off, a photo you send in a conversation is not looked at by any program as it is sent. The scheduled assistant described above may open one in a conversation the safety measures have already put in front of it and write down the same short record about it; it cannot recognise a face and is never asked to. A message photo is still never sent to Google. The check has not been removed — it can be switched back on — and this page will say so on the day it is. Separately, since 25 August 2026 a photo can be covered with a warning before you see it, and that one is still your own iPhone's check running on your own device and telling nobody, including me: section 3 explains it, and it does not change what is stored here or who can read it. You can block another user, and report a user, trade, post, message or trade review; I review reports and can remove content, reset a collection or reputation, and suspend or delete accounts that break the Terms. To do that I may need to read any content stored on the server, including a private message, whether or not it was the thing reported — context usually sits around it.

From 29 August 2026 one of the reasons you can pick when reporting an account is that they appear to be under 13. The community is a 13+ part of the app, and until now there was no way to tell me about an account that clearly is not — so the only thing that ever established an age was the account's own answer. What a report of this kind does is put the account in front of me to look at; it is a message about somebody, not a finding about them, and it is treated that way. It never restricts an account on its own, and it is deliberately not weighted like a report of harassment or of a scam, because "report them as a child" is free to file, impossible to disprove, and would otherwise be an easy way to push somebody to the top of a queue out of spite. As with every other report, what is stored is that you filed it, against whom, and anything you wrote with it.

Being blocked does not stop you reporting someone, and from 29 August 2026 it no longer takes the conversation away from you either. A block still hides the two of you from each other everywhere else — profiles, posts, trades, search — and it still stops anything further being sent between you, in either direction. What changed is which side loses the conversation. If you block somebody, their conversation disappears from your list, because that is what you asked for. If somebody blocks you, the conversation stays where it was and you can still read what was said in it; you simply cannot reply, and Report sits where the message box used to be. The messages were sent to you and are already on your phone, so this hands you nothing new about the other person — it stops someone who takes your sprite and blocks you from also deleting, from your side, the thing you would report them with. For the conversations that genuinely do disappear — the ones you blocked away, and ones you had already deleted — the app still keeps a list of who they were with, the other collector's name and picture only and never the messages, so a block is never a way out of a report or a public scam mark.

Closing a conversation is not blocking, and neither is a way out of a report. The two are easy to confuse because both stop the messages, so the difference is worth stating: a block hides the two of you from each other everywhere — profiles, posts, trades, search — while closing a conversation touches nothing but that conversation. You still see each other, you can still follow each other, and the whole transcript stays on both phones. What closing adds that blocking does not is that it is mutual and mutually visible: it stops you writing too, and both of you are told it happened. Reporting, and marking somebody as a scammer with the conversation as evidence, work inside a closed conversation exactly as they do in an open one — for the same reason being blocked no longer takes the transcript away.

From 1 September 2026, blocking one of the moderators no longer hides you from them. Until that date it hid everything: your profile, your posts, the replies under them and your name in search all disappeared from the one account with a button to act on any of it, while every other collector went on seeing the lot — so blocking a moderator was a way of switching off, for yourself, the only moderation that happens inside the app. Three things bound the change, and each is a limit in the app rather than a promise about anybody's behaviour. It runs in one direction only: your side of the block is untouched, so a moderator you have blocked is still gone from your feed, your search and your profile, and blocking one is still how you stop seeing them. It covers reading and nothing else — the block still refuses a follow, a message request and a reply from them, in either direction, so being visible to a moderator is not the same as being reachable by one. And it applies only to the few accounts I have granted that permission to, not to anyone wearing a mark: what they can see is still only what you have already posted in public, and everything in the paragraph below about what moderating does and does not include is unchanged.

From 24 September 2026 a scam mark is a report, not a review. A mark another collector leaves on you no longer counts as a one-star rating, is no longer shown on your profile among your reviews, and on its own changes nothing about your star rating, your place on the trade ladder or your badges — it goes to the moderation team as evidence, as it always has. What marks can do is add up: when several collectors in good standing mark the same account within a short time, and some of them have strong trade records of their own, the account carries a scam warning automatically, shown and counted like one I put there by hand. The number it takes rises with how many people the account has traded with, so a long record is not overturned by a handful of disagreements. It is a fixed rule applied to the reports and trading records the service already holds — nothing new is collected for it — and it is checked again whenever a mark is added or taken back, and once a day. A warning raised this way comes off by itself when the reports behind it are withdrawn or cleared, and I may also lift it myself after looking at it, for example when an appeal holds up. Lifting it leaves the reports on file as reports; the service notes when it was lifted, so that only marks left after that moment can raise it again. It is not carried over to a new account the way a warning I apply can be, and can be appealed to a person from menu → Support like any other.

From 11 September 2026 a warning I put on an account is not shown to that account. A scam warning exists to tell the person on the other side of a trade something before they send their sprites, and it goes on doing exactly that: it is on the profile, beside the name on posts and replies, on trade listings, and on the public web page for that profile, for everybody. What changed is that the account it is about is no longer shown it — their own copy of their own profile reads as an unwarned one, and the sentence I wrote with the warning is not in their own list of reviews. Nothing else moves. The warning counts everywhere it counted before, still costs the trading roles on Discord, and still keeps the account out of Discover, out of the leaderboards and out of the collectors other people are matched with. The same goes for a warning raised automatically by the rule above. The reviews left by other collectors are untouched and are still shown to the account they are about, because those are other people's words rather than mine. And it is not a secret: everybody else's screen says it in full, and so does the public web page for that profile, which anyone can read without an account. It is my decision, and the reason is plain enough — the main thing telling somebody had ever achieved was warning them to start again somewhere else. The way to contest one has not moved: menu → Support, read by a person, since nothing from an account carrying a warning is ever answered automatically.

Moderation runs both ways. If I put a warning on your profile and you think it is wrong, appeal it from inside the app (menu → Support); I read the appeal alongside whatever the decision rested on, reply either way, and take the warning off if I got it wrong. What I will not do is have the same argument for ever: if you appeal a decision, get an answer, and then keep re-filing the same appeal, I may set your tickets aside for a while rather than keep replying — see Support conversations in section 4 for exactly what that does and does not mean. It changes nothing about your account, and it always ends.

From 4 September 2026 every decision a moderator makes is sent to me as it happens, and a decision can name more than one thing. Nothing new is collected by either half. On the first: the record of what the moderators do has existed since the day they got the power, and it lived only in the operator tools I have to go and open — so a decision I would have questioned could sit unread for a week. Each one now reaches my phone as it is made: who acted, whose account it landed on, and what they said it was for. Attempts that were refused are sent too, which is the half that matters most, because somebody repeatedly reaching for an account they are not allowed to touch is the clearest sign I gave the wrong person the power. The moderator's private note is not in it — that stays in the operator tools, where it always has, and the rule that it never reaches a phone is one I would rather keep whole than make an exception to for my own. On the second: a moderator taking something down used to have to pick a single reason for it, so a post that was both an attempt to sell Sprites for money and the sixth copy of itself that hour was filed as one or the other. It can now carry several, and you are shown all of them on your own Account Standing screen rather than whichever one happened to be picked. What is on that screen is unchanged in every other respect: still the categories and never anybody's free text, still nothing about your messages or your photos, and still nothing that arrives as a notification — a decision is there when you look.

Selling Sprites for real money is now something you can report in as many words. It has always been against the Terms and has always been something I act on; what it did not have was its own reason in the report form, so anyone reporting it had to file it as a scam or as spam and hope the description was read. It is treated as a trading complaint rather than as an abuse report, which is a statement about how it is ranked in my queue and not about how seriously it is taken.

From 2 September 2026 you can see how your own account is doing, and why. Settings → Account Standing shows a colour and a sentence — good, something to watch, limited, restricted — together with a list of what has been decided about your account: what happened — a post or a reply removed, posting paused, a scam mark filed — what it was for, roughly when, and when it stops counting. Almost everybody who opens it will read “good standing”, and being able to say that is most of why it exists. Most of what lands on that list is a decision a person made: a post a moderator removed, a pause a moderator applied, or a scam mark a moderator filed with the evidence they had. A post or reply a moderator removes simply as spam is the exception: from 2 October 2026 it puts nothing on that list and counts for nothing, and you may get a notification asking you to slow down instead. Two things can add to it without a person: being reported by several separate people for something serious, and an automatic check for one narrow thing — asking different collectors for gift-card codes or free V-Bucks, which is against the rules and is how a lot of money gets taken from children here. Each says on the screen which of the two it was. A single ordinary report, or a scam mark from one other collector, does not put anything there on its own. Nothing on it is permanent — every entry stops counting after a set time, on its own, and an account that stops goes back to good standing without asking anybody. As standing falls the app pauses things in steps: first nothing at all, then posting and replying, then also starting new chats and posting trades. Anything paused comes back by itself, and the screen says when. It is yours alone: nobody else can see it, there is no way for another collector to look it up, and it does not appear on your public profile or your web profile. The notes a moderator writes for me are not shown to you; what you see is the category and the date. If you think something on it is wrong, the appeal path is the one described above.

That screen now tells you what is on your account, and until 19 September 2026 it did not. It used to say your posts may reach fewer collectors and your messages may not send a notification — the same words for everyone at that level, whatever was actually true of you, because the measures that hide content were not announced and a screen that varied would have announced them. That hedge is gone. If one of those measures is on your account, the screen names it, says which of a short fixed list of reasons it was applied under, when it started, when it lifts, and that you can appeal it; and if none is, the screen no longer suggests one might be. What still never appears there is the private note a moderator wrote for me, and since 8 October 2026 one measure is not listed there either: a pause on filing reports and scam marks against other collectors, described further down this section.

Some public posts are held back to protect the person who wrote them. A post that says how old the writer is and asks strangers for a relationship — or that hands out an address, a phone number or an account name somewhere else alongside something like that — is kept out of the feed automatically. It is not refused and it is not deleted: the writer still sees it in their own feed exactly as they wrote it, and it simply reaches nobody else. The fact that a post was held, and which of those patterns it matched, is stored with the post so that I can review it and put it back if the app got it wrong. This is aimed at one thing only — a child broadcasting to strangers how old they are, what they look like and where they live — and it is deliberately narrow: talking about where you live so two of you can work out a time to trade is not this, and is not affected.

A moderator's scam mark now says what it is for, and yours does not. From 2 September 2026, when one of the moderators marks an account, the profile carries a short line naming what they say they saw — that they watched it happen, that the account was selling for real money, that a trade went one way, that somebody was pretending to be another collector or to be Sprite Catch, or that other collectors reported it to them and it is second-hand. The same line is shown above a conversation with that account, because a trade happens in the conversation rather than on the profile. Two things about it. The words come from a short fixed list the app translates, plus whatever the moderator chose to publish in the public review they wrote — which was already on that profile under their name; the private note they wrote for me is not part of it and never will be. And a mark from an ordinary collector does not do this: those are counted rather than quoted, and only once several different people have left one does a profile carry a warning at all, for the reason described just below. If a moderator's mark on your profile is wrong, the appeal path is the one above.

A mark you left is yours to take back. If you marked someone as a scammer by mistake, or the two of you sorted it out afterwards, you can take your own mark off their profile from inside the app — open their profile and undo it. It comes off, it stops counting against them, and the report that went with it is withdrawn from my queue. There is no time limit on that. What it cannot do is remove anyone else's mark or a warning I put there myself: the first belongs to whoever left it, and the second is what appealing, just above, is for.

The reporting tools get abused too — most often by someone just marked as a scammer marking everyone back, which puts public warnings on people who did nothing. Where I see that, I can withdraw that account's ability to file: its reports are then discarded rather than stored and affect nobody. Because that pattern is fast and the damage lands on other people's profiles, it can also be applied automatically, when what an account files has a shape a real report does not: filing far more in a day than anyone reporting a real problem ever does, or filing against the app's own account, which is not something a report can be about. If you have a problem with the app itself, or with something I have done, write to me through Support (menu → Support) — that reaches me, and a report filed against my account does not. From 2 September 2026 the same protection covers the handful of accounts allowed to moderate the feed, and it works differently in the half that matters. A public scam mark aimed at one of them is discarded and never lands, because the reliable answer to being paused is to mark whoever paused you and a few annoyed collectors would otherwise put a public scam warning on the account the app asked to police them — but an ordinary report against a moderator is written down and reaches me exactly as any other report does, and filing one costs you nothing. A moderator abusing what I gave them is precisely the thing I need to be told about. Whichever way it happens, a person can see it, review what was filed, and undo it. The same applies to the feed — an account that keeps posting spam, scams or abuse can have its posts and replies withdrawn, still stored and still shown back to its author, but seen by no one else. And the same applies to messaging: an account that keeps sending abuse or harassment in private can have its chat requests and messages withdrawn the same way — still written, still shown back to the sender in their own copy of the conversation, but delivered to nobody and never notified to anyone. And where the problem is the pictures themselves, I can stop keeping an account's photos altogether: what it sends in a message is discarded instead of stored, and any message carrying one reaches nobody, though the sender's own phone still shows it back to them. Since 1 September 2026 it covers a photo attached to a post in the same way, which it did not before — the feed gained photos on that date, and a measure aimed at pictures that stopped at the private half of the app would have missed the public one. A photo attached to a support ticket is always kept, including from an account this has been applied to — a support photo is seen by the person who sent it and by me, by the scheduled assistant in section 4 where the ticket is claiming a reward, and by nobody else; it is usually the screenshot I asked for to settle a reward claim, show me a bug or appeal a decision, so throwing it away would take away their way of showing me something rather than take away anybody's way of being shown it. The measure is the only one here that keeps less rather than hiding more, and it cuts both ways: there is nothing left for me to look at afterwards, and nothing to put back if I lift it. It is also the only one that reaches backwards: unless I choose otherwise it takes the pictures that account has already sent as well, in messages and on tickets both — the messages stay and still read as conversations somebody sent a picture in, the pictures themselves are gone, and there is nothing to restore. Anything else sent before one of these decisions is untouched, and lifting one does not deliver what it held back. I keep a record of each such decision — the account, date, reason, and how much it covered — so it can be reviewed and undone. Since 19 September 2026 the measures that hold back your posts, your messages or your photos are shown to the account they apply to, on the Account Standing screen in Settings: what is held back, the reason category, the day it started, the day it lifts, and how to appeal it. Each also sends a notification within about a minute of being applied, saying only that something on the account changed and where to read it, because that banner can be read by anybody looking at the phone. Pausing your ability to report other collectors is not shown or announced — it was shown on that screen from 19 September to 8 October 2026, and is no longer. It is the mildest of them, it is usually applied automatically, it takes nothing away from your own account, and it leaves you able to block anyone, write to support and report a safety matter as before. If you think it has been applied to you, write to me through Support (menu → Support) and I will tell you, and lift it if it was wrong. Until 19 September 2026 none of these was announced at all, and this page said so.

One caveat on the sentence above, added on 5 September 2026: the only case where I might not answer you is the repeat-tickets one described under Support conversations in section 4. It changes nothing about your account, it always ends, and it never covers a report about somebody's safety.

From 29 August 2026 a small number of trusted collectors can moderate the feed, and I am no longer the only person who can take a post down. Until now every one of the decisions above was mine alone, which meant the feed was only ever tidied as fast as one person noticed. So a few people I choose by hand can now, from inside the app, remove a public post — or a single reply under one, from 2 September 2026, which leaves the post and every other reply where they are — and pause the person who wrote it from posting for a while. Four things bound what that gives them, and each is a limit in the app rather than a promise about their behaviour. They see nothing you have not already made public, apart from videos — a moderator reads the feed like any other collector, with the single exception described just above (from 1 September 2026, blocking one does not take you out of it) and, since 15 October 2026, the videos they review (the next paragraph), and none of this reaches your private messages, your photos, your collection or your account details. The measures above stay mine alone, and the only thing a moderator can do to your account is the pause below. Nothing they do is permanent or unreviewable — a post they remove is kept exactly as your own deleted posts are, and I can put it back. And a record is kept of everything they do: who acted, on whom, when, why, and anything they wrote about it, including the attempts the app refused. That record exists so their decisions can be reviewed, and it goes when either account is deleted. Being able to moderate is something I grant and can withdraw; it is not something an account can earn, buy or ask for.

From 15 October 2026 the moderators also review videos, and can appoint other collectors to review them too. Section 4 describes it under Videos. It changes what they can see in two ways, and this page used to say they saw nothing that was not already public, so both are worth stating plainly. They can watch a video that is waiting for review — one its author has posted but nobody else can see yet — and they can watch videos posted in communities they are not in, including ones you have to ask or be invited to join and ones for adults only. A collector appointed only to review videos sees the same videos and can approve or reject them, and can do nothing else a moderator can: reviewing shows them posts that carry a video, as a reader would see them, and is not a way into your messages, your collection or your account details. Every reviewer must be an adult, every appointment and every decision goes on the record described above, and an appointment is something a moderator or I can withdraw.

From 2 September 2026 the moderators can read that record too, for one collector at a time, and they can undo their own decisions. Until now each of them could act and none of them could see: two could pause the same person without either knowing, and none of them had any way to lift a pause once it was applied. So a moderator looking at a collector can now see whether that account is currently paused, what for, until when and which of us applied it, together with the list of decisions already made about it — and can lift a pause or take back a scam mark they filed themselves. Three limits on that, and each one matters more than the feature does. It is the decisions and never the words: the categories, the dates and who acted, and never the private note a moderator wrote for me, which still goes to me and to nobody else. It reaches nothing else about you — not your standing screen, not your messages, not your photos, not your collection, not your account details, and nothing about the silent measures further up this section, which stay mine. And a moderator can only take back their own mark, never somebody else's. Undoing goes on the record like anything else, and where a moderator says the decision was wrong rather than merely finished, the entry on your Account Standing screen is marked as removed and stops counting. This is the same information those accounts could already act on, read by the same accounts, and it is a new group of people able to read a record about you — so it is written down here rather than left as an implementation detail.

If your posting is paused, you are told so, and told why and for how long. This is the one measure on this page that is deliberately visible. It lasts between an hour and seven days, or until I lift it, and while it runs the app shows you a locked box in place of the one you write posts in, carrying the reason it was applied — chosen from a short fixed list, so what you read is the app's own wording in your own language and never something a moderator typed about you. If a moderator did write a private note, it goes to me and is never shown to you or to anyone else. A pause stops new posts and new replies and nothing else: your collection, your trades, your conversations and everything already posted are untouched, and it does not follow you to another account. It was for a long time the only measure on this page you were told about; since 19 September 2026 the measures above that hold back what you send are shown to you in the same way, and all of them, including a pause on filing reports, can be appealed through Support (menu → Support).

A post you delete stops being visible immediately, but I keep a copy for 90 days. When you delete one of your posts, or a reply, it goes from the feed, from search, from your profile and from your own screen right away — nobody in the app can reach it again, including you. What happens underneath is that it is hidden rather than erased: I can still read it, and only I can, for 90 days from the moment you delete it. After that it is erased for good, automatically, along with the reactions and replies that went with it. One thing outlives it, and it is a number rather than anything anybody wrote: how many reactions your posts have collected in total is part of what your own profile shows and what the achievement badges count, and deleting a post no longer takes that total back down. Nothing about the post is kept in it and nothing about who reacted — just the running count, which is yours, which you can already see, and which goes when your account does.

The reason is that the posts most worth looking at are often the ones taken down a few minutes later — a scam offer, a threat, someone posting another person's details — and until this change, deleting one also destroyed the only evidence of it, including for reports already filed about it. Deleting a post is still the way to take back something you wish you had not said, and it still works instantly for everyone else. It just is not a way to remove something from my view before I have had a chance to look at it. The same 90 days apply when I take a post down myself. Deleting your account is different and is not affected by this: that erases your posts outright, including any that were waiting out these 90 days (section 9).

Some of that checking happens on your own phone. As well as the screening above, the app can recognise — on your device, as you send — a few specific things a message asks a stranger for: how old they are, whether they are a girl or a boy, a picture of themselves, to carry on the conversation somewhere else like Snapchat or Discord, and to meet up or get on a call. When it recognises one, your phone tells the service only which of those kinds it was, and which conversation it was in. Your phone sends the message itself nowhere for this, nothing is scored on it, nothing is kept about how you write, and messages that match none of them — nearly all of them — leave no record at all. That is a statement about this check, on your phone; what a message stored on my server can be read for is described just below and in section 4. Asking one person one of those questions is ordinary and means nothing on its own; the same questions put to several different people is the pattern this exists to catch, and reaching that point can hold an account's messages back automatically for 24 hours, exactly as described above. Only the first three of those kinds can ever add up to that; the other two are recorded for me to read beside something else and never count towards it on their own. It never refuses to send anything, and a person reviews every case afterwards and can undo it. It exists because this app is used by children.

Your phone also warns you about messages you receive, and this half involves the service not at all. When a message arriving in one of your conversations asks for a picture of you, asks you to move to another app, or asks to meet or call, the app puts a short note under it saying so. That reading happens on your own device, on a message already sitting on it, and the answer is drawn on the screen and thrown away: nothing about it is sent to me, nothing is stored, and I have no way of knowing that any of it was ever shown to you. It is a caution about a message, not a judgement about the person who sent it.

Your phone also checks a post before you send it. As you write a post or a reply, the app reads what you have typed — on your own device, before anything is sent — and tells you either that the word list below is going to refuse it, or that it breaks one of the feed's rules: offering sprites for real money, gift cards or free V-Bucks, arranging in-game gifting, or moving someone off the app to finish a trade. If it reads as though you are accusing another collector of scamming you, it offers to file a report instead, because that is the thing that actually reaches me and a post is not. None of that reading is sent anywhere. What you typed, what was pointed out to you, and how often, reach me nowhere and are stored nowhere — including everything you thought better of and deleted before sending. It never sends anything on your behalf and it decides nothing about your account. When you do send the post, it is screened on my server exactly as described above; this is the same check run early, so that you find out before you have written a paragraph rather than after.

The safety program described next is switched off, and has been since 30 August 2026. It ran for a single day, from 29 August 2026. No program on my server reads a whole conversation today. Photos are a different matter since 5 September 2026 — the per-photo check described above under “a second, separate check” does run, on every picture sent in a conversation, and it is not this program. Everything else in this section is unaffected, and some of it does read written words: the word list below still screens each message as it sends, the check further down still holds back a public post that puts a child at risk, reports and blocks still work, and I still read what is reported to me. I have not removed the program — it is still built into the service and I can switch it back on — so it is described here in full, and this page will say so plainly on the day it runs again. What follows is what it does while it is running.

What it does when it is running: it reads written words on my server. The screening above is a word list: it looks at one message at a time and can only catch what somebody actually typed. It cannot tell the difference between a collector asking for a picture of your locker, which is how a trade is agreed here, and a stranger asking for a picture of you. So, while it is running, a few times an hour the program reads whole conversations — both sides, the way a person would — along with public posts, replies, and the note attached to a message request, and writes down what it thinks is going on and why. It looks at a small number of accounts each time, chosen because something about them stands out: they have opened conversations with several people who do not know them, somebody has reported them for something serious, or your phone's own check above has flagged them. It is there for one thing — strangers approaching children — and it exists because the pattern it looks for takes weeks to notice by hand and minutes to run.

It reads the pictures too, and this is the part that changed on 29 August 2026. Until then it read only writing. It also looks at photos sent in conversations — but only the photos of the same small number of accounts it was already looking at, and never a photo attached to a support ticket, which is still read by a person and by nothing else. That this program is not a per-upload check is still true of this program, and no longer true of the app: the separate check added on 5 September 2026, described earlier in this section, does look at every photo sent in a conversation. They are different things and this page keeps them apart on purpose.

What it is looking for in a picture is a pattern across conversations, not a face. It answers a short list of questions about each photo — is there a real person in it or is it a screenshot of the game, roughly how old they look, whether the picture is sexual — and then compares the answers between conversations. An account sending a picture of one person to one collector and a picture of a different person to another, each presented as themselves, is the thing this exists to notice. It is the commonest way an adult gets a child's trust in an app like this one, and it has happened here. It cannot recognise a face and it is not allowed to learn how. Nothing here builds a faceprint, nothing measures anybody's features, and no picture is matched against a picture of a named person: that would be biometric information about a child, which is a different kind of thing entirely and is not something this app collects. The one exact comparison it makes is whether the same image file was sent to several people, which is what a stolen photo looks like and which says nothing about who is in it.

A voice message is still not touched at all — nothing turns your voice into words, which is a promise made elsewhere on this page and this does not go near it. And none of this ever blocks or changes a message, or a photo, as you send it.

What it can do on its own is hold an account's messages back for seven days, the same measure described above and no other — which, since 19 September 2026, means the account is shown it and notified, exactly as it would be if I had applied it myself. It is deliberately hard to reach: the program being sure is not enough on its own, and something independent — a report somebody filed, or your phone's own check — has to point the same way before anything happens at all. Everything else it finds is written down for me to read and nothing more. It can never delete anything, never make a decision permanent, and never overturn one I have made. The seven days run out by themselves whether or not anyone looks.

A person reviews what it decides, and can undo it. Every judgement it makes is stored with its reasons and the messages it was looking at, and I read them; where I agree, the decision becomes mine, and where I do not, I remove it. Until 19 September 2026 this was not announced to the account it applied to; it is now, like the other measures in this section that hold back what you send, and a decision a program reached is shown and appealed exactly as one I reached myself. If you think this has happened to you, write to me through Support (menu → Support) and I will tell you, and undo it if it was wrong. You are entitled to ask a person to look at any decision made about you this way, and that is how.

What it writes down about a photo is a description, never the photo. No copy is made and no picture is moved anywhere: it reads the one already stored, keeps a short line about what it saw and a fingerprint of the file, and that record is deleted with your account like everything else. Where a picture looks like it may be child sexual abuse material, even that line is withheld — the record says only that a person must look, and a person does.

The program runs on Cloudflare's own service, on the same network that already runs everything else here, described in section 6. While it is running, your messages and your photos are sent to it to be read and are not stored there, not used to train anything, and not given to anyone else.

5. Why we use information

• To provide the service — storing and syncing your collection, running your profile, delivering trades, posts and messages.
• To let collectors find each other — discovery, trade matching, suggesting trades somebody could take, owner lists and public profiles, according to your public/private setting.
• To keep the service safe — screening content, handling blocks and reports, investigating abuse, reviewing videos, and enforcing the Terms. This includes using your trading record to decide whether a video you post waits for review (section 4), and stopping someone who has been warned or suspended from starting over with a fresh account — whether they delete the old one first or simply make a second one on the same phone. Section 9 explains what that involves and what it never carries.
• To answer you — support conversations and appeals, including the automatic reply described in section 4 that answers the straightforward questions. It never decides anything about your account, and appeals and safety reports never reach it.
• To understand and improve the app — the usage information in section 2, to see which features are found and used and where people get stuck. Turn it off and this stops.
• To put you among collectors you can talk to — the language of what you write, worked out on your phone as section 2 describes, to label it so the right readers can find it; and the language setting in section 2, to narrow the feed and the trade board when you ask it to.
• To decide what to build next — the country in section 2, to see which countries the app is used in, which languages are worth translating it into, and where a change to it would land. It is counted; it is not used to decide anything about your account, it changes nothing about what you are shown, and it reaches no other collector.
• To ask you things, and to give you what you earned — reading the questionnaire answers in section 2, reading a screenshot you send to claim a reward, and recording which offers you have completed so a decoration is given once and the app stops asking. Answer nothing and claim nothing, and none of this exists for you.
• To give you what you bought — recording that an account bought a decoration, so it stays yours, can be restored on another device, and is not charged for twice. This exists only if you have bought something.
• To send you notifications you asked for — push notifications, by category, if you turned them on, and about a particular collector's posts if you rang the bell on their profile (section 4). Some are worked out from something you stored: if you hearted a cosmetic on the wishlist described in section 2, the daily check of Fortnite's item shop is what decides whether that notification is sent to you. And the trade alerts, which are on unless you turn them off in Settings › Notifications, compare your collection with trades other collectors have posted, so the app can tell you about one that would get you a Sprite you are missing for one you have — naming the collector who posted it and the Sprite they have, and telling them nothing about you — and, once a week before new Sprites arrive, how many of the season's Sprites you are still missing. I keep a note of when each kind was last sent to you, so they are not sent too often; it goes with your account. Trade alerts are not sent to accounts under 13. If you review videos, the app may also tell you when videos are waiting, and keeps a note of when it last did, for the same reason. A notification about something another collector did is written on your phone, so it arrives in whatever language the app is displaying; an announcement I write myself is written on my side, so the language setting in section 2 is what picks which translation of it you get.
• To contact you about your account — and, only if you separately opted in, to send you news about Sprite Catch.
• To tell you the Android app is out — the address you typed into the box on the website, described in section 2, for that one email and nothing else. It is deleted as the email goes.
• To show you the community posts you are most likely to want — the interests described in section 4, worked out from the community posts you open, vote on, react to, reply to and write, to order the Communities feed and choose what it suggests. Switch Personalize Communities off and this stops, and what was learned is deleted.
• To put the most useful community posts first — the order described in section 4, worked out from each post's age, votes, replies and content, the same way for every reader.
• To show how far a post reached — the view count in section 4, a total for each post and nothing about who saw it.
• To show sponsored cards — the Trading feed's cards described in section 2, and the running totals an advertiser may be told. Your age is used to keep them away from accounts under 13; nothing else about you is used to choose one.
• To keep it running and secure — server logs, abuse prevention, debugging.
• To meet legal obligations — where the law requires it.

Nothing about you is sold. Your collection, your posts, your messages, your questionnaire answers and your usage information are not sold, are not used for advertising, and are not used to build a profile of you across other companies' services.

6. Who we share information with

Everybody named here handles information for me, or is a company you have your own relationship with. Nobody buys anything about you, because nothing about you is for sale.

Handled on my behalf. These three process information as service providers and do nothing else with it:

• Cloudflare, Inc. — hosts the server, database, analytics, images and videos and delivers the emails the service sends you, processing data on my behalf as a service provider on its global network. Since 29 August 2026 that also includes Cloudflare's artificial intelligence service, which is what the safety program in section 4 uses to read written messages and posts, and what the photo check in section 4 used on photos sent in conversations. Both are switched off — the program since 30 August 2026 and the photo check since 29 September 2026 — so nothing of yours is being sent to that service at the moment. It is named here because both still exist and can be switched back on. There is still no separate artificial intelligence company — it is the same company on the same network, under the same agreement — and Cloudflare does not keep what it reads and does not use it to train anything. Two things this does not reach: nothing you write to support is read by a machine (the automatic support reply in section 4 is a list of written answers, not a model), and a sign-in code is produced by the same server that runs everything else.
• Anthropic, PBC — since 9 September 2026, the maker of Claude, the assistant that works through the support and safety queues on a schedule. It is shown three things and only when a queue hands it one: the messages on a support ticket, the screenshot on a ticket claiming a reward, and a conversation the safety measures in section 4 have already singled out. It is never shown a voice message, never shown a photo attached to any other kind of ticket, and never asked to recognise a face. Anthropic processes what it is shown on my behalf as a service provider, does not keep it and does not use it to train anything. When it opens a photo in a conversation it may write down a short record of what it saw, never the picture. Section 4 describes the whole of what it may read and what it may do, including the things it structurally cannot — it can give something back, can stop an account in the one case section 4 sets out, and cannot delete an account.
• Apple, Inc. — on iPhone only: Sign in with Apple, if you use it; the Push Notification service, if you turn notifications on, which receives your device's push token and the notification to deliver, never your collection. The App Store is no longer on this list: the app sells nothing, and since 1 September 2026 it contains no code that could. When the notification is about a direct message, the notification carries that message — Apple relays it to your phone the way it relays any notification, and that is how the message is already there when you open the conversation. Two more things from a future release, both described in section 3: Siri, if you use it to ask the app something, where Apple handles the spoken request under its own terms and the app answers on the device; and Apple's Private Cloud Compute, only if you switch it on, which then receives the few names Hunt Advisor drafts from — one collector's display name and the names of some Sprites, never a message, a price or anything that names you — and, by Apple's design, uses it to answer and neither keeps it nor makes it available to Apple. Leave the switch off and nothing about your collection reaches Apple for it.
• Google LLC — three separate things, and one of them is new as of 2 September 2026 and is the only one where Google is working on my behalf. That one is Cloud Vision, which answers whether a picture is explicit before it goes up: it processes that picture as a service provider, is asked nothing else about it, is never asked to recognise a face, does not keep it and does not use it to train anything. It receives photos attached to posts, the picture and the banner on a community, and the photo on a group (the community picture and the group photo since 6 September 2026, the banner since 29 September 2026) — including, from a future release, the still picture shown before a video on a post plays, but not the video or its sound — no message photo, no support photo, no writing, no collection, and nothing at all if you never put a picture on any of those. Section 4 describes it in full. The other two are the ones that were already here, and in those Google is not working on my behalf: Sign in with Google, if you use it; and, on Android, the service that delivers notifications. Google sees that you signed in to Sprite Catch and when, and handles that under its own privacy policy. What comes back to the app is your email address and an identifier for your Google account; what does not go to Google is everything else — your collection, your posts, your direct messages, your usage information. Where you pick the account differs by phone: on iPhone Google's sign-in page opens in your browser, and on Android, from a future release, Google's own software draws the account chooser inside the app. The difference is worth stating because it changes what runs on your phone, not what Google receives — which is the same either way.
  
  Notifications on Android go through Google, the way notifications on iPhone go through Apple. From a future release, an Android device that turns notifications on registers with Google's messaging service, which creates an identifier for that installation of the app and receives the notifications to deliver — including, when the notification is about a direct message, that message, exactly as described for Apple above. It does not receive your collection. Uninstalling the app, turning notifications off, or deleting your account ends it; deleting your account also asks Google to delete that installation identifier.
  
  
  
  On Android, some of Google's own software runs inside the app, each piece for a feature of its own — such as the messaging component above, the component that shows you the account chooser when you sign in with Google, the Google Play component that can answer the age question (section 3), and the Google Play component that can show Google Play's rating card (below). It is worth being exact about what they are not: there is no Google analytics, no advertising SDK, no crash reporter and no advertising identifier, and nothing in any of them watches what you do in the app or follows you into another company's app or website. Each does its work only for its own feature — the chooser when you tap Sign in with Google, the messaging component once you turn notifications on. On iPhone there is no Google software in the app at all: sign-in there happens in your browser, and notifications go through Apple.
  
  The app may ask you to rate it in the store you got it from — the App Store on iPhone, Google Play on Android — now and then, after something that went well, such as a trade you rated highly. The card is the store's own, drawn by Apple or Google rather than by the app: whatever you choose or write in it goes to that store, is handled under that store's terms, and becomes a public review there if you post one. The app is not told whether the card appeared, whether you rated, or what you said. The store also decides how often the card can appear, and may not show it at all. Like the App Store above, Google is not working on my behalf here — it is a company you have your own relationship with, holding what reaches it on its own terms, and beyond that deletion request I cannot remove things from its systems for you.

The Android app adds one thing, and it is the notification service described above. There is still no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK, no crash reporter and no advertising identifier in it, and Android's automatic cloud backup is deliberately switched off so nothing — not your sign-in, not your collection — is copied into your Google Drive. The trade is that turning notifications on means Google's messaging service holds an identifier for your installation for as long as they stay on. Beyond distributing the app, what reaches Google through it is what you choose to hand Google yourself, such as a sign-in, sharing your age range, or a rating you leave on Google Play. The web version adds nobody at all — no third-party script, font or CDN beyond Cloudflare, and that survived it becoming a full version of the app: nothing on any page of it is loaded from another company, and every request it makes for your data goes to my own server. The same is true of every page on spritecatch.com and of the marketing page on app.spritecatch.com, except the linking page described below: the typefaces these pages use are served from the website, not fetched from Google (see section 13).

Signing in to the web version with Apple or with Google sends you to Apple or Google, and that is the point. Instead of running their software on my page, the browser takes you to appleid.apple.com or accounts.google.com, you sign in there, and they send you back with proof of who you are. So it is a visit to their own site, made by you, under their own privacy policy — the same thing that happens on the iPhone today — and what they receive is that you signed in to Sprite Catch and when. The proof they hand back reaches nobody but you and me. Google returns it in the part of the web address that browsers never send to a server, so it arrives in your browser having passed through nothing. Apple insists instead on posting it to the address it was given, which is my own server; that server does one thing with it, which is hand it straight back to your browser the way Google's arrives, and the checking happens afterwards. Either way it goes to no third party, and nothing of Apple's or Google's is left running on the page afterwards.

A photo you put on a post from the web goes to Google Cloud Vision exactly as one from the app does, and nothing about that is different for being uploaded in a browser: same one check, same question asked of it, same nothing kept. Photos you send in a conversation from the web are not sent there, the same way they are not from the app.

A community or promo link is a link, not an integration. Links to the community Discord, or to Sprite Catch's pages on services like TikTok or YouTube, embed nothing and send nothing about you with the click. Clicking through to the community server tells Discord nothing about your account here. If you join or follow, you become that service's user there and its privacy policy applies, not this one — including its minimum age. Sprite Catch's reporting and blocking tools do not reach into other services.

Discord Inc. is the one place that changes, and only if you ask it to. Typing a command means Discord tells this app which Discord account typed it, and which server it was typed in — and nothing else about you there. Everything the bot does is an answer to a command somebody typed; it holds no permission to read messages and no way to see who else is in a server. Once you finish the link, the app tells Discord these things back: the private reply you see on your own screen, a direct message to you confirming the link — which carries your display name and account ID — an instruction to give your Discord account the Verified Collector role, and, if your profile is public, an instruction to give it the trader role matching your trading standing and a role for any past season you have mastered. Those roles are visible to everyone in the server, and they are re-checked once a day for as long as the link exists, so a change to your standing is sent to Discord too. A private profile sends neither of the last two.

Five commands send Discord a picture, and each one is a message in a channel. Typing /missing, /collection, /mastered, /unmastered or /rating sends Discord an image of the collection or the trading record it names — yours, or a public collector's you asked about — carrying the display name and username that collector's public profile already shows. Discord copies that image onto its own network and keeps it under its own rules, which is what makes the message readable to the channel later. Nothing else about the exchange changes: no email address, nothing about what you write or read anywhere in this app, and nothing at all unless you type a command. Discord is not working on my behalf here — it is a company you have your own relationship with, under its own privacy policy, and I cannot remove things from its systems for you. Section 2 describes what is stored on this side, when a picture is refused, and how to undo the link.

The bot sends Discord two more kinds of message, and both are things you asked for. A collector search shows its answer only to the person who typed it, so it tells the channel nothing about anybody. A trade room is a private thread the bot opens for two named people and writes two messages into — what the two of you could swap, and the fact that it closed. Both name Discord accounts and the Sprites involved; neither carries an email address, an Account ID, or anything about what you write or read anywhere in this app. Everything either of you then says in that thread is on Discord and never reaches this app, so it is not mine to store, to read, or to delete for you — and Sprite Catch's blocking and reporting tools do not reach into it either.

The linking page runs two pieces of sign-in software, and only the one you tap. If you finish the link in a browser rather than in the app, the page offers Sign in with Apple and Sign in with Google, and each is drawn by that company's own code loaded from that company's own address — which is the only way either sign-in can work, on any website. Tapping one tells that company you are signing in to Sprite Catch, exactly as the same button does in the app. Neither is analytics, neither is advertising, neither follows you anywhere, and using the app instead loads neither. Every other page on spritecatch.com still loads nothing from anybody.

A copyright complaint is passed on to the person it is about. If somebody tells me that a post, a photo or a message here copies work they own, handling it means handing details to a stranger in both directions, so it is worth stating before you ever send one. The complaint is forwarded to the collector whose content it names, carrying the complainant's name and contact details. If that collector disputes it, the law requires their reply to carry their real name, postal address and phone number, and that reply is forwarded to the complainant in full. Neither step has an anonymous version. The terms set out the whole procedure.

I may also disclose information where I am legally required to, or where it is genuinely necessary to investigate abuse of the app.

Child sexual abuse material is the one thing I am obliged to report, and it goes to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. United States law requires any service like this one to report apparent child sexual abuse material to NCMEC's CyberTipline as soon as it knows about it, and NCMEC may pass a report to law enforcement. A report carries what the law asks for: where the material is held, the account or accounts it involves, the messages around it, the sign-in details and timestamps I have, and — for anything on or after 5 September 2026 — the network addresses described in section 2. It is not something I can decline to send, there is no version of it that leaves the account out, and — because the same law expects the person it concerns not to be warned — it is not announced to them, in the app or anywhere else. Nothing else in this app is ever handed to NCMEC, and this is the only reason anything here is ever sent to a law enforcement body without a court order compelling it. Where this page says elsewhere that something is seen by you and by me and by nobody else — a voice message, a support photo, a direct message — read it as being about other collectors, and about companies other than the ones section 6 names as handling information on my behalf, which is what it has always meant: it was never a promise that a legal obligation could be refused, and this paragraph and the one below it are the exception it was always subject to.

When that happens, the ordinary deletion promises stop applying to that account. The same law requires the material and the account records around it to be preserved for at least one year after a report — longer if the authorities ask, and longer if I decide to keep it, which the law expressly allows. So for as long as a preservation like that is running, nothing about the account is erased on its usual schedule: not the 30 days after a deletion request, not the 30 days a voice message otherwise gets, not the clean-up that removes an abandoned upload after a day. Section 9 says what that means in practice. You can still delete your account and it still disappears from the app the moment you do; what waits is the erasing.

YouTube. A post in a community can link a YouTube video (section 4). Nothing is sent to YouTube when you read the post; tapping the video opens it on YouTube, outside the app, and from then on YouTube's own policy applies to what you watch there. A video uploaded to a post is a different thing: it is stored and played by Sprite Catch's own server on Cloudflare, as section 4 describes, and watching it involves no other company. That feature adds nobody to this section.

Advertisers. A company or creator whose card runs in the Trading feed (section 2) receives nothing about you from Sprite Catch — what they may be told is how many times their card was shown, tapped and reported, in total. Tapping their card opens their website in your browser, outside the app, and from then on what you do there is between you and them, under their own policy.

7. Where information is processed

Cloudflare's network is global and requests are served from wherever is nearest to you, so your information may be processed outside your own country, including in the United States. Where information originating in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom is transferred, Cloudflare relies on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.

8. Legal bases (GDPR)

• Performance of a contract — storing and syncing your collection is the service you asked for. Keeping the record of a decoration you bought is the same basis: without it I cannot give you the thing you paid for, keep it after a reinstall, or restore it on a new device.
• Consent — for the optional parts: signing in, a display name, Fortnite tag or profile description, the language you read and write in, trades, posts, messaging, notifications, making your profile public, linking a Discord account, answering a questionnaire, marketing email, and typing your address into the Android box on the website. Withdraw it by removing the information, turning the feature off, disconnecting the link, asking me to take an address off the Android list, or deleting your account.
• Legitimate interests — for server logs, moderation, the fingerprint described in section 9 that stops a warned account being restarted under a new name, answering support tickets (including the automatic reply in section 4, so that a common question gets an answer in seconds instead of a day), and the usage information in section 2, so the app can be kept secure and made better. The same basis covers the country in section 2, which is recorded once from the request your app already had to make, is never finer than the country, is seen by no other collector, and is used only to count where the app is used and which languages to translate it into. It also covers the interests in section 4 that order the Communities feed for you, and the view count on a post. You can object to the usage information at any time by switching it off in Settings, and to the interests by switching Personalize Communities off, with no effect on anything else. The automatic reply is not automated decision-making of the kind that produces legal or similarly significant effects: it can send one of a handful of answers I wrote and nothing else, a person reads everything it does not answer, and appeals against a moderation decision never reach it at all. The automatic scam warning in section 4 is a fixed rule applied to reports that several other collectors filed, it comes off by itself when those reports are withdrawn or cleared, and a person reads any appeal against it. The permanent restrictions the scheduled assistant may apply for a picture of yourself, or for a picture that looks like it shows a child in a conversation you are in (section 4), are automated decisions with a significant effect: each rests on a fixed rule I wrote to keep the children who use this app safe, applies only where the recorded photo check agrees with it, and is shown to the account it applies to, and you can ask for a person to look at it through Support — I will, and I will lift it if it was wrong. So is the permanent stop on messaging and posting — and, where a sexual or fetish picture was sent or asked for, on sending photos and filing reports too — it may apply where it has read a conversation or a ticket and found grooming, a request for pictures of somebody’s body, sexual messages or pictures, or an account posing as different people to reach children (section 4): it rests on the assistant’s reading of that conversation against kinds of conduct I named, it is shown to the account it applies to, and you can ask for a person to look at it through Support in the same way.
• Legal obligation — where the law requires disclosure, and where it requires information to be kept. The clearest case of the second is the child-safety reporting duty in sections 6 and 9: once a report has been made, the law sets a minimum period during which the material and the account records around it must not be erased, and for that period it overrides a deletion request. That is the only situation in which a request to erase your account is met with a delay longer than the 30 days described in section 9.

9. How long information is kept

• Your account, collection and email address — while the account exists. Ask me to delete it and I will within 30 days. The one exception is the child-safety preservation described in section 6 and at the foot of this section: while one is running on an account, erasing it waits.
• A linked Discord account — until you disconnect it or delete your account, whichever comes first. It has no clock of its own, and disconnecting it is a button on the same page that made it, described in section 2. The private link a /link command hands you is not stored at all: it is good for fifteen minutes, it is not written down anywhere, and nothing about your Discord account exists on this side until a link is actually finished.
• What the Discord bot holds — the Sprites you marked with it, and which servers you used it in — until you delete it with /spritecatch privacy, until you link an account (which moves the marks into your collection and deletes the bot's copy), or until you delete your Sprite Catch account, whichever comes first. It has no clock of its own. A trade room's record — which two accounts it was for, and whether each marked it finished — is kept alongside; the conversation itself is on Discord and is kept under Discord's rules, not mine.
• An email address left in the Android box on the website — until the launch email is sent to it, which deletes it, and in any case no more than 30 days after the announced release date, at which point the whole list is erased whether or not anything was ever sent. This is the shortest-lived thing on this list and the only one with an end date rather than a clock, for the reason section 2 gives: it exists to make one announcement and then to stop existing.
• A note that an address bounced — a day for a temporary failure, and for as long as it stays true for a permanent one, which for a mailbox that does not exist means indefinitely. It is the one item on this list that does not go when an account does, and section 2 explains why: it is a record about a string of characters rather than about a person, most of these addresses never belonged to an account at all, and deleting it would mean the next attempt bounces all over again. It can be cleared on request.
• Which Fortnite codes you ticked off — while the account exists, and it goes with it. It has no clock of its own, it is a list you can add to and remove from at any moment, and unticking everything leaves nothing behind.
• Samples from locker scans — at most a year, and sooner if the account goes: they are deleted with it. Turning sharing off stops new ones being made.
• Your locker, your wishlist and your loadouts — while the account exists, and they go with it. None of them has a clock of its own; each is something you can add to, change and remove from at any moment, and clearing or deleting one leaves nothing behind. Turning the wishlist notification off stops the notification and leaves the wishlist where it is, so the two are separate decisions. Your reactions to cosmetics keep the same clock — they exist while the account does and go with it — with the one difference described in section 2: taking a reaction back removes it from the public count, whereas deleting the account removes your reaction and leaves the count as a number about nobody.
• The note above your name — twenty-four hours from the moment you write it, and then it is deleted. This is the shortest clock on this list and the only one the app runs on its own: the end is recorded with the note itself, so it stops being shown to anybody the instant it is due whether or not the tidying job that clears the rows has run — and that job runs daily. Writing a new one replaces the old and starts the clock again; taking yours down removes it immediately; and it goes with your account like everything else here, rather than waiting out its day. The likes left on a note go with it — when it ends, when it is replaced, and with either account. The copy of a note carried by an answer to it is part of that message, and is kept as messages are.
• The flag and badge you picked — while the account exists, and they go with it. Neither has a clock of its own; they are a choice you can change or clear at any moment, and clearing them leaves nothing behind. A badge I gave your account by hand is kept the same way, until I take it off or the account is deleted.
• The language you chose, and the country and the two app versions from section 2 — while the account exists, and they go with it. None of them has a clock of its own: the language is a setting you can change or clear at any time, the country and the app you signed up in are written once and then never updated, and the app you last opened is overwritten each time rather than added to. The language recorded with a post lasts exactly as long as that post does, and goes when it goes.
• Trade listings, posts and the photos on them, replies, reactions, likes and reposts — until you delete them or your account. Replies also go when the post they answer is deleted, and a photo goes when the post carrying it goes — including out of the storage it was in, not just out of the feed. Deleting a reply does not delete the replies to it: what other people wrote is theirs, so those answers stay and simply move up to the top of the thread, no longer attached to anything. A like you leave on a reply lasts as long as that reply does, and goes when you delete your account. Deleting a post or a reply hides it from everyone at once but keeps it readable by me for 90 days before it is erased for good, for the moderation reason given in section 3; deleting your account erases them outright instead of waiting out those 90 days. The count of reactions your posts have received is kept while the account exists and is not reduced by deleting a post — a total, holding nothing about the post or the people who reacted (section 3). A post in a community that the people who run it remove is kept the same way as a deleted one. An up or down vote on a post in a community lasts until you take it back, the post goes, or you delete your account; which guide was featured on which day is kept as a record of what the app showed, and it names the post, not the people who voted. A post's view count is a total kept with the post, and nothing is kept about who saw it. What the app has learned about your interests (section 4) fades by itself over a few weeks once you stop reading, is deleted as soon as you switch Personalize Communities off, and is deleted with your account.
• Videos on posts, with their sound — as long as the post they are on: a video goes when its post goes, out of storage as well as out of the app, and deleting your account deletes your videos with it. That includes a post removed because its video was rejected, which is kept the same 90 days as any removed post and then erased with its video. A video rejected because it may harm a child is kept for up to a year instead, out of everybody's reach, so that it can be reported as the law requires (section 6). A video you upload but never post is deleted after about a day. The record of who reviewed a video, and how they decided, is kept with the moderation decisions below. The copy your own phone may keep of a video you posted (section 3) is cleared after a few days.
• Direct messages and attached photos — until either participant deletes their account. Deleting a conversation ends your copy of it; the other participant's copy lasts until they delete it or their account, as described in section 4. On your own phone, the messages and photos it has received are kept until you delete the conversation, clear them from Settings → General → Storage, or remove the app. Unsending a message removes it from both apps but not from the server, where its text and, since 24 August 2026, its photo are kept on the same terms as any other message, for the reason given in section 4. A photo unsent before that date was deleted at the time and is gone.
• Trade offers — kept with the requests and conversations they belong to, and deleted when either collector in them deletes their account.
• What your trades added to a community's level — kept while your account exists, including after you leave the community, and deleted with your account. The community's own total keeps what it reached, because a level does not go down; it is a number about the community and names nobody.
• Voice messages — 30 days on my server, then deleted, whether or not anyone has deleted the conversation. This is the one thing here with a clock of its own rather than an account's lifetime, and it is deliberately short: a recording of somebody's voice deserves a shorter life than the words around it. Unsending one deletes it immediately — unlike the words and the photo, nothing is kept. Both of those sentences have the same exception as everything else on this list: a child-safety preservation (section 6, and the foot of this section) stops the 30-day clock and stops an unsend erasing the recording, for the account it covers and for the conversations it is part of. Nothing about the unsend looks different to either person. On your own phone a recording you have played is kept alongside the rest of the conversation and cleared the same way, so a voice message still plays for you after mine is gone — and a recording you started but never sent is never anywhere but that phone.
• Trade ratings and reviews — until you change or remove them, or either account is deleted. Deleting your account removes the ratings you left as well as those left about you. The replies under a review keep the same clock: they last as long as the review they answer, they go when it is retracted or taken down, and they go with either account.
• Reports, moderation decisions and support conversations — while open and for a reasonable period afterwards, so repeat abuse can be spotted and an appeal reviewed against what came before. This includes a short record of what the automatic reply in section 4 did with a ticket and why, which is what lets me check it is behaving and correct it when it is not; it is kept with the conversation and goes when the conversation goes. It also includes what the safety program in section 4 judged about an account and why — its reasoning, how sure it was, and which messages it was looking at rather than a copy of them, so a message you delete or unsend is gone from it too. Since 29 August 2026 it also includes a short line about each photo it looked at — what it saw and a fingerprint of the file, never a copy of the picture and never anything that could match a face. That record is what makes a decision reviewable, and it is deleted with the account. Since 2 September 2026 it also includes a line about each photo attached to a post that the check described in section 4 looked at — the scores that came back and a fingerprint of the file, never the picture, and never anything that could match a face. A refused photo leaves that line and nothing else, because the picture itself was never stored. It is deleted with the account. A photo attached to a support message is kept with the conversation it belongs to — including a screenshot sent to claim a reward, which is kept for the same reason a receipt is: so it can be shown again if the decoration is ever queried. One you picked but never sent is deleted within a day. Deleting your account removes them.
• A record of what the scheduled assistant opened and did — since 9 September 2026, and kept for the same reason the safety record above is: a decision nobody can review is not much of a decision. Each line says which ticket, claim screenshot or conversation was opened, when, and what was done about it — never a copy of what was in it, and never a word anybody wrote. A refusal is kept too, because an assistant repeatedly trying to do something it is not allowed to do is the thing most worth being able to see. Deleting your account removes it.
• What is on your Account Standing screen — each entry stops counting after a set time, three months for most and six for the more serious ones, and it is then shown to you as expired rather than removed, so the screen can still tell you what happened and that it no longer affects anything. An entry withdrawn after an appeal is marked as withdrawn for the same reason: so you can see the outcome instead of watching a line quietly disappear. Deleting your account removes the lot. Nothing on this screen is ever permanent.
• Records of decorations you bought — none, and no longer possible. Nothing in the app has ever been for sale, and the ability to sell was removed on 1 September 2026. There is nothing of this kind held about anybody.
• Questionnaire answers, completed offers and profile decorations — while the account exists. Answers are kept as written so the results can still be read months later; deleting your account deletes them along with the record of what you completed and what you hold. No answer of yours has ever left the service, so there is nothing held by anybody else for a deletion to fail to reach.
• Your daily reward streak — while the account exists, and deleted with it. It is three values rather than a history, so there is nothing to age out: the current run replaces itself each day, and deleting your account removes all of it.
• Your best arcade scores — while the account exists, and deleted with the account, which also takes them off the leaderboards. Your all-time best at a game has no clock of its own: it is one number per game, overwritten when you beat it and otherwise sitting still, and there is nothing else to expire because the games you lost were never recorded. The day, week and month bests do expire, and they expire by being replaced: the first run you finish inside a new day becomes that day's number whatever it scored, and the old one is gone. Going private takes you off the leaderboards straight away without deleting any of them, and they stay yours to beat. A decoration a score earned is a decoration you own, and it is kept and deleted like the rest of them.
• Who invited you — while both accounts exist. It is deleted with your account, and also cleared if the person who invited you deletes theirs, so the link never outlives either side of it. Your own invite count is worked out from those records when you look at it rather than stored, so there is nothing separate to keep or delete.
• Usage information — kept for up to 12 months and then discarded. It is used to read trends, not to build a history of any individual. Worth being straight about: these records live in a store that cannot delete one entry at a time, which is precisely why they carry the scrambled stand-in described in section 2 instead of your account. Deleting your account destroys the link, so what remains is no longer about an identifiable person, and it ages out on the schedule above.
• The web version, used without signing in — your collection and your display preferences are kept only in your own browser, for as long as you leave them there. Clearing your browser data is the deletion; I hold no copy.
• The web version, once you sign in — what reaches the server is kept exactly as long as the same thing is kept when the app sends it, on every line of this list; there is no separate web copy and no separate schedule. What your browser holds (section 3) it holds until you clear it or sign out, and none of it is anything the server does not already have, apart from the two notes about what you have been shown, which are only ever in your browser and go when it is cleared.
• The visit count — described in section 2, it lives in the same store as usage information and ages out the same way. There is nothing to ask me to delete from it and nothing I could find if you did: the stand-in it is filed under is rebuilt from a date that has passed, so from the next day onward no entry in it can be tied to a browser at all.
• Your activity list — on your device only. Entries are discarded after about a month and the list is capped.
• Message drafts — on the device or in the browser you typed them in, until you send them, the conversation leaves your list, or you sign out.
• The search index on your device — on your device only, refreshed as your collection changes, and removed with the app.
• The copy of your rewards the app keeps on your device — on that device, replaced by each new answer from the server, set aside after a week without one, and removed when you sign out, start over or delete the app.
• What Hunt Advisor drafts from — kept nowhere. The few names it drafts from exist for the length of one answer, on the device or, if you switched that on, at Apple's Private Cloud Compute, which does not keep it either. A message it drafted that you leave unsent in a conversation is kept like any other message draft, above.
• Sign-in codes and the record of recent attempts — a code stops working within minutes, and the record behind it, including the scrambled network address described in section 2, is erased within a couple of days.
• Server logs — short-lived operational logs on Cloudflare's own retention schedule, not used to build any long-term record of you.

An anonymous account inactive for a long period may be deleted to keep the database clean.

Logging out is not a deletion. It ends the session on that device and stops that device receiving notifications; nothing held about you is erased, and it is all there again when you sign in. Logging out also offers to clear the collection marked on that phone, which removes it from the phone only — the copy kept for your account is untouched.

What happens when you delete your account. It stops being reachable straight away: you are signed out, and your profile, posts, listings, conversations and follows disappear for everyone else the moment you confirm. Erasing the data itself happens within 30 days. The gap is review — deletions are checked by hand, because an account being abandoned to escape a scam warning should not be handed a clean start automatically, and because a deletion made by mistake is worth being able to undo. If you sign back in during that window the account comes back as you left it, and the app tells you that is what happened.

Backups. So that the service can be recovered if something fails, copies of its database are kept for a limited time: the hosting provider keeps a rolling history of the database for up to 30 days, and I may also keep nightly backup copies with the same provider, normally for about a week (the most recent ones are kept until newer ones replace them). Something you delete, or that is erased with your account, can therefore remain in those copies until they age out, and then it is gone from them too. Their purpose is restoring the service after a failure.

A standby copy, and writes held during an outage. I may also keep a standby copy of the service's main database with the same provider, updated as things change and checked against the backups every night, so that the app can keep showing your collection, profile and conversations if the main database stops answering. Something you delete, or that is erased with your account, reaches that copy along with everything else, and in any case within a few days. While the main database is unavailable, a few things you do — such as sending a message, reading one, or marking a Sprite in your collection — may be held in that standby copy for a short time, normally minutes, and applied as soon as the main database is back; once applied they are removed from the holding queue. The service's data, messages included, may be spread across several databases with the same provider; that changes where it sits, not who can see it or how long it is kept.

One thing survives a deletion: a single anonymous record that an account was deleted, and the date it happened. It holds nothing else — no name, no code, nothing that links back to the account it counts — so I can see how many collectors leave without keeping anything about who they were.

One more thing survives, and only in one case. If an account is erased while it is carrying a scam warning or a suspension, I keep a scrambled one-way fingerprint of the sign-in it used. It is not the sign-in, it cannot be turned back into it, and it cannot be matched against anything else I hold or anything anyone else holds — it is useful for exactly one comparison: whether a new account is the same person coming back. That is its only purpose, and what it restores is the warning or suspension a human decided on, or one of the permanent restrictions the scheduled assistant may apply that are described in section 4, never marks left by other collectors. When it does match, the new account keeps a note that it matched, when the earlier account was erased and how many marks it had — not who it was, and not why it was restricted, which went with it. An account erased without any of that is recorded nowhere. A fingerprint is discarded after a year.

Since 5 September 2026 there is also a short line about photos sent in a conversation or a group that were looked at — until 29 September 2026 each one the automatic check described in section 4 looked at, and since then each one the scheduled assistant opened and recorded. It is two words about what was seen and a fingerprint of the file, never the picture and never a description of it, and never anything that could match a face. It is kept with the moderation records above.

Network addresses are kept for 90 days, and then the address itself is erased automatically while the scrambled form described in section 2 stays. Deleting your account removes them outright, along with everything else.

And one situation stops the clocks on this whole list. If a report has been made to NCMEC's CyberTipline about an account, as section 6 describes, United States law requires the material and the records around it to be kept for at least one year, and it can run longer than that — the authorities can ask for longer, and the law lets me keep it longer on my own judgement. While that is running, nothing belonging to that account is erased on any of the schedules above — not the 30 days after a deletion request, not a voice message's 30 days, not the daily clean-up of an upload nobody ever sent, and not an unsend. It has no maximum here, because the law does not set one and only the authorities asking can say when it ends; when it does end, the ordinary schedules resume and everything that was waiting is erased. Because the conversation is what a report is about, this reaches the other person in it too: their messages in that conversation are held for the same period, and if they have asked for their account to be deleted, the erasing waits with everything else. Nothing in the app looks any different to either of them while it lasts, and nothing extra is collected to do it — what is held is what was already there.

What survives it, permanently, is a short record that the preservation happened: which account, why, when it started, when it ended, and the reference number of the report. That record is kept even after the account is erased, because it is the only proof that the law was followed and it is what an authority asking later is answered from. It holds no message, no photo, and nothing anybody wrote.

And one last one, in a narrower case still. If mail to your address ever bounced, the note saying so — the address, the reason and the date, described in section 2 — is not removed with the account. It is a record that a particular string of characters cannot receive email, held so that nothing tries again and damages this service's ability to send to anybody; most of the addresses on that list never belonged to an account in the first place, and erasing one would simply mean the next person who typed it bounced all over again. It is linked to nothing else here. Ask and I will clear it.

A warning can also follow the phone. If an account carrying a scam warning or a suspension is still here and a new account is started on the same device, the new one is given the same warning or suspension. No deletion is involved. Since 11 October 2026 the new account also keeps a note of which account it came from and what the warning or suspension said there — the reason it was given, who gave it and when — so that a person reviewing an appeal can see the original decision and whether it still stands. That note is for moderating the service, and it is not shown to other collectors. It is deleted with the new account; if the earlier account is erased first, the note stops saying which account it was and keeps only what the warning or suspension said. The same two limits apply: only a warning or suspension a person decided on, or one of the scheduled assistant’s permanent restrictions in section 4, carries, never marks left by other collectors, and the new account is labelled as having inherited it so that a human reviewing an appeal can tell the difference. Two people sharing one phone can be caught by this. If that is you, say so from the app's Support menu and it will be lifted.

10. Your choices and rights

Inside the app, in Settings:

• Share Usage Data — switch off the usage information in section 2. Takes effect immediately, on that device and on your others.
• Email Me About Sprite Catch — the marketing opt-in, off unless you turn it on, withdrawable at any time. Shown only if the service holds an address for you.
• Profile visibility, Share My Catches, Show When I'm Active and Show My Local Time — what other collectors can see. The last two are reciprocal: switching either off also stops you being shown anybody else's, as described in section 4. Switching off the local time also deletes the number the service was holding.
• Personalize Communities — in the Communities feed's settings, and in Settings → Privacy on the web version. Switching it off deletes what the app has learned about the community posts you read and stops it learning more, on every device; the Communities feed is then ordered the way everybody else's is.
• Notifications — by category, and in iOS Settings altogether.
• Delete a conversation — from the Chats list or the conversation itself. It ends your copy; the other collector keeps theirs, as described in section 4.
• Delete a request to chat — clears one you sent out of your own list, once it has been answered or gone quiet, and takes it back from the other collector if they never answered it. A request that became a conversation leaves that conversation alone, you cannot ask the same collector again for a day, and the record that you sent it stays, for the reasons in section 4.
• Storage — shows what the app is keeping on that phone and deletes the messages and photos saved there, without touching your account or any conversation.
• Log out — ends the session on that device and stops it receiving notifications, without touching your account. Your collection, profile and conversations are exactly as you left them when you sign back in. You choose what happens to the sprites marked on that phone: leave them, so you can carry on collecting logged out — in which case they join the collection of whichever account signs in next on that phone — or clear them from it, which is the one to pick if you are handing the phone on.
• Delete your account — it takes everything about you with it. You disappear for other collectors immediately; the data is erased within 30 days, as described in section 9.

Wherever you live, you can also ask me to see a copy of everything stored about you, correct anything wrong, delete your account and its data, export it in a portable format, or restrict or object to processing. Email privacy@spritecatch.com and include your username, or your account ID (Settings → Account), so I can find the right account. I respond within 30 days, there is no charge, and nothing about the app works worse because you asked.

Deletion has its own page — spritecatch.com/delete-account — covering how to do it in the app and how to ask me if you have already uninstalled. The web version's settings delete an account the same way the app's do, on the same 30-day hold, and signing back in during it still brings the account back.

If you are in the EEA or the UK you also have the right to complain to your national data protection authority.

California residents

Californian users have the rights to know, delete and correct set out above, and will never be discriminated against for exercising them. I do not use personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising.

I do not sell anything, and I never have. Nothing about you — not your collection, your posts, your messages, your email address, your usage information, and not your questionnaire answers either — has ever been sold or shared as the CCPA/CPRA define those terms, and nothing about you is sold or shared today. Until 31 August 2026 this page described one thing that could have become a sale: a questionnaire whose answers were sold as market research. It was never offered, no answer was ever sold, and the ability has been removed from the app and the server.

Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

There is nothing to opt out of. Sprite Catch does not sell or share personal information as the CCPA/CPRA define those terms, so there is no sale for this right to stop and no switch you have to find. The heading is kept because this page has carried it since 1 August 2026 and somebody looking for it should find an answer rather than a missing anchor.

If you would like that confirmed in writing for your own records, or you want to be certain nothing about you is held for any such purpose, email privacy@spritecatch.com. Say which account (your friend code is enough) and you will get an answer within 15 business days. You do not need an account or a password to ask, and an authorised agent may ask on your behalf. You will not be charged, refused any feature, or given a worse version of the app for asking.

Under 16. The CCPA requires opt-in rather than opt-out for consumers aged 13 to 16, and a parent's consent below 13. Nothing is sold or shared about anybody of any age, so neither threshold has anything to apply to here.

Sprite Catch does not respond to a browser Global Privacy Control signal, because there is no sale or sharing anywhere in the app or on the website for such a signal to stop.

11. Children

Sprite Catch is not directed to children under 13, and the App Store and Google Play listings are rated accordingly. I do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Because the app works anonymously, asks for no real name, and never asks for or uses the phone's location, an under-13 user who simply tracks their collection is providing very little about themselves: a display name they choose, the country their requests come from — worked out from the internet address, never finer than the country, and shown to no other user — and, where Apple's age service does not answer, the age they enter during setup.

An account under 13 is shown no sponsored cards. The Trading feed's ads, described in section 2, are withheld from it entirely, on the server, rather than chosen for it.

An account under 13 cannot post a video, and is shown only videos a person has approved. Both are enforced on the server. Any other video appears to it as its still picture, with a note that it has not been checked yet. The people who review videos (section 4) must be adults.

An account under 13 contributes nothing to the locker scanner. The samples described in section 2 are refused on the server for it, whatever the switch on the phone says; its scans stay entirely on the device apart from the items it confirms.

From the version going out on 28 August 2026, the app offers that user the collection tracker on its own. The ages on the setup screen start at 13, and the button under them saying My age isn't listed leads to Safe Mode: the collection, the scanner, the Shop and their own profile, with the community, direct messages and news switched off. It is offered, never imposed — nothing about an age switches a feature off by itself — and a parent can switch it off again, or lock the same restrictions behind a passcode, on the Parental Controls screen.

The social features — public posts, trades, and direct messages with photos — do let users communicate with strangers. Text is screened automatically, and users can block and report one another. A safety program that reads written conversations and looks at photos on the server — looking for strangers approaching children, and in particular for one account showing different faces to different children — ran for a day from 29 August 2026 and has been switched off since 30 August 2026; while it is off, no program on the server reads a whole conversation. Section 4 describes in full what it does when it runs: it is not a check on every picture, it cannot recognise a face and does not try, and a person reviews everything it decides. A separate check that looked at every photo sent in a conversation or a group, added on 5 September 2026, has been switched off since 29 September 2026; while it is off, no program on the server looks at a photo as it is sent. The scheduled assistant in section 4 may open a photo in a conversation the safety measures have already singled out and record what it saw, and it cannot recognise a face either. Section 4 describes both. Web addresses are allowed inside an accepted conversation (with a warning in front of every one), and moderation is no substitute for a parent's involvement. A parent can switch each of them off and lock the choice behind a passcode, on the Parental Controls screen, and a collector under 13 can switch all of them off for themselves by choosing Safe Mode; the app does not switch them off by itself. Both apps have these features, and both have the Parental Controls screen.

Once the app has established that an account is under 13, the server also collects no usage information from it and keeps no email address for it. It works out no interests for it either — the Communities feed is ordered for it the way it is for everybody — and does not count the posts it is shown towards their view counts; an account that is found to be under 13 after the fact loses what had been learned. Both are enforced on the server rather than on the device, so they hold whatever the app is asked to do. An account whose age was never established is treated the same way as an under-13 one for this purpose. Nothing about any account, of any age, is sold. iOS's own "allow tracking" request is still put to every account, including a child's, and on every one of them it applies to nothing — the questionnaire it was added for is gone, nothing in the app tracks anybody, and no part of the app reads the answer, so answering it either way collects nothing. It is asked of everyone rather than hidden from children because hiding it made an app that genuinely implements the permission look to Apple like one that does not. On an Apple Account set up as a child's, iOS declines to show the request at all, which is Apple's decision and not mine.

The arcade is not on that list either, for the same reason. An under-13 account can play every game in it and can keep a best score at each, exactly like any other. Nothing about those scores is shared with anyone or sold to anyone, nothing random or paid is attached to them, and the one place they could be seen by other people — the leaderboards in section 4 — hold only public profiles, which an under-13 profile is not unless it has been deliberately made one.

Invites are deliberately not on that list, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than leaving it to be inferred. An under-13 account can share its username and unlock the decorations described in section 2, the same as any other. Nothing about it is shared with anyone or sold to anyone: what is recorded is who invited whom, it is shown to nobody but the person it belongs to, there is no money in it and nothing random about it, and the invite page itself names nobody. A parent who would rather their child did not take part can simply have them not share it — nothing in the app is behind it.

The web version now has the social features, and this section reaches them — but not everything in this section does, so read the next paragraph. Signed out, it is still what it was: a collection tracker that asks for no name, no age and no account, with no way for anyone to contact anyone. Signed in, it is the app in a browser, and every protection in this section that lives on the server comes with the account rather than the device — so an under-13 account keeps its private profile, is still not on a leaderboard, is still asked for no email address, still has no usage information collected about it, and is still never offered the questionnaire, whether it is signed in on a phone or in a browser.

What does not reach a browser is Safe Mode and the parental passcode, and that is worth being blunt about. Those are settings on the phone they were set on — held on that device, enforced by that app — which is what lets a parent lock them behind a passcode in the first place. A browser is not that device and never sees them. So if you have switched the community, direct messages or news off on your child's phone, that does not switch them off for the same account signed in at spritecatch.com; the way to prevent that is the ordinary way you would prevent a browser from reaching any website, on the device or on the network, and it is not something I can do from inside the app. The age itself is not the gap — the server's protections above follow the account everywhere. What does not follow it is the lock you set.

One thing on the website asks for an email address with no account behind it — the Android box described in section 2 — and the protections in this section cannot reach it. They are enforced against an account, and that box has none — so the honest position is that it asks you not to use it if you are under 13, says so on the page beside it, and holds no way of checking. A parent who finds their child's address on that list can have it removed by emailing me, and either way the whole list is erased within 30 days of the release date. Nothing else about that address is used for anything, and it is never sold.

Contacting support is deliberately not restricted: it stays reachable whatever the parental controls are set to, because a child must always be able to tell me something is wrong. The automatic reply described in section 4 is produced on the same server and sends nothing anywhere else. Since 9 September 2026 one other thing reads what arrives: the scheduled assistant in section 4, which works the queue alongside me. A report about somebody's safety is never answered or closed by it — the app refuses to let it — so a child who writes to me about another person still reaches a person, every time, which is the promise this paragraph has always been about. It is never shown a voice message, and never shown a photo on a ticket that is not claiming a reward. It can answer an ordinary question about how the app works and nothing more: there is no artificial intelligence in the support reply — it is a list of written answers matched against a list of phrases — it cannot decide anything about an account, its replies say they are automatic, and anything about safety, a warning, money, or a photo goes straight to me. A child who writes in about their safety always reaches a person. Two other things in the app use an outside service and it is worth being exact about both: the safety program in section 4 reads messages and posts, and it never reads a support ticket; and the scheduled assistant does read one, on the terms just given. From 2 September 2026 one more thing on that list uses an outside service: a photo attached to a public post is checked for explicit content before it is published, by Google's Cloud Vision, and so is a picture or a banner put on a community and a photo put on a group. That check covers the pictures shown to people, not the ones sent to them — never a direct message, never a support ticket — it is asked one question and never asked to recognise a face, and a refusal turns away the picture without recording anything against the child who sent it.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has entered personal information — a real name in the display name field, a Fortnite tag, a message or a photo — email me and I will delete the account and its data promptly.

12. Security

All traffic between the app and the server is encrypted with HTTPS/TLS, and data at rest is encrypted by Cloudflare. Requests are authenticated with a signed token kept in the iOS Keychain on iPhone and in the app's private storage on Android. If you set a password, it is stored only as a one-way scrambled version designed to be slow to attack, never as the password itself, and the sign-in screen limits how often anyone can guess. That said, no system is perfectly secure and I cannot guarantee absolute security — one more reason the app collects as little as it can.

13. Changes to this policy

20 October 2026 — the scheduled assistant can stop an account for good for grooming and sexual conduct. Until today every pause the assistant decided expired on its own, except the one for a picture of yourself. Section 4 now says that where it has read a conversation and found an account grooming somebody, asking for pictures of somebody’s body, sending sexual messages or pictures, or posing as different people to reach children, it may stop that account messaging and posting permanently, without a person deciding first, and where a sexual, pornographic or fetish picture was sent or asked for — a support ticket included — sending photos and filing reports too; and that it may still choose a pause that expires, where the account looks like the child at risk or the case is not clear. It never overrides a decision a person made, it is shown to the account, and an appeal is read by a person. Section 8 names it as an automated decision, and section 9 says it can follow somebody onto a new account the way the other permanent restrictions do. Nothing new is collected about you.

19 October 2026 — joining a community can put you in some of its rooms. From a future release, whoever runs a community can choose rooms that people who join from then on start in, so joining puts you in those rooms as well as in Announcements, and the other people in them can see you are there, as with any room. This page used to say nobody is ever put into a room; that is no longer true of these. You can mute or leave them like any other room, and choosing one does not add the people who were already in the community. Nothing new is collected about you. Section 4 has the detail.

19 October 2026 — community levels. From a future release, a community has a level that its members' trades raise: every trade a member confirms after joining counts towards it, and it does not go down. The service keeps how many of your trades have counted towards each community you are in, and other members can see that number if you are among its top contributors and your profile is public. Sections 2, 4 and 9 have the detail.

19 October 2026 — loadouts in the locker. From a future release on iPhone and iPad, the Locker on the Skins screen lets you build loadouts: named sets of Fortnite cosmetics, with the style you chose for each, kept in the order you arrange them. Section 2 says what is stored, section 3 what is kept on the phone, and section 9 how long. Loadouts are private like the locker itself, they can include cosmetics you have not ticked, and they change nothing in Fortnite.

18 October 2026 — the Helper badge is your choice. From a future release, how many collectors you have given a Sprite to is no longer printed beside your trade count on your profile for everybody: it is a badge you can choose to wear, with the number on it, and the service records whether you wear it. The number itself stays part of your trade record, as before. Section 4 has the detail.

18 October 2026 — Quick add and your locker's value on the Skins screen. From a future release on iPhone and iPad, Quick add asks about cosmetics one at a time and remembers, on that device, the ones you said you don't have, and the Skins screen shows an estimate of what your locker is worth, worked out on your phone. Section 3 says how. Nothing new is collected and nothing new reaches me: the list stays on that device, and signing out removes it.

18 October 2026 — recent searches on the Skins screen. From a future release on iPhone and iPad, the Skins screen remembers your last few searches on the device, so you can repeat one with a tap. Section 3 says how. Nothing new is collected and nothing new reaches me: the list stays on that device, you can clear it, and signing out removes it.

18 October 2026 — badges given by hand. The badge beside a name can now be one I give an account by hand — the first is for the community server's Kindness Krew — rather than one its owner picked. It is public, it is shown in the place of an account mark such as verified, the service records which one an account was given, and it is removed with the account. Sections 2 and 9 have the detail.

15 October 2026 — reactions order the Skins screen. The public count of reactions to each Fortnite cosmetic, which was drawn on the shop screen, is now published for every item anybody has reacted to and used to put the most popular items first and to show an item's place among them. Nothing new is stored about you, and nobody is shown which reaction was yours. Section 2 has the detail.

15 October 2026 — the bell on a profile. From a future release you can ask to be told when a collector you follow posts, or posts and replies. The choice is a new thing stored about you: it is kept with your follow of them, it is not shown to them or anybody else, and it is removed when you unfollow, when either of you blocks the other, or when your account is deleted. The notification may carry the first words of what they wrote. Sections 4 and 5 have the detail.

15 October 2026 — videos on community posts, and the people who review them. From a future release a post in a community can carry a video with its sound, prepared on your phone — trimmed, shrunk and stripped of details such as where it was filmed — and stored and played by Sprite Catch's own server on Cloudflare; no other company stores or plays it. Its still picture is checked for explicit content like any other photo on a post, and the video itself is not sent to Google or any other company to be checked. People review videos: one from an account without a long, good trading record is seen by nobody but its author and the reviewers until it is approved, and the reviewers are the app's moderators, collectors they or I appoint, and the people who run the community it was posted in, all of them adults. Two sentences this page used to say are no longer true, and both are narrowed rather than kept: that a post in a community you have to ask or be invited to join, or that is for adults only, is shown to nobody else using the app — the app-wide reviewers can now watch a video posted there; and that the moderators see nothing you have not already made public — they, and anybody they appoint to review videos, can now watch a video waiting for review and videos in communities they are not in. A rejected video's post is removed and its author told why, except where the video may harm a child; it is kept as removed posts are, or for up to a year for a video that may harm a child. An account under 13 cannot post a video and is shown only approved ones. Whether videos play by themselves is a setting kept on your phone. Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 11 say how. Nothing is sold, no advertising changes, and nobody new receives anything.

14 October 2026 — what puts a community post higher. The order posts in communities are shown in now also counts how many different people replied to a post, and what the post itself is like: one with substance, such as a guide, may start higher, and one that only says hello or asks people to follow each other may start lower. That is worked out from the post's own words, layout and pictures and may be kept with it. Nothing new is collected about you, and the newest-first order is unchanged. Section 4 says how.

14 October 2026 — trade alerts. The app may now send you a notification when somebody posts a trade that would get you a Sprite you are missing for one you have, and once a week, before new Sprites arrive, one saying how many of the season's Sprites you are still missing. Both are worked out from your collection and the trades other collectors post, both are on unless you turn them off in Settings › Notifications, and neither is sent to an account under 13. To keep them from being sent too often, I store when each was last sent to you. Section 5 says how.

14 October 2026 — the app may keep a copy of your rewards on your phone. From a future release on iPhone and iPad, the app keeps a copy of where your rewards stand — your streak, balance, level and what is on offer to you — on the device, so the Rewards tab and today's reward are ready the moment you open the app. Section 3 says how. Nothing new is collected and nothing new reaches me: it is a copy of what your account already holds, it is left out of the phone's backups, and signing out removes it.

14 October 2026 — an unfinished locker review may be kept on your phone. From a future release on iPhone, a locker scan's review that you leave before adding its items may be kept on that phone as a draft, for up to 30 days after you last change it, so that you can come back to it: the small tile cut-outs, the scanner's measurements and guesses, and your ticks and corrections. Section 3 says how. Nothing new reaches me — a draft is not uploaded and is left out of the phone's backups — and your photos and screenshots are still never saved. On the same day: a locker scan's sample for improving the scanner (section 2) that cannot be sent straight away is now kept on the phone until it can be, and sent in pieces, rather than given up on.

13 October 2026 — an offer below your Trade Offer Levels is no longer answered for you. From a future release, an offer below the levels you set may still reach you: its sender may be warned and may send it anyway, and the app shows you which of its Sprites are below your levels instead of declining the offer for you. The app may still answer an offer that would add nothing to your collection, as section 4 describes. Nothing new is collected, stored or shared to do this.

12 October 2026 — a message notification may show who wrote. From a future release on iPhone and iPad, the notification for a message can show the sender's character and name instead of the app's icon. Section 3 says how: the app keeps small pictures of characters on your device, and describes the message to iOS as one from a person so that iOS can draw it that way. Nothing new is collected, nothing new reaches me and nobody new receives anything — the notification already carried the sender's name and the message.

12 October 2026 — an archived conversation stops notifying you, and your Archived shelf is stored with your account. Until now, which conversations you had archived was kept on your phone, and an archived conversation went on sending you notifications. From a future release, section 4 says that an archived conversation does not send you notifications for its messages, in the app or outside it, while it still counts what is waiting in it; some notifications that are not an ordinary message, such as a mention by name or a request to confirm a trade, may still arrive. What is new is that I store whether, and since when, you have archived each conversation — including the ones you had already archived on your phone, which the app sends once — so that I know not to notify you, and so that the shelf follows you to another phone. The other collector is not told, and nobody new receives anything.

12 October 2026 — a Trading post may show the level of the Sprites you have. Section 4 already said that a public profile shows the level each of your Sprites is at, and that the same level may be shown beside your name on a Sprite's list of owners and in suggested trades. It now gives those as examples and adds one: from a future release, where a Trading post of yours shows a reader the Sprites you have that they are missing, it may show the level of each and list your highest levels first. Nothing new is collected, nobody new receives anything, and going private still takes it away.

12 October 2026 — chat settings get a screen of their own, and the app may update your collection after a trade. From a future release, Let anyone message me, Block follow-for-follow requests and the Trade Offer Levels settings move from the Requests screen and the Trades list to a Chat Settings screen opened from the top of Chats. The two message settings are still in Settings → Privacy & Safety as well, and what each of them does has not changed. Section 4 also now says that once the two of you have confirmed a trade, the app on your phone may offer to mark the Sprites you received as owned in your collection, or do it for you if you choose that. It is worked out on your phone, and the marks are saved like any you make yourself. Nothing new is collected and nobody new receives anything.

12 October 2026 — the verified badge given for helping run the community server now leaves with the role. On 13 September this page said a badge is never taken off your account automatically. For one case that has changed back. If you were recorded as helping run the community server and your profile carries the verified mark, then losing that role in Discord, leaving the server, or disconnecting your Discord account may take the mark off along with the protection, usually within a day — whether the daily check gave you the mark or I did by hand. What went wrong in September was the check deciding somebody had lost a role they were still wearing. It now asks Discord about that one account by name before it removes anything, and changes nothing when it gets no answer. A verified mark on an account that was not recorded as helping run the server is outside what this check looks at, the other marks an account can carry are outside it too, and I may still give or remove any mark by hand. Nothing new is collected about you and nobody new can read anything. Section 2 has the detail.

11 October 2026 — where an inherited warning came from. Section 9 used to say that when a scam warning or a suspension follows a phone to a new account, nothing extra is stored to do it. It now says that the new account keeps a note of which account it came from and what the warning or suspension said there — the reason, who gave it and when — so that an appeal can be reviewed against the original decision. The note is deleted with the new account, and stops naming the earlier account once that one is erased. Section 9 also now says that a new account matching the fingerprint of an erased one keeps a note of the match, of when that account was erased and of how many marks it had, never who it was. Nothing is collected from anybody whose account carries no warning or suspension, and nobody new receives anything.

8 October 2026 — scanning your locker, and scans that teach the scanner. Section 2 now says that, from a future release, the iPhone app can fill your locker in by recognising photos or screenshots of it, and that a locker scan shares the small tile cut-outs it read, its guesses and what you confirmed or corrected, to improve the scanner, if you agree — you are asked the first time you add items from a scan, never from an account under 13, and never your whole photos or screenshots (only accounts run by the Sprite Catch team send their own). Section 3 used to say the scanner's photos are never uploaded and that the only thing leaving your device is the result you confirm; the first part still holds for both scanners, and the second is now true of the Sprites scanner and of a locker scan with sharing off. Section 3 also says that on a phone with Apple Intelligence the locker scanner may ask Apple's model on that phone to compare a tile with its closest matches, and that this stays on the phone. Section 9 says the samples are kept for at most a year and go with the account, and section 11 that an account under 13 contributes none. No new recipient receives anything: the samples are stored where the rest of your account is.

8 October 2026 — the Discord link's reward is for server members. Section 2 used to say that the only thing which reaches this app from the Sprite Catch community server, beyond the link itself, is whether you help run it, and that every link gives a decoration. It now says that the app may check whether your linked Discord account is a member of that server, when you link and once a day for a while after, and that the link's decoration (today the Pumpkin skin) goes to members. What is stored is that decoration, which records that you were a member when it was given. Nothing about anybody who has not linked is used, and nobody new receives anything.

8 October 2026 — levels in trading. Section 3 now says that the level you mark each Sprite at is part of your collection, as it has been since September, and that the trade offers you send and receive carry levels too. Section 4 now says that a public profile shows each Sprite's level alongside which ones you have and have mastered, and that, from a future release, the same level may be shown beside your name on a Sprite's list of owners and in suggested trades; that an offer, a Trading post and a want may say the level each Sprite is offered at or the lowest level asked for it; that new Trade Offer Levels settings say which levels you take, are shown to collectors who can open your profile, and may turn away an offer below them; and that the app's automatic answer to an offer now also goes by those settings and by what you have mastered. A private profile still shows no levels. Nobody new receives anything.

8 October 2026 — muting a conversation with one person. Groups and community rooms could already be muted; from a future release a one-to-one conversation can be too, and a muted conversation, group, room or community no longer counts towards the unread numbers the app shows you. What is new is that I store whether, and since when, you have muted a one-to-one conversation, as I already did for groups. The other collector is not shown it, and nobody new receives anything. Section 4 has the detail.

8 October 2026 — a pause on filing reports is no longer shown to the account it is on. Section 4 describes it. When an account's reports and scam marks against other collectors are being set aside, the Account Standing screen no longer lists it, and a standing with nothing else on it reads as good standing. It still works exactly as before, it is still recorded so that a person can review and undo it, and it still takes away nothing but filing against other collectors — never your posts, your messages, blocking or Support. Holding back posts, messages or photos is unchanged: each is still shown on that screen and still sends a notification. Nothing new is collected and nobody new can see anything; this changes only what your own screen shows you about your own account. Asking about it through Support works exactly as it did — see Moderation in section 4.

7 October 2026 — the Communities feed skips posts you have already seen. Section 3 used to say that the phone's short list of posts it has already counted is not sent anywhere beyond the views themselves. From a future release the iPhone and Android apps may send that list, with the posts already on your screen, when they ask the Communities feed for posts, so that a refresh brings posts you have not seen yet. The server uses the list to answer that request and keeps none of it. Nothing new is stored, and nobody new receives anything. Sections 3 and 4 have the detail.

7 October 2026 — pinned messages and read-only rooms in communities. From a future release, the people who run a community can pin a few messages to the top of one of its rooms, and can start a room that only they can write in rather than locking it afterwards. Section 4 now says so. What is stored is which messages are pinned and when, and pinning or unpinning joins the record a community keeps of what its staff do. A pin is shown only to people who could already read that message in that room. Nothing new is collected about anybody, and nobody new receives anything.

7 October 2026 — “In a trade” in a conversation. Section 4 now says that, from a future release, the person you are talking to one-to-one may be shown that you are in a trade you have agreed with somebody else and, if they have sent you an offer you have not answered, its place among the offers waiting on you. It does not say who you are trading with or who sent the other offers, nothing new is kept for it, and it follows Show When I'm Active in both directions.

7 October 2026 — you can turn away follow-for-follow requests. From a future release, a setting at the top of the Requests screen and in Settings → Privacy & Safety refuses a first message that asks you to follow somebody back, and declines the ones already waiting when you turn it on. Your choice is stored with your account. The words it checks are the first message's own, which are already screened when they are sent, and a refused message is not kept. Nobody new receives anything. Section 4 has the detail.

3 October 2026 — hand-written cards on the Thanks page. Section 2 used to say the Thanks page does not name anybody's Discord account. That is now said of the list of the server's team only: a person who helps run the server and is thanked in a card of their own, written by hand, may be shown there with the name and picture they use on Discord beside their Sprite Catch profile. The picture is a copy kept on the website itself, so nothing on the page is loaded from Discord. Nothing new is collected from anybody else, and nobody new receives anything.

3 October 2026 — the Happy Helpers on the Thanks page. The community Discord server's Happy Helpers join the roles the website's Thanks page thanks by name, so section 2 now lists them beside the admins, moderators, mod apprentices and Kindness Krew. A Happy Helper's linked public profile may appear there with the role and how many trades they have made, on the terms the 28 September 2026 entry below describes: never a private profile or an account the app has established is under 13, and not their Discord account. Nothing new is collected and nobody new receives anything.

2 October 2026 — groups and community rooms show who is typing. From a future release, the typing indicator a one-to-one conversation already draws appears in groups and community rooms too, shown to the members who have the room open at the time, with your name and picture. That widens who can see it from one person to the people looking at the room, which is why it is here. It follows Show When I'm Active in both directions and is never shown between two collectors when either has blocked the other. Nothing about it is stored: the service keeps which room you have open in memory only, for a minute or so, so that it knows who to tell. Section 4 has the detail.

2 October 2026 — a community room can be read before you join it. From a future release, anybody in a community can open one of its rooms and read it without joining, though not write in it. They see only what joining would have shown them, they are not added to the room, and nobody is told. It widens who can read a community room from the people who joined it to everybody in the community, which is why it is here. Nothing new is stored. Section 11 has the detail.

2 October 2026 — a post removed as spam no longer counts against you. When a moderator takes down a post or a reply only because it is spam, nothing is added to your Account Standing and nothing counts towards it any more; you may get a notification asking you to slow down instead. The moderator's decision is still recorded for review, as every one of theirs is. Less is kept about you, not more. Section 4 has the detail.

2 October 2026 — posts show how many times they were seen, and the Communities feed learns what you like. From a future release, every post shows a view count. The apps tell the server when they have shown you a post, at most once a day for each one, and the server keeps only the total — never who saw it; the web version does not count. Separately, the app now works out which communities and kinds of post you are interested in from the community posts you open, vote on, react to, reply to and write, keeps that against your account, and uses it to order the Communities feed and what it suggests. That is new information about you, which is why it is here. It is not shown to anybody, it is not used for ads, it fades on its own, it is never worked out for an account under 13, and you can switch it off with Personalize Communities, which deletes it. Sections 4, 5, 8, 9, 10 and 11 have the detail.

2 October 2026 — a note can be liked and answered, and can be eighty characters. Tapping somebody's note now opens it, with a way to like it and a way to answer it. A like is new information stored about the person who leaves it, which is why it is here: who liked a note and when. Only the note's author sees it, nobody is notified, and it is deleted with the note. An answer is a direct message that carries a copy of the note it answers, so a note's words can now outlast its day inside that one conversation. Sections 2, 4 and 9 have the detail.

2 October 2026 — the picture-of-yourself rule, narrowed and widened. Section 4 now says that two adults swapping pictures are left alone by that rule when the account has a long trading record and each of them looks like an adult in their own picture, and that where a picture in a direct conversation looks like it shows a child, the scheduled assistant may stop both people in that conversation sending photos, permanently — the other person included. Section 5 says the second is an automated decision too, and how to have a person look at it. The rough age the assistant records when it looks at a photo, already described in section 4, is now part of what decides both. Nothing new is collected and nobody new receives anything.

2 October 2026 — the app may answer a trade offer for you. Section 4 now says that, from a future release, the app on your phone declines a trade offer that would only give you Sprites you already have, takes back an offer you sent once you already have everything it asked for, and may leave the Sprites you already have out of an offer you are shown. It is worked out on your phone from your own collection; nothing new is collected and nobody new receives anything. Somebody you already talk to may be able to tell from such an answer that you already had what they offered, so section 4's sentence about a private profile keeping your collection to yourself now names that exception.

30 September 2026 — what this page no longer promises about buying. This page used to open by promising that nothing in the app can be bought with money and that no amount of money would ever produce a Gem, and said the same in section 2. Those promises are gone. Nothing is sold in the app today, nothing ever has been, and no payment information has ever reached me; if anything is ever sold for money, this page will say what that involves before it happens. What the free draws say about themselves is unchanged: nothing random can be bought or paid into.

30 September 2026 — sponsored cards in the Trading feed. From a future release, the Trading feed may show sponsored cards, each marked Ad, with the advertiser's name, who paid for it, and an About this ad explanation on the card itself. This page used to open by saying the app has no ads; that stops being true when the first card runs, and sections 2, 3, 5, 6 and 11 now say what the cards involve. They are the same for everyone who opens the Trading feed, chosen without anything about you, never shown to an account under 13, and counted only as totals with no account or device attached. No advertising identifier, ad network or advertising SDK is added to either app, nothing about you is sold, and hiding a card is remembered on your phone alone. Tapping a card leaves the app for the advertiser's website.

30 September 2026 — counter offers, and changing an answer. Section 4 now says that, from a future release, a trade offer can be answered with a counter offer, that the collector who accepted an offer can change their answer for a while afterwards, and that the collector who sent an offer nobody has answered can edit it. The service keeps the earlier version with the offer that answered or replaced it, and records how many times an answer was changed; the other collector is told of each change. Nothing new is collected from anyone who does not use these, and nobody new receives anything.

29 September 2026 — community banners. A community can now carry a banner, a wide picture across the top of its screen, chosen by whoever runs it. Sections 4, 6 and 11 now say so: it is public in the same way as the community's picture, and like that picture it is checked for explicit content by Google's Cloud Vision when it is set, and turned away if the answer is a confident yes. That sends one more kind of picture to Google, which section 4 used to say happened to three pictures and nothing else. Nothing new is collected about anyone who does not set one, and a photo you send to somebody is still not sent to Google.

29 September 2026 — posts in communities. Sections 2, 4, 6 and 9 now describe posts in communities, from a future release: guides and discussions with a title, several photos, Sprite cards and links to YouTube videos; voting a post up or down, which is stored against your account and never shown to anyone as who voted; who can read a community's posts, which follows how the community works; the General feed moving into a community run by Sprite Catch; a featured guide each day; and what the people who run a community can do with its posts. Nothing is collected from anyone who does not use them, and nobody new receives anything; tapping a video opens YouTube, outside the app.

29 September 2026 — photos in conversations are no longer checked as they are sent. The check that has looked at every photo sent in a direct message or a group since 5 September 2026 is switched off, and sections 4, 6, 9 and 11 now say so. Instead, when the scheduled assistant in section 4 opens a photo in a conversation the safety measures have already put in front of it, it may write down the same short record the check kept — whether there is a real person in it, roughly how old they look and whether it is sexual, with a fingerprint of the file — and that record is what its one permanent restriction is checked against. Nothing new is collected and nobody new receives anything: fewer photos are looked at than before, by a provider this page already names. Section 6 also no longer says the assistant cannot restrict an account, which stopped being true on 28 September 2026. This does not bring back a sentence this page used to make — that photos are never looked at as they are sent — because the check still exists and can be switched back on; if it is, this page will say so.

29 September 2026 — gifts, and a count of the collectors you have helped. Section 4 now says that, from a future release, a trade offer can be a gift — Sprites given with nothing asked back, or a trade offer accepted by giving your side for nothing — and that the service records which collector gave. Your profile may show how many different collectors you have given a confirmed gift to, with a Helper badge, and the trading board may rank public collectors by that number over a day, a week and all time, for which I keep the same day and week counts as for trades. What is new is that a gift is recorded as one and that this count is shown; the gate on who is listed is the trading board's, and nobody new receives anything.

29 September 2026 — reporting a review, and asking for one to come off. Section 4 now says that each trade review has its own menu: anyone can report a review, which files a report about the collector who wrote it with the review attached, and the collector a review is about can ask me to take it off their profile. That request is a support ticket naming the review, read and decided by me rather than by the automated assistant, and it is not shown to the collector who left the review. What is new is that a report or a support request can name one review; nothing else is collected and nobody new receives anything.

29 September 2026 — message drafts. Sections 3, 4 and 9 now say that a message you start in a conversation and leave without sending is kept as a draft on the device you typed it on — or in your browser on the web version — and shown on that conversation's row until you come back to it. A draft stays where it was typed: it is not sent to me or to the other collector, and sending it, the conversation leaving your list, or signing out removes it. This narrows one sentence this page used to make: that a message Hunt Advisor drafts is kept nowhere. That is still true of the names it is written from, but a drafted message you leave unsent in a conversation is now kept on your device like any other draft. Nothing new is collected and nobody new receives anything.

28 September 2026 — the community server's team on the Thanks page. Section 2 now says that the website's Thanks page may list the Sprite Catch profile of each member of the community Discord server's team — today its admins, moderators, mod apprentices and Kindness Krew — with their role and how many trades they have made, taken from a daily check of which linked accounts wear those roles. It shows only what their public profile already shows, never a private profile or an account the app has established is under 13, and not their Discord account. What is new is that holding one of those roles is said on the website as well as inside Discord, and that the app writes down which linked accounts hold them. Nothing new is collected from anybody else, and nobody new receives anything.

28 September 2026 — the scheduled assistant can stop an account for one thing. Section 4 now says that if an account sends another collector a picture of themselves and asks for one back, or sends one with no reason given while it has little or no trading record, the scheduled assistant may stop it messaging, posting, sending photos and filing reports, permanently, without a person deciding first — only where the automatic photo check has recorded a real person and nothing sexual, never over a decision a person made, and with an appeal a person reads. Section 5 says this is an automated decision and how to have a person look at it, and section 9 that it follows an account that is erased and started again, as a suspension a person decided on already does. The assistant is also now shown the photo check's short record about a photo in a conversation it is reading. This retires a sentence this page used to make: that the assistant cannot restrict an account, and that anything it decides expires on its own. Both are still true of everything except this one rule. Nothing new is collected from you, and nobody new receives anything.

28 September 2026 — an age I can fix myself. Section 2 now says that where I have good reason to believe an account's age is wrong — usually because the account holder has said they are younger — I may set the account to that age myself, and that while it is set that way the age check in the app cannot change it. The effect is the same as that age given in the app: under 18 closes spaces marked for adults, under 13 applies the under-13 defaults. You can ask for it to be lifted through Support. Nothing new is collected from you, and nobody new receives anything.

27 September 2026 — a standby copy of the database, and writes held during an outage. Section 9 now also says that I may keep a standby copy of the main database with the same provider, so the app keeps working if the main database fails; that deletions reach it within a few days; that during an outage a message you send, a read mark or a collection change may be held there briefly and applied once the database is back; and that the service's data may be spread across several databases with the same provider. Nothing new is collected from you, and nobody new receives anything.

27 September 2026 — how long backup copies of the service's data are kept. Section 9 now says something it did not before: so that the service can be recovered after a failure, the database's host keeps a rolling history of it for up to 30 days, and I may also keep nightly backup copies with the same provider, normally for about a week. Something you delete, or that is erased with your account, can stay in those copies until they age out. Nothing new is collected from you, and nobody new receives anything.

26 September 2026 — from a future release, the Android app may ask you to rate it on Google Play. The iPhone app has always been able to put the App Store's rating card in front of you now and then; from the next Android release the Android app can do the same with Google Play's, most often after a trade you rated highly, and rarely. The card is Google Play's own: what you give it goes to Google Play under its terms, and the app is not told whether the card appeared or what you said. Section 6 now says so, and describes the Google software in the Android app by what each piece is for instead of as a fixed list of two — that list was already one short, since the Google Play component that can answer the age question arrived on 9 September 2026. Nothing new is collected by me, and nobody new receives anything from me.

26 September 2026 — an automatic scam warning can now be lifted by a person without deleting the reports behind it. Until today the warning applied when several collectors mark the same account came off only when those reports were withdrawn or cleared. I can now lift it after reviewing it, for example on an appeal, and keep the reports on file as evidence. The service records when a warning was lifted, so that the reports made before then cannot raise it again and new ones still can. Nothing new is collected from you, and nobody new can see anything.

24 September 2026 — a scam mark no longer counts as a one-star review, and a scam warning can now be applied automatically. Until today every mark another collector left on you counted as a one-star rating in your average, took the No Reports badge away, and was shown on your profile among your reviews. From today a single mark does none of that: marks are still kept, still reach the moderation team and still count as evidence, but they no longer move your rating, your rank or your badges, and their words are no longer shown on your profile. When several collectors in good standing — some of them with strong trade records — mark the same account within about two weeks, the service now puts the same scam warning on it automatically, with the bar rising for accounts with long trading records; that warning comes off by itself when the reports behind it are withdrawn or cleared, is not carried to a new account, and can be appealed to a person. So that nobody's rank fell when marks stopped counting, the service also keeps a small, fixed allowance for the collectors whose place on the trade ladder those old marks had been holding up. Nothing new is collected, and nobody new can see anything.

23 September 2026 — from a future release the Social tab has a Friends view that brings together what the people you follow can already see about you. It lists the collectors you follow, and for each one the sprites they caught this week, what a trade between you could be, the wants they have posted and whether they are active — each under the switch that already governs it (Share My Catches, a public profile, Show When I'm Active). The one thing it shows somewhere new is your note: it may appear beside your face there as well as at the top of Chats, to exactly the same people as before. Nothing new is collected, nobody is told when you catch something, and nothing about who can see your collection, your activity or your messages changes.

22 September 2026 — from a future release a trade request can be a structured trade offer, and offers may be suggested to collectors who could take them. Instead of a note, you can send a collector an offer naming the Sprites you would give and the ones you would like, in order of preference; the service now stores those offers — what was offered and asked for, which one was agreed, and what became of each — alongside your requests and conversations, and deletes them with either account. An offer from somebody you have not met arrives the way a request does and opens a conversation when accepted. What is new about who sees what: with Show to other collectors who match left on (the default; always off for a private profile), what you offered and asked for may be suggested, with your name, to other collectors who could take the trade — never who you sent it to — and public Trading posts and board wants may be suggested the same way. Only public collectors who show when they are active, and have been recently, are suggested, and turning off Show When I'm Active takes you out. Notifications for an offer say that it was sent or accepted. Nothing about who can read your messages, or how long they are kept, changes.

22 September 2026 — from a future release you rate a trade as part of confirming it, and a rating you give when asking is held until the other collector answers. Asking another collector to confirm a trade now starts with choosing one to five stars, with an optional line of words after it, and so does confirming one somebody else asked about. The rating you give when you ask is stored with the request before the trade has been confirmed, which is new, and why it is here: nobody else can see it while it waits — not the collector you asked, whose answer is given without knowing what you said — and it goes on their profile, like any other rating, only once they confirm. If they decline, or the request is withdrawn, it is deleted. The words under a rating are optional again, where for a short while the app had asked for them. Nothing about who can see a rating once it is public, or how long it is kept, changes.

22 September 2026 — from a future release you can let collectors message you without asking first, and following somebody lets them message you. Until now every conversation with somebody new began as a request they had to send and you had to accept. That is still what happens by default, and it is still the whole of what a stranger can do. What changes is that the door is now yours to open in two ways: a collector you follow can write to you straight away, because following somebody already says you want to hear from them, and a new switch — Let anyone message me, on the Requests screen and in Settings → Privacy & Safety — turns requests off altogether so that anybody's first message arrives as a conversation. Turning that switch on also converts the requests already waiting into conversations; turning it back off stops new ones without closing any that opened. Nothing else about messages moves — not who can read them, not how long they are kept, not blocking, not closing a conversation, not the safety rules shown before your first one — and accounts the app has established are under 13 cannot turn requests off at all. It is a change to who can reach you, which is why it is here rather than left to the screen it lives on. Sections 4 and 10 have the detail.

22 September 2026 — from a future release the app ranks collectors by completed trades over a day and over a week, and to do it I keep a count of when your trades happened. The number of trades you have completed has been public on your profile for a long time; this adds a count of how many of them fell inside the current day and the current week, and the best week you have had. It is new information stored about you, which is why it is here. The counts keep no history — each is replaced when a trade lands in a new day or week, and only the best week outlives its week — and the rules that decide who appears on a board are the ones that already applied to every other board: public profiles only, nobody carrying a scam warning, nobody you have blocked, and going private takes you off while still showing you your own number. Section 4 has the detail.

21 September 2026 — from a future release you can leave a short note above your name, and it is deleted after a day. One line of sixty characters, shown at the top of the Chats screen to the collectors you already talk to — the people who follow you and whom you follow back, and the people you have an open conversation with. It is new information stored about you, which is why it is here, and it is the shortest-lived thing in the app: the app deletes it twenty-four hours after it is written, without being asked, and writing a new one replaces the old. It is not on your profile, not on the shareable web page, not in the feed, not on Discord, and nobody is notified when you write one. Sections 2, 4 and 9 have the detail.

21 September 2026 — from a future release, the people who run a community can see the reports filed about it and the record of what its own staff have done. This is the one change here that adds somebody new who can read something, so it is the one worth reading. Until now, a report reached me and nobody else, and the record of a community's own moderation was mine alone. From a future release both are also shown to whoever runs that community — the reports as what was reported, when, how many different people reported it and which of the fixed reasons they chose, and the record as the short entries it has always been. Who filed a report is never shown to them, deliberately: the people who run a community are not vetted by me, and naming a reporter to them is how a report becomes a reason to remove the person who filed it. Deciding a report stays mine. The same release lets you report a community itself, or one message in one of its rooms, rather than only a collector.

21 September 2026 — and the people who run a community get three more ways to act inside it, none of which reaches your account. They can quieten somebody in that community for up to a week, take a message down in one of their rooms, and lock, close or reorder their channels. You are told when you are quietened, with the reason and when it ends, the same way you are told when you are removed. A message taken down is hidden rather than erased, exactly like one you unsend yourself, so a report about it stays answerable; closing a channel erases nothing either. I store each of these the way I already store the powers described in section 11 — who did it, to whom, and when — and none of it touches your posting, your messages, your trading, or anything else outside that community. Section 11 has the detail, along with four smaller additions from the same release: tagging somebody by name in a room, an Announcements post being copied into the community's other channels, a list of who has traded most inside a community, and a background a channel can be given. A collector's profile can also say which listed communities the two of you are both in.

21 September 2026 — you can now react to a single message in a conversation, and that reaction is stored. Holding a message offers a row of the app's own mascot in different expressions; picking one leaves it under that message for everybody else in the conversation, and picking it again takes it back. What is kept is which expression you chose, on which message, and when — the same kind of thing a reaction on a post has always been, described in section 3 among the other things you make. Only one expression is kept per person per message, so reacting again replaces what was there rather than adding to it. A reaction is visible to whoever can already see the message: the other collector in a direct conversation, or everybody in a group or community room. Nobody outside it is shown one, and a reaction appears on no public profile and no web page. It is deleted with the message it sits under, with the conversation, and with your account, and everything section 4 says about where a message is stored and who can read it applies to it too — including that a conversation is private from other collectors and not from me.

21 September 2026 — a private profile now shows your name and your numbers instead of nothing at all. Sections 3 and 4 describe it, and it is a widening, so it is worth reading even though nothing new is collected to do it. Until today, turning your profile off meant that anybody opening it — in the app, on the web version, or at your shareable web address — was shown a locked door with no name on it. Your display name and the character you designed were nevertheless on every post, message, chat row and community room you appeared in, and always had been, so the one screen that refused to say who you were was the screen somebody opened to find out. From today a private profile shows what identifies you and what your record is — name, username, character and decorations, Fortnite tag, community tag, official mark, how long you have been here, your trading record and any scam marks — together with the counts of what you hold and of who follows you. It goes on withholding everything you made or chose: your collection, your posts, the description you wrote, the written reviews on you, the achievements you pinned, and the lists of who follows you and whom you follow, which stay readable by nobody but you. It also goes on keeping you off search, off Discover, out of trade matching, off the "who has this" lists and off every leaderboard, and a private profile is still given no Discord role and is still refused by the Discord collection commands. The shareable web address is still asked not to be indexed by search engines. Nothing new is stored and nothing new is shared to make this change — the same facts that were already on every row you appear in are now also on the profile those rows link to. An account the app has established is under 13 is exempt: its private profile goes on showing nothing at all, in the app and on the web alike, because section 11 promises a parent that a child's display name is not published, and that promise was worth more than the consistency.

21 September 2026 — forgetting to claim a daily reward no longer ends your streak. Section 2 describes it. Until today a run ended the moment a day went by without being claimed, which meant that opening the app every day and not tapping the reward cost people runs they had kept for months. From today a day you do not claim costs you that day's reward and nothing else, and a run ends only after you have been away from the app for more than a whole day. Nothing new is collected and no new record is kept to do it. The app reads the single when you were last using the app time it has always held, described in section 4, and that time is still one value overwritten each time you come back — there is no log of which days you opened the app, and there was not one before. What did change is that opening the app can now affect your streak, where the policy previously said opening it wrote nothing at all, so the paragraph that said that has been corrected. Runs that ended this way in the days before the change have been put back.

19 September 2026 — a reward screenshot is now compared with your own earlier ones. Section 4 describes it. When you send a picture to claim a reward, a short mathematical summary of what it looks like is kept beside it, and compared with the summaries of claim pictures you have sent before, so that one screenshot filed for three different rewards can be recognised as one screenshot. It is compared only with your own, never with another collector's; no picture can be rebuilt from it; it is never used to recognise a person or a face; and it decides nothing by itself — where two claims look alike, both pictures are put in front of whoever is working the queue and the decision is made by looking at them. If you are asked to send a fresh screenshot, that is all it is: nothing is taken away and the reward is still yours once a new one arrives.

19 September 2026 — the measures that used to work by not telling you now tell you. Section 4 describes it, and this is the change on this page I would most want somebody to read. For as long as this app has had them, four measures — holding back an account's posts, holding back its messages, discarding its photos, and stopping it filing reports and scam marks — were applied without the account being told, and this page said so plainly and gave the reason: naming one just tells somebody to open a new account and carry on. That reasoning has not stopped being true. It is no longer what I do. European law — the Digital Services Act — requires that somebody whose content or account is restricted is told what was restricted, on what grounds and how to challenge it, and it does not make an exception for the case where telling them is inconvenient for me. It is the better rule, and I would rather keep it everywhere than keep it for the people it happens to be convenient to keep it for.

So from today, if any of those four is on your account, the Account Standing screen in Settings names it: what is held back, which of a short fixed list of reasons it was applied under, the day it started, the day it lifts, and a way to appeal it that a person reads and answers either way. Three of the four also send you a notification within about a minute. The fourth — pausing your ability to file reports and scam marks against other collectors — is shown on the screen in the same way but deliberately sends no notification: it is the mildest of the four, it is usually applied by an automatic rule rather than by a person, and it never touches your ability to block somebody, to write to support, or to report a safety matter. Nothing new is collected about you and nobody new can read anything: this is information about your own account, shown to you, that I was already holding. The private note a moderator writes for me is still never shown to you. And the sentence the standing screen used to show everybody at a level — that posts may reach fewer collectors — is gone, because it was there to avoid confirming these measures and would now only worry the large majority who have none of them.

19 September 2026 — five decorations that the daily reward can no longer hand over are in the Gem shop. Sections 3 and 6 describe it. The streak used to run a second week, and past the seventh day it handed over five further decorations; that second week no longer exists, so since it went there has been no day of the streak that could give them to anybody. They now carry a Gem price like the rest of the shelf. Nothing new is collected, nobody new can read anything, and no draw changes: none of the five is in the seventh-day pool or in any reward box, and the rule that nothing the app draws at random may carry a price is unchanged and still enforced by the app rather than remembered. An earlier version of this page said the decorations that were on sale between 11 and 13 September 2026 had all come off sale again. That was true of the ones the streak still hands over and it is no longer true of these five, so both sections now say which is which.

17 September 2026 — a trade review can now be answered, by the two people in the trade and by nobody else. Sections 2, 4 and 9 describe it. A review used to be the last word: one collector could describe a trade however they liked, and the person it was about had nothing to say back on the profile the reader was looking at — the only ways out were to appeal the review or to write to support, both of which ask me to settle something the two of them can settle in a sentence. So a review now carries a short conversation. What you write there is public on that profile like the review itself, it is attributed to you, it goes through the same automatic check every other public string goes through, and it is deleted with either account or with the review it answers. The part worth reading twice is who may write: the collector the review is about, the collector who wrote it, and nobody else — a review is about one trade between two people, and a comment box open to everybody would be something else entirely.

18 September 2026 — the badges beside a name are now a ladder, and one you unlock stays yours. Yesterday's entry said the badges I publish may be reserved for collectors who have supported the app with its creator code. From today the set may also be arranged so that each badge is unlocked by another settled claim — the first by one, the next by two, and so on — and a badge you have unlocked stays available to you afterwards rather than only while your most recent claim is current. So the badge somebody wears can say roughly how often they have supported the app, as well as that they have. Nothing new is recorded about you: it is counted from claims the app has already settled with you, wearing any badge is still entirely your choice, and nobody new can read anything. Section 3 describes it.

17 September 2026 — the badge beside a name is now a picture, and it may be reserved for collectors who have supported the app. The three marks the badge picker offered (two platform marks and a moderator's mark) have been withdrawn and taken off every account that wore one; the flag is untouched. From a future release the badges on offer are small pictures I publish, and the first set is available to collectors who have supported Sprite Catch by using its creator code in Fortnite and claiming the reward — so wearing one says publicly that you did. Whether to wear one is your choice, nothing new is recorded about you, and the app already knows whether a reward was claimed; nobody new can read anything. Section 3 describes it. The flag itself has been in the app since version 4.5, so section 3 no longer describes it as a future release.

15 September 2026 — a community's rooms now always keep their past messages for people who join later, and it has stopped being a setting. Section 11 describes it. It arrived on 7 September as a switch that whoever ran a community had to find and turn on, and the default was the mistake: the two largest communities in the app were started the day before it existed, so hundreds of people were sitting in rooms whose messages nobody who joined afterwards could ever see. A room is somewhere you walk into, and walking in to nothing was not a choice anybody had made on purpose. So every room that was still waiting was started that day, and no room can be stopped again. Nothing new is collected, and not one message that had already been said was shown to anybody: a room only ever keeps what is said after it begins, each of the rooms started that day began at that moment and not at any earlier one, and every one of them was told so in the room. A room you have cleared off your own list stays cleared. What is given up is the ability to turn it back off, which is why it is written here: if you are in a community, what you say in its rooms from now on can be read by whoever joins next.

15 September 2026 — Siri and device search can read your collection, an on-device advisor can read a summary of it, and your saved looks keep the order you put them in. All from a future release, and none of them new about what the server keeps. On iPhone and iPad the app writes each Sprite and whether you have it into the search index your device keeps for itself, so Siri, Shortcuts and the device's search can find, open and mark Sprites; that index is on the device, is never sent anywhere, and goes with the app. Hunt Advisor shows you which collectors you follow, or who follow you, own Sprites you are missing — worked out on the device from collections that are already public — and can draft a message to one of them, or a trade post, by handing the language model on the device that collector's display name and a few Sprite names in each direction; never a message, a price or your name. Nothing about a draft is stored or sent to me, and you read it before anything is sent. A switch under Privacy & Safety, off unless you turn it on, lets it use Apple's Private Cloud Compute instead, which then receives those same few names and, by Apple's design, keeps nothing — the one way this change can send anything about your collection to a company, and only by your hand. And the looks you save can now be arranged, so the order you put them in is kept with them. Sections 3, 6 and 9 describe all of it.

15 September 2026 — the Rewards tab is now called the Shop, a reward box may pay Gems, and a reward you claim by hand may be asked for by name. Three things, and only one of them is new about what is kept. The screen this policy has called Rewards is now the Shop; nothing on it changed what it collects, and the older name still appears in the dated entries below. A reward box may now hand over a fixed number of Gems beside its decoration — shown on the box before it is opened, the same for everyone, never drawn — and those Gems are counted from the record of which box you opened rather than stored as a number of their own, so nothing new is kept for it. And where a reward that a person checks pays a box, you may instead name one decoration from a published list and be given exactly that, with none of the box's Gems: that choice is the one new thing recorded, on the request you send, beside the photo, readable by the same people and kept for as long as the request is. Sections 3 and 6 describe both.

13 September 2026 — a correction: the phone may also remember that you have read the chat safety rules, and the screen now has a way out that does not ask you to read it twice. Since 21 August this policy has said that your having read the rules is kept on your account "rather than on the phone". That was true of the design and stopped being true of the app: because it was the only copy, anyone whose phone lost the one message that records it — a moment offline at the wrong second — met the screen again on every launch afterwards. The acceptance is now written on the device as well, against the account that gave it, which is what stops the screen coming back; it stays on the phone, reaches nobody, and goes when the app's storage does. The screen itself gained a plain "Don't show this again" under the button, which records exactly what ticking the box records. Nothing new is collected about you and nobody new can read anything — what the account keeps is still a single date. Section 3 describes it.

13 September 2026 — the daily reward hands over decorations again, and its random draw is back. This reverses the 11 September change directly below. The first days of a run each hand over a fixed, published decoration again, and every seventh day draws one at random from a small published pool; a day that hands over no decoration still pays Gems, worked out the same way. The four things that have always been true of a draw in this app are true of this one and are enforced by the app rather than remembered: it cannot be paid into with money or with Gems, a prize you already hold is never drawn again, the real odds are shown before you choose to draw, and nothing won this way can be traded or sold. The decorations involved have come off sale in the Gem shop, because nothing that can be drawn may carry a price. Nothing new is collected about you and nobody new can read anything — a decoration handed over by the streak is recorded exactly as every other decoration you own already is, with the day of the run that paid for it. Anything you were given or bought while the reward was Gems only stays yours. Sections 1, 3 and 8 describe it.

13 September 2026 — a badge is never taken off your account automatically. The verified mark described in section 2 could be removed by the daily job that checks who helps run the community server: lose the role there, lose the badge here, within a day. It does not work that way any more, and the reason is a plain one — I hand that mark out by hand as often as the job does, and twice this month the job decided somebody had lost a role they were still wearing and took their badge away for it. So nothing in the app removes a badge now. Losing the role still removes the protection it carries, immediately and automatically; the mark itself stays on the profile until I take it off myself, and deleting your account still removes it with everything else. Nothing new is collected about you and nobody new can read anything — this is one automatic change fewer, not one more. The two collectors it affected have their badge back. Changed again on 12 October 2026: the verified mark given for helping run the community server may be taken off with the role — see the entry above. Section 2 has the detail.

13 September 2026 — a public scam mark aimed at somebody who helps run the community server is now written down, like anybody else's. Since 5 September, marking one of those accounts quietly did nothing: the mark was thrown away, and the app told you the same thing it tells everybody. From today it is kept, shows on their profile and counts there, exactly as a mark left on any other collector does. Reporting one of them has always worked normally and still does. Nothing new is collected about you and nobody new can read anything — this is a mark that used to be discarded being kept instead, on a handful of accounts, and it is visible to exactly the people every other mark is visible to. What those roles still do is keep a mark or a report from becoming a punishment applied by a machine: the automatic safety checks in section 4 will not act on one of these accounts without a person looking at it. Sections 2 and 4 describe it.

11 September 2026 — the daily reward is Gems only, and its random draw is gone. The first days of a streak used to hand over a decoration and every seventh day drew one at random from a small pool. Both have been removed: claiming a day now pays a fixed number of Gems, worked out from how long your run is and shown to you before you tap, and there is no chance left in the daily reward at all. The decorations that used to be handed out are on sale in the app's Gem shop instead, for Gems you earn — except one, which sits in a reward box and therefore cannot be given a price. Nothing new is collected about you and nobody new can read anything; the running total your streak has paid is still kept, and is now a record of what you were given rather than something the next day's amount is worked out from. Anything you were already given stays yours. Sections 1, 3 and 8 describe it.

11 September 2026 — your own profile can be read as a timeline, and mastering a Sprite now keeps its date. Catching one already did. The new thing stored is a second date beside it: the day you first marked a Sprite mastered. Nothing new is disclosed to anybody — neither date has ever been published, and neither is on your public profile, the web card or anything another collector can open. What they are for is a screen about you, shown only to you: a list of what happened and when, built on your phone out of things it already holds — your own collection, the decorations you have earned, the collectors who followed you, the trades you confirmed. Dates from before today do not exist and are not invented: a Sprite you mastered last month simply has no mastery date, and the screen says nothing rather than guessing one. Section 2 describes it.

11 September 2026 — a community can hand out a tag, and wearing one is a new public fact about you. Whoever runs a community can give it a badge of up to four letters or numbers and one Sprite, and anybody in that community can choose to wear it beside their name everywhere their name appears. The new thing stored is which community's tag you are wearing, with a copy of what it says. The new thing disclosed is your membership of that community, to everybody who can see your name — which is why it is off until you switch it on, why it is one tap to take off, and why it comes off by itself if you leave that community, are removed from it, or it closes. Nobody is given one, nothing about it is bought or earned, and nothing about it decides what your account may do. Section 4, Communities, has the detail.

11 September 2026 — a conversation shows what time it is for the other person, and this is the first thing the service keeps that is about where you are. It is worth being plain about that, and about how narrow it is. What is kept is how far your clock is from UTC — one number, shared by dozens of countries at once, never turned into a location, and never a country, a city or a place name. It is shown in one place only: a line above the box you type in, inside a one-to-one conversation, to the person you are talking to. It is on no profile, in no community room, in no search result and on no web page. The reason it exists is that collectors ask each other where they live in order to work out when they are both online, and this answers that question without either of them saying it. Show My Local Time in Settings → Privacy & Safety turns it off; it is reciprocal, like the switch beside it, and turning it off deletes the number rather than hiding it and stops your app sending one. Accounts under 13 start with it off. Sections 4 and 10 describe it.

11 September 2026 — posts can be edited for an hour, and they show that they were. Until today the only way to fix a post was to delete it and write it again. Now the words and the topic chips can be changed for an hour after writing, an Edited mark appears beside your name for everybody who could already read the post, and after that hour it is settled. Nothing new is collected about you and nobody new can see anything: what is recorded is that a post was edited and when. The wording you replaced is not kept, which is the part to know — a post has one copy and a rewrite replaces it — and an edit goes through exactly the same content checks as a new post. It is described in section 2.

11 September 2026 — two more Discord commands draw a picture, of the same thing in a different light. The bot could already post the Sprites you have caught and the ones you are still hunting. /mastered and /unmastered post the ones you have mastered and the ones you have caught but not mastered yet, which is the other half of what people are actually working on. Nothing new is collected, nobody new can see anything, and nothing has changed about who may ask. Whether a Sprite is mastered is something your own profile already shows to anybody who opens it, it is in the same picture the app's share button has always made, and the two new commands go through the identical rules as the three before them: yours whenever you like, somebody else's only if their profile is public, every refusal shown to you alone, and nothing posted unless you type the command. They are described with the others in section 2.

11 September 2026 — a scam warning is no longer shown to the account it is on. It is still shown to everybody else, everywhere it was shown before, and it still counts for everything it counted for. What is new is that the account it is about sees an unwarned profile, and the sentence written with the warning is not in its own list of reviews. Nothing new is collected, nobody new can see anything, and nothing is taken off anybody's account. Writing to me about a warning works exactly as it did and still reaches a person — see Moderation in section 4.

11 September 2026 — appealing a review is settled by the assistant, and nothing you write yourself is. Tapping Appeal this review on a review another collector left you files a message the app writes for you — your own words are not in it. From today the scheduled assistant in section 4 settles those by itself: it takes the review off your profile and tells you so, instead of the message waiting for me, which is what an unfair review used to do. Nothing happens to the person who left it. That message files under the same heading as a report about a trade or another collector, so the line is worth being exact about: the assistant may answer that one because the app composed it word for word and it can be recognised with certainty, and anything you write in your own words still reaches me, always. Nothing new is collected and nobody new sees anything.

9 September 2026 — an assistant now works through the support and safety queues on a schedule, and it reads what is in them. This is a new company seeing information about you, so it is the change on this page to actually read. Support has always been one person, and what that cost was paid by whoever was waiting: a reward claim sent on a Friday could sit until Monday, and an unfair review stayed on somebody's profile until I got to it. From today a session of Claude, made by Anthropic, PBC, opens those queues every few hours and works them. What it is shown is three things and only when a queue hands it one: the messages on a support ticket, the screenshot on a ticket claiming a reward, and a conversation the safety measures in section 4 have already singled out. It cannot search, cannot browse, and cannot go looking. This retires a sentence this page used to make. The claim screenshot was described here as read by me and nobody else, and a support photo as having two readers; both are now true only of a ticket that is not claiming a reward, and saying so is the point of this paragraph. What has not moved: a voice message is still read by nothing and turned into words by nothing; a photo on any other kind of ticket is still readable only by me; nothing is ever asked to recognise a face; and a report about somebody's safety is never answered or closed by it — the app refuses to let it, so those still always reach a person. It cannot restrict your account: it has no way to ban, mute or hide anybody, and where it thinks an account should be paused that is recorded as a request and decided afterwards by the same unchanged rules as before. Anthropic does not keep what it is shown and does not use it to train anything. A record of what it opened is kept and is described in section 9; section 4 has the whole of it and section 6 names them.

9 September 2026 — announcements from Sprite Catch are written in your language, and have a switch of their own. Until now, a notification I write myself — a new feature, a new version, something worth knowing about the app — went out in English to everybody. Only the app's own built-in wording is translated on your phone; mine is not, so it was sent exactly as I typed it. From today the language setting in section 2 — or, if you never picked one, the language the app is already displaying itself in — decides which of the nine translations you are sent. Nothing new is collected to do it: it is the same setting that already narrows the feed and the trade board, used for one more thing, and no new fact about you leaves my servers. Alongside it, these announcements move out of the Fortnite News switches in Settings and get one of their own, App news, which starts on. That is a real change for one group of people: an announcement from me used to ride the Game updates & events switch, so turning that off stopped mine along with Fortnite's. From today it stops only Fortnite's, and the new switch is what stops mine — it appears in Settings with the next app release, and turning notifications off in your phone's own settings has always stopped every one of them.

9 September 2026 — the account now records which version of the app you signed up in, and which one you last opened. Section 2 describes both. Sprite Catch reached Google Play today, and there was no way to tell how many people were joining on Android, or how many of the people already here were using it — so from today two more facts are kept with the account: which of the three versions created it, and which of the three you most recently opened. Each is one of three words, neither keeps any history, and no other collector ever sees either. Nothing new is asked of you and nothing new leaves my servers: every request the app makes already says which app it is, and this keeps the answer — once, for the first one, and overwritten in place for the second. The signup one is blank for every account that existed before today, with one exception: where the only device an account had ever registered for notifications was an Android one, it has been marked as an Android signup, because that could only have been true on Android. The last-opened one is blank for everybody until the next time they open the app.

9 September 2026 — on Android, Google Play can now answer the age question for you. Sprite Catch arrived on Google Play today, and with it a change to how the age in section 3 is established: before showing you the age screen, the Android app asks Google Play for the age range held for your account, and Google asks you whether to share it. Agreeing means you are not asked again; declining, or Google having nothing to share, means the same screen you would have seen anyway. Nothing new is collected and nothing new is sent anywhere — the app receives an answer instead of asking for one, and what it keeps is the same single number of years it always kept. It is required of apps that children and adolescents are likely to use by Brazil's Digital Statute of the Child and Adolescent, and it is on for everybody because a better-sourced answer is not worse elsewhere. Google's own rules, and mine, allow that range to be used for one thing only: giving you an age-appropriate experience. Section 3 has the detail.

7 September 2026 — whether you are 18 or over now reaches my server, and a community can be marked for adult collectors. Section 3 said on 2 September that this answer stayed on your phone and told me nothing; from the version going out today that is no longer so. The app sends the same yes-or-no it already worked out — still no date of birth, still no number for the accounts Apple's service answered — and it is stored with your account for one purpose: a community's owner can now mark it for collectors aged 18 and over, and the server refuses to let anybody it does not know to be an adult start, be invited into or join one. That is the whole of what the answer does. Nothing else reads it, it is shown to nobody, and everything the safety note above a new conversation did with it on the phone is unchanged. An account that never gave the answer is treated as under 18 and told how to give one. The mark itself is a label everybody can see in the community list, not a filter; it permits nothing — the same rules and the same reports apply inside such a community as anywhere else — and marking a community that already has members removes none of them. Sections 3 and 11 carry the detail.

7 September 2026 — polls, a community's own want board, a community card on a post, the people you follow on a community's card, handing a community on, and a web page for every community. Six smaller things, going out in the same version, and one of them collects something new. A poll is a question asked in a conversation; what is new is that I store each person's own pick, which is shown to nobody but them — everybody sees the totals, and the picks go with your account (section 4). A want can now be posted into a community you are in, where every member sees it; it is the same want as on the board, with one more fact beside it. A post can carry a community, so that the people reading it can join from it; that is a pointer to something already public and nothing new about you. A community's card can show you which of the people you follow are in it, read from two things that were already yours to see. The person who started a community can hand it to a moderator. And every community has a web page that anyone can open, signed in or not, showing its name, what it is for, its picture, its size and how joining works — the four facts this page already made public to every signed-in collector, now reachable by a link — and never who is in it. Sections 4 and 11 carry the detail.

7 September 2026 — a community's rooms can now be set to keep their past messages for people who join later. Section 11 describes it. Until today, every group and every community room showed you only what was said after you arrived; that is still true of a group chat, and a community's rooms are now the exception, at the choice of whoever runs the community. Nothing new is collected, and nobody can be shown anything from before the setting was turned on: what changes is how far back a member of a room can scroll, it only ever applies forwards from the moment it is switched on, and a room you have cleared off your own list stays cleared. A community created from today starts with it on, because a brand-new community has nothing said earlier to disclose; every community that existed before today starts with it off.

7 September 2026 — from a future release you can be invited into a community, and being invited is something I store. Section 11 describes it. It is one new fact about you — that a particular collector offered you a place in a particular community, and when — and it is kept until you accept it, turn it down, or the community closes. Nothing new leaves my servers and nobody new can read anything: an invitation is visible to you and to the person who sent it, the record of it being sent joins the record every other community power already writes, and turning one down is recorded nowhere. The one thing that reaches outward is the notification telling you an invitation is waiting, which goes through the same notification service every other one does and can be switched off in Settings with them.

7 September 2026 — signing in with Epic has shipped, and the sentences elsewhere on this page that said the app never talks to Epic Games have been narrowed. Section 2 has described it since 4 September as something a future release would do; that release is out, so it is written in the present tense now. Nothing new is collected and nobody new can read anything — what is kept is still the account identifier, the display name it had when you linked it, and when you linked it, exactly as section 2 already set out. What changed is a promise this page makes in five other places, about three different features, and it has been narrowed rather than left standing: the locker import, the codes checklist and the reward claim queue each still make no call to Epic and send it nothing, but the app as a whole does now contact Epic — once, on our own servers, when you choose to link, to ask whether the account is yours. It still cannot see what you own, still cannot change anything in the game, and still never asks you for an Epic password.

7 September 2026 — a reply can answer another reply, and a reply can be liked. A thread used to be a flat list, so an answer to the ninth reply landed at the bottom under eleven unrelated ones. A reply can now be written under another one — in the web version straight away, and in the iPhone and Android apps from their next release — which means two more things are kept about it: which reply it is answering, and, when it was aimed at somebody further down that conversation, who it was addressed to — drawn beside it as a name everyone can already see. Replies can also be liked, the same one tap a post takes: the number is shown to everybody and who left it is shown to nobody. Nothing here is new in kind, no new recipient can read anything, and none of it is used to work out anything about you — it is the same feed, one level deeper. One behaviour is worth stating plainly because it is a choice rather than a detail: deleting a reply does not delete the replies to it — what other people wrote stays and moves to the top of the thread — and the same is true when a moderator takes one down or an account is deleted. Sections 2, 3 and 8 describe it.

6 September 2026 — a day of your streak that unlocks no decoration now pays Gems, and one number is kept to work out how many. Past the first week, and once the seventh day's pool is collected, a daily reward had nothing left to give and said so. It now adds a small number of Gems instead, which the app tells you before you claim and again afterwards. The amount gets smaller the more the streak has paid you over time, so a running total of what it has paid is kept against your account — a fourth number beside the current run, the best run and the date of the last claim, and the only reason it exists is to work out the next day's amount. Nothing new is collected about you, nobody new can read anything, and nothing here can be bought: Gems are still earned only, and this is a reward being given rather than anything being recorded. The seventh day's random draw has not changed, and a prize you already hold is still never drawn again. Sections 2 and 3 describe it.

6 September 2026 — from a future release you can save up to ten looks, and they are yours alone. A look is the whole of how your profile is set up at one moment — your character, your decorations, your flag and badge — kept under a name you type so you can put it back on in one tap. It is a new thing an account holds, which is why it is written down here before the release rather than after it. Nothing new is collected and nobody new can read anything: a saved look is a copy of choices this policy already describes, and it is not on your profile, not on the shareable web page in section 4, never sent to another collector and never published to Discord. The one thing worth saying on its own is that the name you give a look is not screened, unlike everything a stranger can read — because nobody but you can read it. Section 3 describes them.

6 September 2026 — from a future release you can put a flag and a small badge beside your name, and both are public. They are new things an account can hold and new things other collectors can see, so they are written down here before the release rather than after it: a country you pick from a list, and one small mark — a platform badge, or a moderator's mark if you are one. Nothing new is worked out about you and nobody new can read anything. The point worth stating on its own is that the flag is chosen and never inferred: it comes from a list you tap, not from your internet address, your phone's settings or your phone's location, and it is a different thing from the country in section 2, which is recorded from your address, is shown to no other collector, and neither feeds this nor changes because of it. Both are optional, both can be taken off, and both go when the account does. Sections 3 and 12 describe them.

6 September 2026 — the picture on a community and the photo on a group are now checked for explicit content before they go up, which sends two more kinds of picture to Google. Since 2 September 2026 a photo attached to a post has been sent to Google's Cloud Vision to be answered one question — how likely it is to be explicit or graphic — and this page said, in as many words, that it happened to post photos and to nothing else. That is no longer true, and this is the notice. What changed and why. The line those two are on is not public against private; it is that a picture like that is shown to people rather than sent to them. It sits next to a name in a list for everybody in that place, whether or not they opened anything — a community's picture is public to every signed-in collector browsing for one, and a group's photo is in the list of everybody in that group. Nobody there chose to look at it, which is exactly what a post photo and these two have in common and a message photo does not. A photo you send to somebody is still never sent to Google, and neither is a support photo, a voice message or anything you write; that boundary has not moved and is not going to. Nothing new is stored. The picture itself is not kept by Google or by me — what is written down is the answers that came back and a fingerprint of the file, the same as for a post photo, and a picture that is turned away is not stored at all. Unlike the post half, this one does refuse: a confident yes means the picture does not become the community's or the group's, you are told so, and you can pick another. It is about the one picture and nothing else — never a strike, never a mark on your Account Standing, never a restriction on your account. Sections 4 and 6 have the wording.

6 September 2026 — whoever started a community will be able to close it, and that ends it for everyone in it. Until now nothing anybody did in the app ended a community: the only way one closed was its owner deleting their whole account with nobody they had made a moderator to inherit it. From a future release its owner — and only its owner, never a moderator — can close it outright. Everyone in it loses it and every one of its rooms, at once, and nobody is told, because there is nothing anybody else could do about it. Nothing is deleted by this and nothing new is collected. What was said in its rooms is kept the way every other message is kept and stops being reachable, which is what lets a report about something that happened there still be looked at afterwards; your own messages in it go when you delete your account, exactly as they did before. Section 4 has the wording.

6 September 2026 — your conversations now follow you onto a new phone, and this page used to promise the opposite. Until today the apps kept a conversation only on the device it arrived on: signing in somewhere new showed who you had been talking to and the last thing said in each conversation, and nothing above it. This page described that as a deliberate limit, and it was one — but it was a limit in the app, never in what is stored. The server has kept every message the whole time, which section 4 has always said, and it is what the operator tools read when a scam report needs the context. So what the limit actually did was leave collectors looking at their own conversations with the words missing, and it did it to exactly the people least able to work around it — somebody whose phone was lost, broken or replaced. From today, opening a conversation on a device that does not hold it downloads it, and a button at the top of the conversation loads the rest of it, back to the beginning. Nothing new is collected and nobody new can read anything: the same messages, in the same place, kept for the same time, shown to the same account that wrote and received them. The web version has worked this way since it gained accounts on 4 September 2026. Section 4 has the wording, and the note about backups still stands — the copy on the device is still left out of them, because the server is what your history survives on.

5 September 2026 — I can now set aside the tickets of somebody who writes in about the same thing indefinitely. Support is one person answering everybody, in the order the tickets arrived, and a collector who will not accept an answer can sit at the front of that queue for weeks while everyone else waits. So from today I can stop reading one person's tickets for a set time — three months usually, a year at the most, never permanently. It takes nothing away from them. They can still write in on the same daily limit, the automatic reply still answers what it can, the conversation still stays open at their end, their tickets and photos are stored exactly as everybody else's are, and nothing about their account, their profile, their posting or their messaging changes in any way. Nobody reads it, that is all, and only until it runs out. A report about somebody's safety is never set aside — that reaches me in the ordinary order whoever sends it. The only thing stored is a note to myself: the account, the reason, the date and the date it ends, kept in the operator tools and shown to nobody. Section 4 has the wording.

5 September 2026 — helping run the community server is now recorded against your linked account. Until today, linking a Discord account only ever sent information the other way: your collection and trading standing became roles in the server, and nothing about the server came back. From today one thing does. Once a day the app looks at who is wearing one of the roles given to the people who moderate and answer questions there, and records the name of it against the account they have linked. It does three things and no others: it stops another collector putting a public scam warning on that profile, it stops the automatic safety checks acting on it without a person, and it gives that account the verified badge if it carries no mark already. Reporting one of them still works normally — a report still reaches me and still counts, which is the point. Losing the role, disconnecting, or deleting the account takes the first two away. Corrected on 13 September 2026: the badge is not taken back automatically — see the entry above. Section 2 has the detail.

5 September 2026 — every photo sent in a conversation is now looked at as it is sent. Until today the only automatic look at a message photo was the safety program in section 4, and that one only ever looked at pictures from a small number of accounts something else had already singled out — this page said so, and said it was not a check on every upload. That is no longer true of the app. A separate check now runs on every photo sent in a direct message or a group, as it is sent, and asks one question: whether the picture is sexual and whether the person in it appears to be a child. It exists because of the one thing I am obliged to report, in section 6. It runs on Cloudflare's own service — no photo of yours goes to another company, and a message photo is still never sent to Google. It cannot recognise a face and is not allowed to learn how. It never looks at a support photo and never touches a voice message. Today it turns nothing away, and this page will say so plainly on the day that changes. What is written down is two words and a fingerprint of the file — never the picture, and never a description of it. Sections 4, 9 and 11 have the detail.

5 September 2026 — network addresses are now stored, for 90 days. Until today this app kept no record of the address you connect from: it was scrambled into something nobody can read back, and the address itself was discarded. From today it is written down when you create an account, sign in, upload a photo or voice message, post, or send a message, and erased after 90 days — after which only the scrambled form remains. This is new information collected about you and it is the first of its kind on this page, so it is described in full in section 2, its retention is in section 9, and it is named in section 6 as something a report to the authorities can carry. Nothing about it is used for advertising, analytics, or working out where you are; nothing is shared with anybody in the ordinary course; and no law required it. The reason is the one in section 2: a report about child sexual abuse material is close to useless without an address, and this app had none to give. If you would rather it did not apply to you, deleting your account erases them, and sections 9 and 10 say how.

5 September 2026 — a preservation that overrides the deletion promises, and one new recipient. United States law requires a service like this one to report apparent child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and — once a report is made — to preserve the material and the account records around it for at least one year, longer if asked. An earlier version of this page, published this morning, said 90 days. That was the figure the law used until 2024 and it was wrong to publish; the period is longer, not shorter, so nothing was kept for less time than it should have been. Until today that duty was written down as a procedure I follow; it is now built into the app, so the automatic clean-ups that erase things on a schedule cannot run against an account it covers. Three things changed on this page rather than in what is collected: NCMEC and, through it, law enforcement are named in section 6 as a recipient in that one situation; section 8 records that the law can require information to be kept and not only disclosed; and section 9 says plainly that a preservation stops every clock on that list, including the 30 days after a deletion request and the 30 days a voice message otherwise gets, and that it reaches the other person in an affected conversation as well. Nothing new is collected about anybody, and nothing is shared with anybody in the ordinary course — this is a change to how long some things last and to who sees them in one specific, legally compelled case. As section 6 says, a report is not announced to the account it concerns, because the same law expects that.

If this policy changes materially I will update the date at the top of this page and note the change in the app's release notes.

This version is about the web version, which became a real version of Sprite Catch on 4 September 2026 and moved house doing it. It is at spritecatch.com now; app.spritecatch.com, which is where it used to be, is now only the page that tells people about the app, and the old addresses send you to the new one. You can sign in there with the same account as the phone, and once you do, the web version does what the app does: your collection syncs, and you can post, reply, react, trade, message, follow, block, report, mark a scammer, change your settings and delete your account. A reader who never signs in can now read the live feeds and public profiles there, and there is a new public leaderboard of collectors who have chosen to be public. Nothing new is collected about anybody by any of it — it is the same account, the same records and the same rules, reached from a second place — and no new company is involved: the web version still loads no third-party script, font or content delivery network, and every request it makes for your data goes to my own server.

Five things this page used to say about the web version are no longer true, and I am not going to quietly delete them. It said the web version has no account and no sign-in; it now has both. It said it stores nothing in your browser and that nothing there is tied to a browser; once you sign in it keeps the token that keeps you signed in, your own profile and your own collection, listed in full in section 3. It said the web version stores nothing on the server, so that clearing your browser was permanent deletion; that is still exactly true until you sign in, and after you sign in your collection is on the server like the app's. It said the web version had no social features to restrict, in the section for parents; it has them now, and section 11 says which protections follow the account there and which — Safe Mode and the parental passcode — stay on the phone they were set on. And it said the community feed shown on the web was not live, a fixed sample of about twenty posts with invented author names; that page is gone and the feeds shown now are the real ones under real names. What has not changed is the part people ask about most: still no cookie — with the one long-standing exception of the Discord linking page, which runs Apple's and Google's sign-in code and always has; still no advertising and no third-party analytics; still no third-party script, font or CDN anywhere else. The visit count in section 2 works exactly as it did and still stores nothing in your browser. There is a new Cookies page that says all of this on one screen, which is why you have never been shown a cookie banner here and will not be.

This version says that the web version now keeps the conversations you have already read in your own browser. It did not before: every time you opened a conversation there, the whole recent history was fetched again, and closing the tab threw it away. Now the messages stay on the computer that read them, so opening a conversation is instant and the list is still there when the connection is not. Nothing new is collected about anybody and nothing new is sent to me — it is a copy of messages you can already read, held on your side rather than asked for again — and the server's copy, what it keeps and for how long, is unchanged. Two limits are part of it rather than added to it, and they are why this has a paragraph. It belongs to the account that is signed in: signing out deletes it, and so does signing in with a different account on the same computer, so nothing one person read is left behind for the next person to open that browser. And clearing your browser data removes it like everything else on the list in section 3 — which loses nothing, because your conversations are on the server and come back when you sign in. The Cookies page lists it with the rest.

This version adds communities, and with them the first thing in Sprite Catch one collector can do to another. From a future release you can start a community, find one and join it, and whoever runs a community can hand out the ability to run it and can remove somebody from it. That is new in two ways worth stating plainly. It is a new public surface: a community's name, what it is for, how many people are in it and who they are can be seen by any signed-in collector who opens it. And it is a new kind of decision about you made by somebody who is not me — so being removed is something you are told, with a reason from a fixed list, and it takes nothing else away and closes no door to reporting. It also adds records: who is in each community and what they may do there, which of its rooms they have joined, and a log of every time one of those powers was used. The section Communities under Direct messages and groups is the whole of it, and section 10 covers what happens to all of it when you delete your account.

This version makes a public profile's follower and following lists readable by anybody, where before they were readable only by the collector they belonged to. Nothing new is collected and nothing new is stored: the two numbers were already on every public profile, and this publishes the names behind them. It is still a new public surface, which is why it has a paragraph here rather than a line. Two limits are part of it rather than added to it. Only public profiles appear on either list, so going private takes you off every copy of both, and an account belonging to somebody under 13 — which starts private — is never on one unless that has deliberately been changed. And neither list says anything about whoever is reading it. The section Your public profile is the whole of it.

This version also moves your trading record onto your posts, and tightens what happens behind a moderator's decision. Nothing new is collected by any of it, and no new group of people can read anything about you. From a future release the star rating from your completed trades, and the warning an account carries once enough scam marks have been left on it, appear beside your name on your posts and replies as well as on your profile — the same record, already public, shown where somebody is deciding whether to trade with you rather than one tap away; it is deliberately not drawn on your own posts, and it changes nothing about what your posts do. Separately, a moderator's decision can now name several reasons instead of one, and you are shown all of them on your Account Standing screen; and every decision they make — including an attempt the server refused — is now sent to me as it happens, so that the record of a power I handed out reaches me the same hour instead of waiting for me to open a tool. The moderator's private note is not in what reaches me that way, and still never reaches anybody's phone. Report reasons gained one entry, for selling Sprites for real money. Sections Your public profile and Moderation and safety carry the detail.

This version records something new about achievements: the few badges that are handed out rather than earned. Achievements have always been worked out on your device from numbers your profile already carries, and that is still how almost all of them work. From a future release a small number of badges exist that no rule could describe — for helping test the app, for being here early, for reporting a problem — and those are given out one account at a time, so which of them your account holds is stored with it and shown on your profile. Section 2 describes it under Questionnaire answers and rewards. Nothing else about achievements changed, and nothing new is collected from you: this is a note about something I record, not something you tell me.

This version opens the Discord bot to every server, and it collects something new from people who do not have a Sprite Catch account at all. Until now the bot connected an account and drew pictures. It can now be added to any server, and inside one it does three more things, all described in full in section 2 under Tracking your collection with the Discord bot. It keeps a list of which Sprites you have marked, saved against your Discord account rather than a Sprite Catch one — so somebody who has never installed the app now has information stored about them here, which is new, and is why this paragraph exists. It keeps which servers you have used it in and roughly when, which is what lets other members of those servers find you when they are looking for a Sprite you have; that is a new way to be found, it is limited to servers you have used the bot in, and /spritecatch privacy switches it off and deletes everything the bot holds, from inside Discord, without asking me. And it opens private trade threads between two collectors — those live on Discord, under Discord's rules and that server's moderators, and this app neither stores nor reads a word of them, which the bot says in the first message of every room. Linking an account moves the bot's marks into your collection and deletes its copy. That list also marks who on it has linked an account, which is the same single fact the Verified Collector role already publishes, and it now covers only people who are still in the server — leaving one deletes what the bot remembered about your being a member of it. From this version the bot can also learn who is in a server from its member list, rather than only from who has typed a command — which affects you only if you have linked an account, never applies to a private profile, and is switched off for you by /spritecatch privacy; and a server may give you one role for completing a season, chosen by that server's admins. Nothing about the app's own data changed, no new company receives anything, and a trade agreed in Discord still changes nothing about your trading record here.

This version gives the moderators a way to see and undo their own decisions, and stops them being publicly accused for making them. Nothing new is collected about you by any of it. Three things change and each is described in full in section 3 under Moderation and safety. The handful of accounts allowed to moderate the feed can now read, one collector at a time, whether that account is currently paused and the list of decisions already made about it — the categories, the dates and who acted, never the private notes, and nothing at all about your messages, your photos, your collection or your own Account Standing screen. That is a new group of people able to read a record about you, which is why it is written here. Those same accounts can now undo: lift a pause, or take back a scam mark they filed, and where they say the decision was wrong the entry on your standing screen is marked as removed and stops counting — the first time anything on that screen could come off other than by waiting or appealing. They can also remove a single reply rather than the whole post it sits under. And a public scam mark aimed at one of those accounts is now discarded rather than published, because marking whoever paused you is the obvious retaliation; an ordinary report against a moderator still reaches me exactly as before, and it should, because a moderator abusing what I gave them is a thing I need to be told. One more visible change comes with it: a mark left by a moderator now shows a short line on the profile, and above a conversation with that account, saying what they say they saw — from a fixed list the app translates, plus the public review they chose to write. A mark from an ordinary collector is still only counted, never quoted.

This version works out one more thing about your age, and it never leaves your phone. From 2 September 2026 the app decides whether you are 18 or over as well as whether you are over 13. On an iPhone that is one extra boundary in a question Apple's service was already being asked, so there is no second prompt and Apple still reports no age; everywhere else it comes from the number you already gave. It changes exactly one thing you can see: the short safety note above a conversation with somebody new is no longer shown to collectors of 18 and over. The result is kept on the device, is not sent to my server, and is not attached to your account — over or under 13 remains the only age result I hold. The same release lets anybody switch that note off for good, which is also remembered on the phone alone, and puts it back under Settings → Privacy & Safety. Nothing about reporting, blocking or closing a conversation moves with any of it. Sections 3 and 4 carry the detail.

This version starts sending one kind of picture to another company, and it is the first time anything in this app has done that. From 2 September 2026, a photo you attach to a post is sent to Google's Cloud Vision before the post is published, and Google answers how likely it is to be explicit or graphic. If the answer is a confident yes the upload is refused and the photo is not stored. Nothing else about you goes with it and no new kind of information is collected: the picture was already being uploaded and already being published to everyone. What has changed is who sees it on the way, which is why this is a paragraph here rather than a release note. It covers photos on posts and nothing else. A photo you send in a direct message and a photo you attach to a support ticket are not sent to Google, are not part of this, and the promises made about them elsewhere on this page are unchanged — the whole reason a post photo is treated differently is that you are publishing it to everyone, including people who never signed in. Google is asked one question, is never asked to detect or recognise a face, handles the photo as a service provider, does not keep it and does not train on it; on my side the picture is not kept either, only the scores and a fingerprint of the file. If Google cannot be reached the photo is published rather than held back. Right now it refuses nothing — it is set to record its answers rather than act on them while I learn how it behaves on real photos — and this page will say so plainly on the day that changes. It is not a check for illegal images of children and is never treated as one. Sections 4, 6, 9 and 11 carry the detail, and section 6 now lists Google in two places for this reason: for this one job it works on my behalf, and for sign-in and Android notifications it does not.

This version adds a screen that tells you how your own account is doing. Nothing new is collected about you and nothing new is shared with anybody. What changes is that decisions a moderator makes about your account — a post removed, a pause applied, a scam mark filed with evidence — and the two things that count without a person (several separate serious reports, and asking different collectors for gift-card codes) are now written down as a short, dated record and shown to you, in Settings → Account Standing, instead of happening where you cannot see them. Each entry stops counting after a set time and then falls away on its own; none of it is permanent, and none of it is visible to any other collector. As that record grows the app pauses posting, then replying, then starting new chats and posting trades, and it says on the screen when each comes back. The full description is in section 3 under Moderation and safety, and the retention line is in section 9.

This version adds codes you can redeem, and one small thing they store about you. From a future release, a short code given out on a stream, in a Discord post or on a card can be typed into the Rewards screen to be handed a profile decoration, some Gems, or both. The app records which of its codes you used, when, and how many Gems that code paid — that record is what your Gems are counted from and what stops one code being used twice by the same account. Nobody else can see it, and it is deleted with your account. Two things are worth saying plainly, and both are in section 2. These are the app's own codes and not Fortnite's: the app still cannot grant, transfer or change anything in the game, and the checklist of Fortnite's codes described in section 2 is a separate thing that redeems nothing. And a code is always free — there is no way to buy one, they are never sold or bundled with anything, so nothing here changes the fact that nothing in this app can be bought with money.

This version adds a way to close a conversation. It sits between deleting one and blocking somebody, and it exists because neither of those fits the commonest reason a chat ends: the trade is done. Closing stops new messages in that conversation for both of you, keeps everything that was said, and leaves everything else about the two of you exactly as it was — no hiding, no verdict, nothing removed. Two things are worth reading in full in section 4, because both reach the other person. They are told, in a line inside the conversation naming who closed it. And only whoever closed it can reopen it, which is the point rather than a side effect: someone who ends a conversation because the person on the other end makes them uncomfortable should not be able to have it reopened by that person. I now store, for each conversation, whether it is closed and which of you closed it. Reporting, scam marks and everything else in section 10 work in a closed conversation exactly as they did before.

This version adds a second item-shop notification, and it is off until you ask for it. The first one has always been about your wishlist — it is sent only because you hearted something, and only about the thing you hearted. The new one is the shop itself: once a day, what has gone on sale, the same message for everybody who wants it. It is not built from anything about you and needs nothing from you; the only thing stored is that you turned it on. Section 4 describes both, and they are separate switches.

This version removes the ability to buy anything, and opens the shop that spends the earned currency. Two changes on the same day, and they are two halves of one thing. The ability to sell profile decorations through the App Store — built, never opened, never used by anybody — has been taken out of the app and off the server entirely. It is not switched off any more; there is no code left that could charge you, and the sections describing what a purchase would have involved have gone with it. Nothing is lost by anybody: nothing was ever sold, no payment information ever reached me, and every decoration that had a money price now has a Gem price instead — eighteen of them, which is what put stock in the shop the previous version introduced. Gems are earned by using the app and cannot be bought at any price, so the practical effect is that things which were once going to cost money are now things you can earn. This collects nothing new. It collects less: there are no purchase records, no transaction references and no refund messages, because there are no purchases. Sections 2, 6 and 9 are shorter for it, and the App Store is no longer a recipient of anything.

This version adds a currency, and it is earned rather than bought. From a future release the app has Gems, given for using it — trading, posting, keeping a daily streak, filling in your collection, being around a while, taking part in a creator-code campaign — and spent on profile decorations in a small shop. No amount of money will ever produce one: there is nothing to top up, no pack, no bundle and no subscription, and the App Store still sells nothing for this app. Earlier versions of this page said flatly that there was no currency in the app, and that is no longer true. Three things are now kept against your account that were not before: what you have spent Gems on and when, anything I have handed you by hand, and a one-off adjustment made when Gems were introduced so that a long-standing collector's history did not pay out all at once. How many Gems you have is not stored at all — it is worked out from things the app already knew about your account. Nothing the app draws at random can be bought with them, and nothing that can be drawn is ever put in the shop. Section 2 has the detail.

This version changes one thing about blocking, and only for the handful of accounts allowed to moderate the feed. A block used to hide both people from each other everywhere, without exception. From 1 September 2026 a block you place on a moderator stops hiding you from them — your profile, your public posts, the replies under them and your name in search stay visible to that account, because a block that hid them was a way of putting your posts beyond the reach of the only people who can act on them while everyone else went on reading them. Nothing else about blocking moves: your own side is untouched, a moderator you block is still gone from your app, the block still stops them following you, messaging you or replying to you, and it changes nothing at all between you and any other collector. No new information is collected, kept or shared for this, and there is no new recipient — it is the same public content, seen by the same handful of accounts, which section 4 already described. Section 4 sets it out in full.

This version also describes signing in with Epic, which section 2 covers. It is worth being plain about what it is and is not: it confirms who you are, it stores an account identifier and a name, and it can never tell this app what you own in Fortnite, because no level of access to Epic offers that to anybody. It has since shipped — see the entry at the top of this section.

This version adds a way to fill in your locker by pasting a link instead of ticking every item. Section 2 describes it in full. The short version is that the reading happens on your phone, the app does not visit the site the link points at, and what is saved is a list of cosmetics and nothing about where the list came from — not the address you pasted, and not the account creation date those links carry, which is discarded. It is not a connection to your Fortnite account. Importing reads nothing from Epic, and the sentences elsewhere on this page saying so are still true: it cannot see what you own, cannot change anything in the game, and never asks for an Epic password.

This version lets you react to a Fortnite cosmetic, and publishes the counts. From a future release each item in the shop carries five faces you can tap, and how many people picked each one is shown to everybody. Two things about that are new and section 2 describes both: a small amount is stored about you that was not stored before — which item, which face, when — and a number derived from it is public, which nothing about your locker or your wishlist has ever been. Which face you picked is not published and is not on your profile. Deleting your account deletes your reactions; it does not walk back a public count, because a count of opinions is not information about a person — and taking a reaction back before you delete removes it from both.

This version is about the community feed, which has gained a second half. The feed used to ask only what you had caught and what you were hunting; from a future release it has a general Fortnite and Sprite Catch section beside the trading one, and four things about it are worth stating plainly rather than leaving to be discovered.

A post can carry a photo, and that photo is public. Until now the only pictures in this app went to one person in a message or to me in a support ticket. A photo on a post can be seen by anyone using the app, including people who never signed in, because reading the feed needs no account. It is stored on the server like a message photo, it is stripped of the details a camera records with it before it leaves your phone, it is not put on the public web profile page and it is not indexed by search engines — but it is published, and section 4 says so in those words.

The measure that stops keeping an account's photos now covers posts too. It covered messages only, which would have left the public half of the app out of the one measure aimed squarely at pictures. A support photo is still always kept, and is still the one exception.

You can now tag any collector with a public profile, where a tag used to work only if that person followed you and silently did nothing otherwise. Tagging someone notifies them unless they have turned mentions off in Settings, and it still cannot reach a private profile or somebody either of you has blocked.

Posts can be liked and reposted, and both are stored the way a reaction already was: who did it and to which post, kept while the post is, and gone when it goes. A photo goes with the post that carried it, including out of storage, on the same 90-day clock section 9 describes for the post itself.

This version gives every collector a username, and moves what is in the address of your public profile page. Until now people found each other by a randomly generated friend code that the app printed on your profile. From a future release that code is your account ID — still yours, still what a support conversation quotes, but shown only to you in Settings — and the thing other collectors see and search for is a short username you pick.

Three things about that are worth stating plainly rather than leaving to be discovered. You choose it, so it can be recognisable in a way a random code was not; if you reuse a handle you use elsewhere, somebody may connect the two, and that is now your call rather than the app's. It is in your profile's web address, at spritecatch.com/u/<your username>, which no account is needed to open — so a guessable handle makes a page that was effectively unfindable somewhat findable. The page itself shows exactly what it showed before, and the old code-based address still works, so nothing already shared has broken. And accounts that existed before this release are given one automatically, worked out from the display name already on the account, so that nobody becomes unfindable on the day the change ships; the app then puts a one-time notice on your own profile showing what you were given and offering to change it. Nothing else is collected: a username and the date you last changed it (which is how the app tells you when you may change it again — once every fourteen days) are the whole of it, there is no new recipient, and going private still hides you from search entirely.

This version adds three Discord commands that post a picture, and a new recipient for information that was already public. A collector who has linked their Discord account can now type /missing, /collection or /rating in a channel and have the app reply there with an image of their collection or their trading record — or of another collector's, if that collector's profile is public. Nothing new is collected or stored to draw one, and everything on the picture is what a public profile already shows to anybody; what is new is that it now leaves for Discord, which keeps its own copy under its own rules. A private profile cannot be looked up this way, and nothing is ever posted unless somebody types the command. The commands arrive with the release that carries them.

This version adds a place to read one collector's posts, and collects nothing for it. A profile now has a Posts tab listing everything that collector has written. Every one of those posts was already public and already listed in section 4 as something anyone can see; no new information is collected, kept or shared to draw it, and nothing that was private has become public. What is new is that one person's posts can now be read together rather than found one at a time, which is worth saying plainly even though the posts themselves have not changed. The same limits apply to the list as to the profile it sits on: a private profile withholds it, a block hides it, and a deleted post is gone from it.

It also adds a check that runs on your phone and collects nothing. The app now reads a post or reply while you are typing it, on your own device, to tell you if it will be refused or if it breaks the feed's rules, and to offer you a report instead when it reads as an accusation against another collector. Nothing about that reading — the words, the warning, or the fact that there was one — is sent to me or stored anywhere, and it is listed here because it reads what you write, not because it collects it.

This version adds one small record: a note that mail to an address bounced. Sign-in codes had been going to addresses that could never receive them — misspelled domains, mailboxes that do not exist — and enough of them bounced that the email provider warned it would stop letting this service send at all, which would have left everybody without a way to sign in. So two things changed. An address is now checked before a code is sent, by looking up whether the domain after the @ can receive email; and when a message does bounce, the address, the reason and the date are written down so the same message is not sent again. That note holds nothing else, is not linked to an account, and is not shared with anyone. A temporary failure is forgotten within a day; a permanent one is kept while it remains true, and unlike everything else here it is not removed when an account is deleted — section 2 says why, and section 9 gives the whole rule. You can ask to have one cleared. Nothing else about what is collected, who sees it, or what it is used for has changed.

This version removes the ability for questionnaire answers to be sold, and every part of this page that described it. Since 1 August 2026 the app has carried machinery for offering a questionnaire whose answers were sold to game companies as market research, and this policy set it out in detail: a purpose, a category of buyer, a separate consent screen, and a switch in Settings. None of it was ever used — no such questionnaire was ever offered to anybody, no answer of yours was ever sold to anyone, and no money ever came of it. From today it is gone rather than switched off: the server refuses to serve or accept a questionnaire of that kind, and the app carries no consent screen and no sharing switch. Answers to a questionnaire are read by me, to work out what to build next, and go nowhere else. Nothing about you is sold, and nothing ever was. One thing is deliberately kept: the iOS tracking permission. The app still asks it, and nothing in the app reads the answer or tracks you — it is held so the choice is already made if anything ever needs it, and this page would change before anything did. Section 2 describes it, and the App Store listing declares no tracked data. Sections 2, 5, 6, 10 and 11 lost the paragraphs that described the old arrangement, and section 10's Do Not Sell heading is kept — pointing at an answer rather than a control — because a page that has carried it since 1 August should not simply drop the anchor. The entries below from 1 and 30 August 2026 are left standing as the record of what was disclosed at the time.

This version says the arcade has stopped paying out decorations. The games were built with a way of handing one over for a high score, or for being first on a board, and from today that is switched off. Nothing has been taken away from anybody: no decoration was ever given out for a score, so there is nothing on any profile that this removes. Nothing else about the games changed — your best scores are still kept and still ranked, exactly as Playing the arcade describes — and nothing new is collected or kept as a result. It is written here rather than left to a release note because this page has been describing, in the present tense, something the app no longer does. If it is ever switched back on, this page will change with it before it does. Sections 2 and 4 describe it.

This version describes one new thing the app keeps, and it is small and short-lived. From a future release, opening a reward box shows you a few decorations and lets you keep the one you want, instead of handing you a single one. While you are deciding, the app keeps a note of which decorations it has offered you, so that closing it and coming back brings you to the same ones. It is deleted the moment you keep one, and it goes with everything else if you delete your account. Nothing about a box has become buyable and nothing costs money: the extra looks are free, fixed in number and came with the box, and none of the promises this policy already made about free draws has changed. Section 4 describes it.

This version describes the typing indicator, and puts it behind the switch it should always have been behind. A conversation shows the other person while you are typing. That has been true on iPhone since 27 August 2026 and this page did not say so; from today it is written down, and it arrives on Android in the same release. Nothing is stored — it is passed between the two of you as it happens and there is no record of it afterwards — so this adds nothing to what is kept about you. What has changed is that it now obeys Show When I'm Active, in both directions, exactly as the "last active" time already does: until today it was sent whatever that switch said, which was not what this page promised the switch would do. Section 4 describes it.

This version adds one recipient, and it is a person rather than a company. The terms now carry a copyright-complaint procedure, because the app has always let you post pictures and never said what happens when one of them belongs to somebody else. Running that procedure means a complaint reaches the collector it names, and a reply disputing it reaches the complainant — each carrying the sender's own name and contact details, because the law that governs it gives neither side a way to stay anonymous. Nothing new is stored about you and nothing new is collected; what is new is that a stranger can end up holding your name and address if you dispute a complaint about something you posted, and you should know that before you decide to. Section 6 describes it, and the procedure itself is in section 9 of the terms.

This version narrows the measure that stops an account's photos being kept, and says plainly what an earlier version of this page got wrong. Since 9 August 2026 that measure has thrown away what the account uploads instead of storing it, and this policy said it applied in messages and on support tickets alike. From today it applies to messages only: a photo attached to a support ticket is always kept, whoever sends it. A support photo has two readers — the person who sent it and me — so discarding one protected nobody; it only meant that somebody who had been asked for a screenshot, to settle a reward claim or show me a bug, sent one that arrived empty, with neither of us told. This keeps more of your information than the earlier wording promised, which is why it is written here rather than left to a release note: for an account under such a decision, a support attachment is now kept on the same terms as anybody else's, described in sections 4 and 9. Nothing changes for messages, and nothing changes for an account this has never been applied to. Photos already thrown away were never written down anywhere and cannot be recovered — if you were asked for one and it did not arrive, send it again.

This version also corrects a sentence about how far back those measures reach. It said that messages and photos sent before such a decision are untouched. That stopped being true of the photo measure on 21 August 2026, and this page should have said so then: stopping an account's photos being kept can also take the pictures it has already sent, in messages and on tickets both, and unless I choose otherwise that is what it does. The messages themselves stay, and still read as conversations somebody sent a picture in; the pictures are deleted and there is nothing to restore. Nothing about the other measures changed — a withdrawn report, post or message is still stored and still shown back to the person who wrote it.

This version says that an arcade score can now be shown to one conversation. From a release shipping shortly, you can send a challenge into a chat you already have: it arrives as a card that stays in the conversation and keeps a small scoreboard on it, and either of you can play the game straight from it. New information is kept — who opened a challenge, which game, which conversation, when, and one best attempt per person who plays it — and it is described in full under Playing the arcade. Two limits are the reason this is a small change rather than a large one. A challenge can only go into a conversation you already have, so nobody can be challenged by somebody they have never agreed to hear from. And the number on a card is always one you chose to put there — your own record at that game, or a run you played on the card — so a score can never appear anywhere you did not send it. The one genuinely new thing it makes possible is that a private profile, which is on no leaderboard at all, can now show a score to the people in one conversation, and only to them. The same release adds a short Friends list to each game's screen, which publishes nothing a leaderboard does not: it lists only accounts a leaderboard would already list, so a friend whose profile is private is simply not on it. Nothing about either is sold, shown on the web, or used for anything but the screen it is on.

This version says that the language shown beside a post is now worked out from the post itself, on your phone. Until now it was taken from the language setting on your account, which is seeded from the language the app is displaying itself in — so somebody who reads the app in Spanish and writes to the feed in English had their English posts labelled Spanish, and both filters gave the wrong answer. From a release shipping shortly, the app asks the language recogniser built into iOS what language you have actually typed, before the post is sent. Nothing is uploaded to do it and nothing new is stored: the analysis happens entirely on your phone, what leaves it is a single language code, and that code goes in the place the setting's code used to go — the same label, on the same post, visible to the same people. Where there is too little text to tell, nothing is guessed and the setting is used instead, exactly as before. Your setting is unchanged and still yours to set or clear; what it no longer does is decide what language other people are told your words are in. Sections 2, 4 and 5 describe it.

This version says that the safety program which reads conversations on my server is switched off. It ran for one day, from 29 August 2026, and I turned it off on 30 August 2026 because of what it costs to run. Since that date no program on my server reads a whole conversation, or looks at a photo. This is a change that collects less and reads less, not more. Everything else in Moderation and safety is unchanged and still running, including the parts that do read written words: the word list that screens each message as it sends, the check that holds back a public post putting its author at risk, the check your own phone makes on messages you receive, reports, blocks, and the measures I apply by hand. I have not removed the program — it is still built into the service and I can switch it back on — which is why sections 4, 6 and 11 still describe it in full rather than deleting it, and why this page does not go back to saying that nothing you write is read by a machine or that photos are never looked at on my server. Those are things I can no longer promise. If it runs again, this page will say so on the day, in the same plain words.

This version says that I am no longer the only person who can moderate the feed. From a release shipping shortly, a few collectors I choose by hand can remove a public post and pause its author from posting for a while. It is the first time anybody but me can act on your content, so it is written out in full under Moderation and safety: what they can see (only what you have already made public), what they cannot do (any of the measures on this page that work by not telling you), and what is written down about it. The pause itself is the one measure here that is deliberately announced to the person it applies to — you are told that it happened, why, and when it ends.

This version says plainly that nothing about you has ever been sold, because nothing has. Earlier versions said that some questionnaire answers "are sold" to game companies, and described that as how the app pays for itself. The ability to run such a questionnaire was built and disclosed — and it was never used. No questionnaire whose answers are sold has ever been offered to anybody, no answer of yours has ever been sold to anyone, and the app has no income. What those sections describe is kept, in the conditional, because the ability still exists and because a switch you can set in advance is only worth having if you know what it is for. If one is ever offered, this page will say so before it happens. (Superseded the following day: on 31 August 2026 the ability itself was removed, and the sections describing it went with it — see the entry at the top of this section.)

This version says plainly that nothing in the app can be bought, because nothing can be. Earlier versions said the app had optional in-app purchases and described buying a profile decoration in the present tense. That was written when the ability shipped, and it was never switched on: the shop was closed on both the app and the server before a single decoration was offered, none was ever put on sale, and nobody has ever bought anything. No payment information has ever reached me, and there are no purchase records to keep, share or delete. What the sections below say about purchases is kept as a description of what would happen if the shop were ever opened — nothing there has taken place. If it is ever opened, this page will say so on the day, and not before. (Superseded on 1 September 2026: the ability itself was removed from the app and the server, and the sections describing it went with it — see the entry at the top of this section.)

This version adds two things around age, and neither collects anything new about how old you are. Accounts holding an age that an older version of the age screen recorded by default, rather than by anybody choosing it, are asked the question again — and when anybody confirms the age on their account is right, the app now keeps a record that they confirmed it and when, which is what stops it asking. That record says only that the question was answered; it is not proof of the answer. Separately, accounts that stated an age under 13 now see a notice naming 1 October 2026, the date from which the community, direct messages and news will be switched off for them; the collection, the scanner, Rewards and their own profile are unaffected. Section 8 describes both.

You can also now report an account for appearing to be under 13. It is a new reason on the reporting form described in section 10, it puts the account in front of me rather than restricting anything by itself, and it is deliberately weighted below a report of harassment or of a scam.

This version changes what being blocked does to your side of a conversation, and section 10 now describes it. Until 29 August 2026 a block hid the conversation from both people, which meant the one who had not blocked lost the transcript as well — and that is the person most likely to need it, because blocking the collector you have just taken a sprite from is a scammer's second move. From that date a conversation somebody blocks you out of stays in your list and stays readable, with no way to reply and Report in place of the message box. Nothing new is collected and nothing new is shared: those messages were sent to you in the first place. Your own blocks work exactly as before — block someone and their conversation goes.

This version also lets that safety program look at photos, which is a change from what this page promised before. Until 29 August 2026 photos attached to messages were never scanned on my server — they were stored as sent and looked at only when somebody reported one. That is no longer true and this page no longer says it. What it does is narrow, and the shape is the point: it looks at pictures only for the small number of accounts something else has already singled out, never at every upload, and never at a photo attached to a support ticket. What it is looking for is one account showing different people to different children — the way an adult most often gets a child's trust in an app like this, and something that has happened here. It cannot recognise a face and is not permitted to learn how: it answers simple questions about each picture (is there a real person in it or is it a game screenshot, roughly how old they look, is it sexual) and compares those answers between conversations. No faceprint is made, nothing measures anybody's features, and no picture is matched against a named person. It keeps a line about what it saw and a fingerprint of the file, never a copy of the picture, and where a picture may be child sexual abuse material it keeps not even that — only a note that a person must look. A voice message is still never touched. Sections 4, 9 and 11 moved with it.

This version adds a safety program that reads written messages and posts on my server, and that can hold an account's messages back on its own. Until now the only automatic reading of a message on the server was a word list checking one message at a time as it was sent, and the only thing that could hold an account back automatically was a count of how often it had done a small number of specific things. Both are still there. What is new is a program that reads whole conversations — both sides, plus public posts, replies and the note on a message request — a few times an hour, on a small number of accounts chosen because something about them stands out, looking for strangers approaching children. It reads writing only: not a photo, which is still never scanned on my server, and not a voice message, which nothing turns into words. It can hold an account's messages back for seven days, silently, and only when something independent — a report somebody filed, or your own phone's check — points the same way; everything else it finds is written down for me to read. Its reasoning is stored so a decision can be reviewed and undone, and it names the messages it was looking at rather than copying them, so deleting a message removes it from that record too. It runs on Cloudflare's own service, which is not a new company on this page (section 6), does not keep what it reads and does not use it to train anything. You are entitled to have a person look at any decision made about you this way, and section 4 says how. Sections 4, 6, 9 and 11 all moved with it.

This version narrows the age question to 13 and up, and adds Safe Mode for everybody below it. The list of ages on the setup screen used to start at 4; it now starts at 13, because the social side of the app is a 13+ product, and the button under it saying My age isn't listed leads to an explanation and to Safe Mode — a limited version of the app with the community, direct messages and news switched off, leaving the collection, the scanner, Rewards and your own profile. This collects less, not more: an account that takes that door is recorded as under 13 with no age number at all, where before it would have stored one, and every under-13 protection in section 4 applies to it. Nothing about an age switches a feature off by itself — Safe Mode is chosen, and a parent can undo it, or lock the same restrictions with a passcode, on the Parental Controls screen.

This version lets collectors send each other web addresses inside a conversation, and puts a warning in front of every one. Until now the app refused a link in every piece of text anybody could write. That has changed in one place only — a conversation both people already agreed to have — and nowhere else: a public post, a display name, a profile description, a trade listing, a group's name and the note attached to a message request all still refuse one. Tapping a link never opens it straight away: the app shows you the website's address on its own, says that a collector sent it and that nobody has checked where it goes, reminds you never to type a password into it and that no site gives away free V-Bucks, and offers to keep you here before it offers to take you there. Only an ordinary web address can be tapped at all — a link that would open another app, or one written to look like one website while going to another, stays plain text. Sprite Catch has no browser of its own, so following a link opens your phone's browser and leaves the app. None of this collects, stores or shares anything new about you: nothing about the visit comes back here, and the app tells nobody which links you followed.

This version adds a wishlist to the locker, and one notification that comes with it. Tapping a heart on a cosmetic stores which item you hearted and when, and once a day the app compares your hearted items with what is in Fortnite's item shop and sends you a single notification if any of them are there. Nothing is sent until you heart something, it is never more than one notification a day, and a switch in Settings turns it off without changing your wishlist. A wishlist is private on exactly the terms the locker already is: not on your profile, not on the shareable web page, and not visible to any other collector. The list of what is in the shop comes from the same public Fortnite community database the cosmetics catalogue does; it describes the game rather than any player, and nothing about you or what you hearted is sent to it, to Epic Games, or to anyone else.

This version adds a locker: a place to track which Fortnite cosmetics you own. It works exactly like the code checklist already did — you tick what you have, the app remembers it against your account so it survives a new phone, and it checks nothing, because it is not connected to your Fortnite account and cannot see it. A locker is private. It does not appear on your profile, it is not on the shareable web page, and no other collector can see it. From a future release there may be a setting that lets you choose to publish it; nothing is published unless you turn that on yourself. The list of cosmetics the app shows you comes from a public Fortnite community database that describes the game rather than any player, and nothing about you is sent to it, to Epic Games, or to anyone else.

This version grows the game on the Rewards screen into five games, and with them sixteen more leaderboards. Alongside the original — flying your character through a run of pipes — there are now four more, all drawn by the app out of its own artwork and the sprites you already collect. Nothing new is collected. What is kept for each of them is exactly what was already kept for the first: your best score and the date you set it, plus your best inside the current day, week and month, each rewritten only when you beat it, so the games you lose still record nothing. What is genuinely new is where a name can appear: each game keeps its own four leaderboards, twenty in all, on the same terms as before — inside the app only, fifty names each, and only for profiles that are public. A game's boards are its own and the games are never added up. One game a day is spotlit on the arcade screen, which is worked out from the date and nothing about you. Playing can still earn a profile decoration and still cannot be paid into. Sections 2, 4, 9 and 11 have been reworded throughout to say "the arcade" and "each game" where they used to name one game and four boards.

This version adds one small thing that is stored about you: a checklist of Fortnite's own codes. Fortnite gives out codes you type into its Admin Panel, and it does not tell you which ones you have already used — so the app now lists them and lets you tick them off, and the ticks are kept against your account so a new phone still has them. Only the ticks are stored, and only for codes the app has published: not the time you ticked one, not whether it worked, and nothing at all read from Fortnite or from your Epic account, which this app cannot read. Nobody else can see the list, it is deleted with your account, and ticking is optional — the codes are readable without ticking anything.

This version widens invites, removes a deadline, and adds one thing that is drawn at random. Nothing new is stored about you: it is still only who invited you, if anybody did, and still worked out from that how many people you have brought in. Three things change. There are more decorations to unlock, at more points along the way. The one-week deadline for entering somebody's code is gone — an account of any age can now credit the person who invited it, still only once and still never changeable afterwards — and there is a decoration for doing so, so the person who was invited gets something too. And one of the rewards is a box: it opens into a single decoration out of a published set, on the same terms as every other box in the app, which section 2 sets out — nothing about it costs money, nothing can be bought to change the chances, something you already hold is never drawn again, and the set and your real odds are shown before you open it. Everything the last version promised about invites otherwise still holds: your count is shown to you and to nobody else, nobody is told who invited them, an invite page names nobody, and nothing won this way can be traded or sold.

This version gives you a switch over something that has always been shown and never had one: when you were last using the app. Nothing new is collected. That time has been on public profiles and behind the trade board's "active this week" filter since trading launched; what changes is that a conversation now draws it as "Online" or as how long ago it was, accurate to the minute rather than to the hour, and that Show When I'm Active in Settings → Privacy & Safety turns the whole thing off. The switch is deliberately reciprocal — off means nobody is told about you and you are told about nobody — and it also removes you from that trade board filter, so it cannot be worked around. Accounts under 13 start with it off. Section 4 describes it in full, including the one thing switching it off does not do, which is stop the service noting when it last saw you.

This version changes what linking your Discord account does, and it narrows something the last version said absolutely. Finishing a link now gives your Sprite Catch account a profile decoration, sends you a direct message from the app's bot confirming it — carrying your display name and friend code, in your Discord inbox, under Discord's own retention — and gives your Discord account a Verified Collector role in the community server. The last version said the link was visible to me and to nobody else. That is still true of the link itself, and it is no longer true of the fact that you have one: a role is visible to everyone in the server, so anybody there can see that your Discord account has linked a Sprite Catch account — though not which one, and not your name, friend code or collection. Disconnecting removes the role; the decoration is yours to keep. Nothing else changes: no new data is collected on this side, the link is still one account each way, still only happens if you type the command, and the Disconnect button is still on the same page and the same screen that made it. Section 2 describes it in full and section 6 says what Discord receives.

This version also publishes one thing about you to the community server that used to stay inside the app: how your trading has gone. A linked Discord account is now also given a trader role — Bronze, Silver, Gold or Diamond — matching the standing the app already shows under your name, and that role is visible to everyone in the server. It is worked out from trades, ratings and reports that are already described in section 2, so nothing new is collected about you; what is new is who can see it, and the honest way to put that is that linking now carries your trading reputation from one place to the other. It is checked once a day, so it goes up and down with your record and comes off when you disconnect. Two limits are deliberate and worth having in writing: a warning on your record is never published to Discord — an account carrying one simply has no role — and nobody with no trades yet gets one either. The only thing stored on this side is which roles the server was last told to give you. If you would rather none of this were on Discord, disconnecting removes them and takes seconds; section 2 says where the button is.

The same version adds a season role, and one limit that applies to both. A linked account is also given a role for any past season whose Sprites it has mastered — the same achievement the app already shows you, and, unlike the trader role, kept once earned rather than re-checked against your collection. And neither role is given to a private profile. That limit is the point: section 4 promises a private profile keeps its collection and its record to yourself, and a Discord role is that information shown to a whole server, so linking Discord must not become a way to publish a collection you chose to keep private. A profile that goes private after the fact has both roles removed the next day.

This version adds group conversations, and the change worth reading is who your messages reach. A conversation can now have up to thirty-two people in it, so a message, a photo or a voice message you send to a group goes to everybody in it rather than to one collector. Alongside it I store the group's name and picture, who is in it, when each person joined, whether they have muted it and how far each has read. Anyone in a group can add other collectors to it; nobody can remove anybody else. Being added is still your choice — people you follow or already talk to can add you straight away and you can turn that off, while somebody you do not know always has to ask, and a group you join shows you nothing that was said before you arrived. Section 4 covers what is stored and section 9 what happens to it when you leave or delete your account.

This version adds the first thing the website has ever asked you for: an email address, so that you can be told when the Android app is released. A box on spritecatch.com and on app.spritecatch.com now takes an address, and what is kept beside it is which of the two pages you typed it on and the language that page was in — no account, no network address, and nothing linking it to a collection. It is used for one email, on release day, and your address is deleted as that email is sent. There is no newsletter and nothing to unsubscribe from afterwards; if the release slips or the email is never sent, the whole list is erased 30 days after the announced date regardless. It is not sold, it is not shared, and the only company that ever handles it is the one that already sends every other email this service sends. The box asks you to be 13 or older and, unlike everything else here, has no account behind it to check that — section 11 is blunt about what that does and does not mean. Section 2 describes it in full, section 9 gives the deadline, and you can have an address removed at any time by emailing me.

This version adds a game, and with it a few new things stored about you and a new place your name can appear. The Rewards screen now has a small arcade game in which the character you designed flies through a run of pipes. What is kept is your best score and the date you set it, plus your best inside the current day, week and month — each rewritten only when you beat it, so the games you lose record nothing, and the three shorter ones simply replaced when a new day, week or month starts. The new public surface is a set of four leaderboards of the fifty highest scores, shown inside the app, carrying the same name, character and decorations any collector row already shows, and only for profiles that are public. Playing can now earn a profile decoration — for reaching a published score, or for being first on one of the boards. There is no draw and no currency, nothing about the game costs money, and nothing that can be bought changes a score or what it earns; an earlier draft of this policy said nothing was won by playing, and that is no longer true. Section 2 describes what is stored, section 4 describes the leaderboards and who is on them, section 9 says how long it all lasts, and section 11 says how it applies to an account under 13.

This version adds one new thing that can be stored about you, and it only happens if you ask for it: a link between your Sprite Catch account and your Discord account. The community server now has a /link command that connects the two, so that the person asking a question there and the collector it is about are recognisably the same person. What is stored is the identifier Discord uses for your account, the username it had at the time, and when the link was made — nothing else about Discord, and nothing at all unless you type the command and finish the page or screen it opens. No other collector can see it, it is one account each way, and there is a Disconnect button on the same page that made it. Section 2 describes it in full, section 6 says what Discord and the two sign-in providers receive, and section 9 says how long it lasts. This also narrows something this page used to say absolutely: every page on spritecatch.com loaded nothing from any other company, and the linking page is the one exception — it loads Apple's and Google's sign-in code, because that is the only way either sign-in works in a browser. Doing the link inside the app loads neither.

This version says that deleting one of your own posts no longer reduces the number of reactions your profile has collected. That total is shown on your profile and is what one of the achievement badges counts, and it used to be worked out from the posts still on the feed — so tidying up an old post that people had reacted to quietly took the badge back, which is not what anybody deleting a post is asking for. It is now a running total that a deletion leaves alone. Nothing new is collected and nothing extra is kept: the post, its replies and the reactions themselves are still erased on exactly the terms in section 3, and what survives is a number you can already see on your own profile, holding nothing about the post and nothing about who reacted. It goes when your account does. A post I take down myself is not counted this way.

This version takes something back that this page used to promise: a photo you unsend is no longer deleted. Until today, taking a message back deleted any photo attached to it outright, while the words were kept on the server for moderation — and the page said so plainly. The photo is now kept on the same terms as the words: out of both apps, unreachable by either collector, readable only by me and only for the reasons in section 4. The reason for the change is the reason the words were always kept, applied honestly: when what somebody sends is a picture — a fake receipt, a photograph they should not have sent a child — deleting it on request destroyed the evidence for the very report that follows, and unsend became the thing to do immediately after doing something worth reporting. Nothing new is collected: the photo was already on the server, sent by you and seen by the person you sent it to, and this changes only whether it survives your taking the message back. Two things are worth being clear about. Photos unsent before today are gone and cannot be brought back. And a voice message is still deleted outright when you unsend it, with nothing kept, because recordings have a thirty-day life of their own (sections 4 and 9). If you do not want a photo you sent to exist on the server, deleting your account still removes it, as section 10 describes.

This version corrects what this page said about the Android app, which had fallen behind what the app actually does. Two places still described it as collection-only — no feed, no trades, no direct messages, no reputation, no reports — and one of them also said it had no Parental Controls screen. None of that has been true since the August 2026 parity work: the Android app has all of those, and it also sends usage analytics, stores an email address if you sign in with one, and can record a voice message. Nothing about what is collected changed with this edit — the collection had already been described in section 2, and the apps were already doing it. What changed is that section 4 and section 11 no longer tell an Android user that features they can see do not exist. The Google Play data disclosure was corrected on the same day to match.

This version also makes the age question compulsory, and asks it on Android for the first time. It was previously an iPhone-only question that could be left unanswered, which meant most accounts had no age on file — and the age is what sets an account's privacy defaults and decides which safety reminders it sees. It is now asked on both apps, it has to be answered before the app continues, and it is asked once of existing accounts that were never asked. Still a number and never a date of birth, still never shown to another collector, and answering it still takes no feature away (section 4).

This version adds three child-safety measures, and one of them stores something new. A public post whose writer says how old they are and asks strangers for a relationship is now kept out of the feed automatically — the writer still sees it in their own feed, nobody else does, and the fact that it was held is stored with the post so I can review it and put it back (section 3). The check the app already ran on your own phone as you send a message now recognises two more kinds of request — moving the conversation to another app, and meeting or calling — which are recorded for me to read but, unlike the first three, can never on their own hold an account's messages back (section 3). And the app now shows the safety rules before your first conversation and records on your account that you have read them, so that reinstalling does not ask you again (section 3). Separately, your phone now puts a short caution under a message you receive that asks for a picture of you, asks you to move to another app, or asks to meet; that reading happens entirely on your device and nothing about it is sent to me or stored anywhere.

Correction: the support arrangement with Discord described below never actually happened. In August 2026 this page said that volunteer moderators would help answer the support queue from a private staff channel on Discord, and that Discord would therefore handle some of what you wrote to support. It was disclosed in advance, as it should have been — and then it was never switched on. No ticket ever reached that channel, no moderator ever received anything about one, and no support content of any kind has ever reached Discord. The connection was removed from the app on 20 August 2026 without ever having carried anything. Earlier versions of this page said a residue of those tickets remained on Discord's systems; there is no such residue, because nothing was ever sent. Support has always been answered by me alone. The community Discord server is unrelated and unchanged: it was never part of the support queue, joining it has always been your own relationship with Discord, and section 6 still describes it under community links.

This version also corrects something about the website, and the correction is an admission. Until 20 August 2026 the pages at spritecatch.com loaded their two typefaces from Google's font service, which meant that opening one of those pages sent your IP address and your browser's description of itself to Google — a request this policy did not describe, on pages whose section 10 says there is nothing to opt out of. That was wrong of the pages, not of the policy, and it is fixed the right way round: the typefaces are now stored on and served from the website itself, so no page on spritecatch.com or app.spritecatch.com loads anything from a third party — no font, no script, no CDN beyond Cloudflare, which serves the site. Nothing about the apps changed, and what reaches Google from the app remains exactly what sections 2 and 6 describe: a sign-in you chose to start, and notifications on Android.

This version changes how signing in with Google works on Android, and adds a second piece of Google software to the app there. It adds no company, no new information about you and no new permission: Google was already listed in section 6 for this exact feature, and what it receives is unchanged. What changed is where you pick your account. Until now that happened on Google's own page in your browser on both phones, which meant no Google software ran in the app for sign-in. Google no longer supports that arrangement on Android, so from a future release the Android app shows you Google's own account chooser, drawn inside the app by Google software, the way most Android apps do. The reason this is written down rather than left as a detail is that the previous version of this policy said sign-in put no Google software in the app, and on Android that stops being true. It stays true on iPhone, where nothing about signing in changes. Still no Google analytics, no advertising SDK, no crash reporter and no advertising identifier, on either phone. Sections 4 and 6 describe it.

This version adds a new company to the list in section 6, for Android only: Google's notification service. Until now no Google software ran inside either app, and this policy said so. From a future release, an Android device that turns notifications on registers with Google's messaging service so that notifications can be delivered to it — the same arrangement iPhone has always had with Apple's, and for the same reason: there is no way to deliver a notification on either platform except through the company that makes it. What that costs is stated plainly rather than buried: Google's service creates an identifier for that installation of the app and holds it while notifications are on, and it receives the notifications themselves, which for a direct message includes the message. It does not receive your collection, and it is the messaging component only — no analytics, no advertising SDK, no crash reporter, no advertising identifier. Notifications stay off until you turn them on, turning them off ends it, and deleting your account asks Google to delete the installation identifier as well. Nothing changes on iPhone, and nothing changes for anyone who leaves Android notifications off. Sections 2 and 6 describe it.

This version adds two new things to what an account records: the country your requests come from, and the language you read and write the community in. The country is worked out from your internet address by the service that hosts the app — never anything finer than the country, with no location permission asked for and nothing read from your phone — and it exists so I can see which countries the app is used in and which languages are worth translating it into. It is written down the first time your account is seen and not updated afterwards, so it is where you started rather than where you are, and no other collector can see it. The language is a setting you choose, and from a future release it does two things with one choice: it labels the posts and trade listings you write, which other collectors can see, and it lets you narrow the feed, the trade board and the list of collectors who own a Sprite to one language — which also means your language decides whether you appear on somebody else's narrowed list. If you never choose one, the app uses the language it is already showing you and your feed keeps showing every language, which is what it does today. Sections 2, 4, 5, 8 and 9 describe both, and section 11 has been reworded so that what it tells parents stays exact.

This version says that deleting a post no longer erases it immediately. It disappears from the app for everyone the moment you delete it, exactly as before, but I keep a copy I alone can read for 90 days and it is then erased automatically. Before this change a deleted post was gone at once, which also destroyed the evidence behind any report about it — the posts that get taken down fastest are usually the ones a report is about. This is a change to how long something is kept, not to what is collected: nothing new is gathered, nothing new is shown to anyone, and no one but me can reach a deleted post. Sections 3 and 9 describe it. Deleting your account still erases your posts outright, without waiting out the 90 days.

This version corrects one sentence about what a second phone shows you. It used to say that signing in on a new phone showed who you had been talking to but nothing that was said. The last message in each conversation was always an exception — the list of conversations has always shown a preview of it — and from a future release the app draws that message in the conversation too, instead of an empty screen. Nothing new is stored or sent to do it: it is the same message, already on the phone, drawn where you would look for it. Everything older is unchanged and stays on the device that received it. Section 4 has the full description.

This version says the app now asks for the microphone, and that it keeps recordings of your voice for a while. From a future release you can send a voice message in a conversation instead of typing one — which is why the app asks for the microphone for the first time. It is described in sections 2, 3 and 4. Two things about it are new rather than restatements of what already happens to a photo. Your voice is a new kind of thing to be holding, so it is held differently: a sent recording is deleted from my server after 30 days, which is the only clock of its kind on this page and is much shorter than the life of a written message. And nothing transcribes it — no machine of mine turns a voice message into words and none of anyone else's does either, which is also why a recording is not screened for banned content the way a written message is; it is reviewed only if somebody reports it. Recording only ever runs while you are holding the record button, nothing is sent until you let go and choose to send it, and refusing the microphone leaves everything else working exactly as before.

This version also adds an official mark beside a few names. From a future release a small number of accounts — mine, the moderators', the app's own, and collectors the team vouches for — show a mark next to the name so you can tell them from somebody imitating them. It is described in section 4. Nothing new is collected for it: it is something I set by hand on an account, not anything gathered about the person holding it, and it is the one thing beside a name that an account cannot give itself. It is shown inside the app only, not on the shareable web page.

This version says the camera has a second use, and that this one sends the picture. From a future release, claiming a reward that a person checks lets you photograph your proof inside the app rather than switching to your camera's own app first — which is what you need when the thing you are proving is on a television. It is described in sections 2 and 4. It is here because this page said, accurately until now, that scanning was the app's only use of the camera and that camera photos are never sent anywhere. The scanner has not changed and still never uploads or saves a frame. What is new is one picture, taken only when you ask for it, attached only to a message you send, going to the same people and kept under the same rules as a photo you pick from your library. No new information is kept about you. (The same release also asks for the photo library for the first time, for a different reason — the entry below.)

This version says the app now asks to see your recent photos. From a future release, attaching a picture to a message shows the most recent ones on your phone in a strip, so you can pick a screenshot without hunting through your library — which is why the app asks for photo access for the first time. It is described in section 4. It is here because this page and the information for parents both said the app never asks for your photo library, and that is no longer true. Nothing is collected by it. The strip is drawn on your phone from your own pictures; the app reads only the one you tap, sends nothing until you send it, and never adds anything to your library or removes anything from it. You can refuse and still attach photos — the picker that was always there is one tap away — and iOS also lets you share selected photos only, which the app handles normally.

This version describes a reward that arrives as a box, and it collects nothing new. From a future release, a reward a person has checked and given you can arrive as a box you open, which reveals one decoration out of a published set rather than the same one for everybody. It is described in section 2. It is here because the page said, accurately until now, that exactly one thing in the app was drawn at random — that sentence would otherwise have become untrue. No new information is kept about you: which decorations you own was already recorded and already private, and this adds only which box gave you one. Nothing about it costs money, nothing can be bought to change the odds, the whole set and your real chances are shown before you open it, and nothing won can be traded or sold.

This version says that a notification about a direct message now carries the message. From a future release, the notification the other person's phone receives contains what you wrote, instead of a shortened preview of it. The reason is speed: their app can put your message straight into the conversation, so tapping the notification opens onto your words rather than onto a wait while it goes and asks what they were. What changes for you is who handles the text on the way: it passes through Apple's push service, which already carried the preview and the sender's name, and now carries the message itself. It is described in sections 4 and 6. Nothing new is kept about you — the message was already stored, already private from other users, and is not kept by anyone new; a notification is delivered and not filed. Turning notifications off stops it entirely, and a message too long to fit a notification is fetched the old way.

This version also says that an account's photos can stop being kept at all. The moderation measures described above all worked the same way: the thing was stored and then withheld from everyone else. From today there is one that goes the other way — for an account whose pictures are the problem, what it uploads is discarded rather than stored, in messages and on support tickets alike. (The part about support tickets changed on 30 August 2026 — see the entry at the top of this section.) It is strictly less of your data kept, it changes nothing for anybody it has not been applied to, and like the others it is not announced to the account it applies to. Ask support if you think it has been applied to you.

This version says that a refunded decoration is taken back, because from today it is. Until now, if you bought a decoration and Apple refunded you, the decoration stayed on your profile — not as a kindness, but because nothing here was listening for the refund. Apple offers a way to be told, it is now switched on, and the earlier wording — that a refund was between you and Apple and that I was not part of that conversation — was about to stop being the whole truth. So: Apple still decides refunds and I still cannot grant or refuse one, and when it grants one, the decoration is removed from your account and the purchase record is marked refunded. The same applies when a decoration reached you through Family Sharing and that sharing ends. Nothing else about your account is affected, nobody is told, and you can buy it again if you want it back. (Superseded on 1 September 2026: buying was removed altogether, so there is nothing left to refund and nothing listening for one. No refund was ever processed, because nothing was ever sold.) What this adds to what is held is one thing, described in section 2: Apple's message about the refund, which carries a reference for the transaction and nothing about your name, your card or how you paid, kept with the purchase record and deleted with it (section 9). If you have never bought a decoration, none of this paragraph applies to you.

This version adds a safety check that runs on your own phone. From a future release, the app can recognise as you send that a message asks a stranger their age, whether they are a girl or a boy, or for a picture of themselves — and tells the service only which of those three it was and which conversation it happened in. It is described in section 3, and what it does not do is the part worth reading. The message is never sent anywhere for this and is never stored for it; there is no score, nothing is learned about how you write, and a message matching none of the three — nearly everything anybody sends — leaves no record at all. Nothing new is shared with anyone: no new company, no new service, and nothing about this leaves the app and my own server. It cannot refuse to send a message. Asking somebody their age is ordinary and counts for nothing by itself; only the same questions put to several different people can hold an account's messages back, for 24 hours, and a person reviews every one of those afterwards and can undo it. It exists because children use this app, and because the pattern it looks for is one an automatic word filter cannot see.

This version adds invites, and with them the first record of a link between two accounts. You can share your friend code, and unlock decorations as friends join — so the service now keeps who invited you, if anybody did, and works out from that how many people you have brought in. It is described in section 2, and the shape of it is the part worth reading. Your invite count is shown to you and to nobody else — not on your profile, not on the shareable web page in section 4, and not to anyone I share information with; nobody is told that you invited them, and nobody gets a list of who they invited. Only entering a code records anything: sharing your own code, and other people opening your invite link, write nothing, and a code can only be entered in the first week of a new account. The link goes when either account does — yours, or the account of whoever invited you. An invite link is a page that names nobody: it carries a friend code and an install button and says nothing about the person who sent it. Nothing here can be bought, nothing about it is random, and nothing won this way can be traded or sold.

This version starts counting visits to the web version at app.spritecatch.com. Until now that side of Sprite Catch was measured by nothing at all, so I had no way of telling whether anybody used it. It now records that a visit happened, which screen it landed on, the language and the country — described in section 2 — and the change is worth reading for what it does not do. It still sets no cookie and still stores nothing in your browser, so the promise in section 3 that nothing there identifies you is unchanged. So that repeat page loads are not counted as separate people, a visit is filed under a scrambled stand-in worked out from your IP address, your browser's description of itself and today's date; because the date is part of it, that stand-in is different tomorrow, which is what stops it being a way to follow anyone. Nothing about your collection is in it, no address is recorded — only a category of screen — and no new company receives anything: it is the same server running the same site. There is no off switch on the web version because there is nothing there tied to you to switch off, and the app's Share Usage Data setting is untouched. This changes nothing about the iPhone or Android apps, which count what they always counted, on the same terms and with the same switch.

This version adds a third moderation measure, alongside the two already in section 3. Reporting could already be withdrawn from an account that abused it, and posting from an account that kept posting abuse; messaging can now be withdrawn the same way, for an account that keeps sending harassment in private. It works exactly like the posting one: their requests and messages are still written and still shown back to them in their own copy of the conversation, they are simply delivered to nobody and notified to nobody. This changes nothing about what is collected — the messages were already stored and already readable by me for moderation, as section 3 has always said — and it gives no new information to anyone. It exists because the automatic screen catches banned words and cannot catch someone who insults people using ordinary ones, and because the alternative, telling the account it has been stopped, is how you teach somebody to start again under a new name. Like the other two it is not announced to the account it applies to, it is recorded so it can be reviewed and undone, and support will confirm it and lift it if I got it wrong.

This version also lets the oldest of those three measures be applied automatically. Withdrawing an account's ability to file reports was always something I did by hand, after noticing it; it can now also happen on its own when an account files far more in a day than anyone reporting a real problem ever does. The threshold comes from what people actually do — nearly nine in ten collectors who report anything report exactly one thing that day, and the level that triggers this is well above anything I have seen from someone with a genuine complaint. Nothing new is collected and no new company is involved; what changes is that the decision can be reached without me. It is recorded like any other, a person reviews it, and support will lift it if it caught you wrongly.

This version also lets you take back a scam mark you left on someone. Marking somebody as a scammer puts a public mark on their profile with your name on it, and until now the only way out of one you regretted was to write to support and ask me to remove it. You can now undo your own from their profile, at any time — it comes off, it stops counting against them, and the report filed with it is withdrawn. Nothing new is collected for it, and it reaches only marks you left yourself.

This version also says out loud that a public collection includes what you have mastered. Other collectors could already see every sprite you have, and a count of how many of them you had mastered; from this version they can see which ones, on your profile and in a conversation with you, as a comparison against their own collection. Nothing new is collected — mastery is something you were already recording, and the count was already public — and it goes no further than the app: it is not on the shareable web page, and going private removes it with the rest of your collection. Which sprites you marked as needing a rebuy is still shown to nobody.

This version adds a third way to sign in: Sign in with Google. It sits alongside Sign in with Apple and the email-and-password way in, and it is useful for the simple reason that many phones are already signed in to Google, which makes it one tap. Nothing is being taken away: Sign in with Apple has not changed and is still offered first, email and password still work, and collecting as a guest with no account at all still needs nothing. What it adds to this policy is one new company — Google LLC, now listed in section 6 — and one new source for something already described in section 2: your email address, which Google shows you before it shares it and which the app keeps only if Google confirms the address is yours. The identifier Google returns for your account is described under Account information in the same section. Three things are worth reading plainly. Sign-in adds no advertising identifier and no tracking prompt of its own — the app's one tracking request is the iOS permission described in section 2, which nothing reads and which signing in neither raises nor changes. (Two later changes each added a Google component, both on Android only and neither on iPhone: the notification service, described at the top of this section, and the software that draws the account chooser for Sign in with Google. On iPhone sign-in still happens on Google's own page in your browser and puts no Google software in the app. There is still no third-party analytics, advertising or crash software in either app.) Google learns that you signed in to Sprite Catch, because it is the one showing you the sign-in screen, and it keeps that under its own privacy policy rather than mine. And nothing else goes to Google — not your collection, not your posts, not your direct messages, not what you do in the app. Signing in with Google is optional and required for nothing: if you never use it, nothing in this paragraph ever applies to you. It is dated from today because it cannot reach you before you have read it — no version of the app you can install right now offers it, and it needs a future release.

This version adds a daily reward, and with it a small record of when you claim one. An upcoming release offers a reward for coming back on consecutive days, so the service now keeps how many days in a row you have claimed one, your longest run, and the date of the last claim. It is described in section 2. Three things are worth reading. Opening the app records nothing — it is claiming the reward that writes anything down, so a day you looked at the app and did not claim leaves no trace. Your streak is not shown to other collectors, is not on the shareable web page, and goes to nobody I share information with. And nothing about it costs money — the first six days unlock fixed, published decorations and every seventh draws one prize from a small pool, with the odds shown in the app, nothing purchasable to change them, and no prize ever drawn twice. The release also adds optional reminders about an unclaimed reward; those are set by your phone rather than sent from a server, collect nothing, and are described in section 3.

This version announced a company that would handle some of what you write to support — and it never came to pass. The plan was for a small number of trusted volunteer moderators to help answer the queue from a private staff channel on Discord. It is kept in this log because it was announced here and honesty about a change includes the ones that were called off: it was never switched on, and no support ticket ever reached Discord. See the correction at the top of this section. Every support ticket has always come to one person — me.

This version explains what unsending a message does and does not do. (The part about the photo changed on 24 August 2026 — see the entry at the top of this section.) An upcoming release lets you take back a message you have already sent: it leaves both apps, and a photo attached to it is deleted. The text is not deleted — it stays on the server, where neither of you can read it and I still can, because a message that vanishes completely is a message a scammer can take back the moment they are reported. No new information is collected; this is a new thing you can do, described honestly rather than sold as an erasure it is not.

This version says where your conversations are kept. (The part about a new phone changed on 6 September 2026 — see the entry at the top of this section.) Messages and the photos in them are now saved on the phone that received them and read from there, instead of being fetched from the server every time you open a chat. Nothing new is collected and nothing is kept for longer on the server — the change is about which copy the app reads, and it exists so the app asks the server for a conversation far less often. Two things follow, and both are in section 4: signing in on a new phone shows your conversations but not what was said before you got there, and there is now a Storage screen in Settings showing what is held on that phone and deleting it on request.

This version changes how the automatic support reply works, and says so because the earlier wording no longer describes it. Support is one person, and the same handful of questions arrive over and over — how to unfollow somebody, how to get a profile frame, how to move a collection to a new phone. Those get an answer straight away. Until now that answer was written by an artificial intelligence system running on the same servers as the rest of the service; that has been removed, and what replaced it is a list of phrases and a list of answers, both written by me. Nothing you write to support is now read by any such system at all. Two things follow that are worth reading. A ticket the automatic reply answers is closed, so a follow-up means opening a new ticket rather than writing again in the same thread — the reply itself says so, and section 4 explains it. And more tickets now reach me rather than being answered automatically: anything the phrases do not cover, and anything mentioning money, a refund, a ban or your own account, waits for a person. Nothing new is collected because of any of this, and the short record of what the automatic reply did with a ticket (section 9) is unchanged.

This version adds something you can buy. Profile decorations — an effect on your name, a frame around your picture, a background behind your posts, a look for your profile card — can now be bought through the App Store, so the sentence saying the app had no in-app purchases is gone. Nothing else changed about what the app does: every feature is still free, nothing has been taken away or put behind a price, and the same decorations can still be given out or earned by answering a questionnaire. What is new for this policy is one record — that this account bought that decoration — described in section 2 under Buying a decoration, kept for as long as the account exists (section 9) and relied on to give you the thing you paid for (section 8). Apple takes the payment and I never see your card, your billing address or the name on it. It is dated from today because it cannot reach you before you have read it: no version of the app you can install right now can sell you anything at all, buying needs a future release, and even then nothing is collected unless you choose to buy something — if you never do, nothing in this paragraph ever applies to you.

This version adds a second way to sign in: an email address and a password. Until now the only address the app could ever hold was one Apple offered on your behalf. Now you can type one yourself, confirm it with a short code, and choose a password — which is useful if you would rather not use your Apple ID, or if you are coming back on a phone that is not the one you started on. Sign in with Apple has not changed, is still offered first, and is still the quickest way in; collecting as a guest with no account at all works exactly as it always has.

What that adds to this policy is described under Contact information in section 2: an address you typed, a password kept only as a one-way scrambled version that cannot be turned back into what you typed, a sign-in code that stops working within minutes, and a short-lived record of recent attempts holding a scrambled, shortened form of your network address so that nobody can use the code screen to flood a stranger's inbox. Section 9 says how long each of those lasts, section 12 covers how the password is protected, and section 6 notes that the emails go out through Cloudflare, which already runs everything else — no new company is involved. Signing in this way is refused for anyone whose age check says under 13, since it cannot work without an address, and section 11 says so.

The same version opens reading to people who are not signed in. The community feed and public profiles used to require an account to view — not because they were private, but because every request needed one. They no longer do, so somebody can read the feed and look at a public profile before deciding whether to sign up, and a person who signs out can still read. Nothing new is published by this: the same posts and the same public profiles, seen by the same kind of stranger, and a private profile is still private. What changed is that a reader no longer has to have an account, which is worth saying plainly because "other collectors" used to imply one. Everything that writes — posting, replying, reacting, following, messaging, trading — still requires signing in, and nothing about a signed-out reader is recorded beyond the ordinary request metadata in section 2.

This is a material change, and it is dated from today because it cannot reach you before you have read it: no version of the app you can install right now offers this way of signing in at all, so nothing is collected under it until the release that adds the screen arrives. Nobody is signed up to anything by this page changing. Continuing to use the app means you accept the updated policy.

Alongside it comes a control rather than any collection: from the same future release you can log out without deleting anything. Until now the only way off an account inside the app was to delete it, which is a very large answer to "not on this phone, thanks". Logging out ends the session and the notifications on that device and changes nothing else — your account, collection, profile and conversations are as you left them when you sign back in. It asks what to do with the sprites marked on that phone, and one consequence of keeping them is worth stating plainly rather than leaving to be discovered: sprites left on a phone join the collection of whichever account signs in next on it, so clearing them is the right answer if you are handing the phone on. Sections 9 and 10 describe it.

This version changes what your profile picture is. Until now it was one of the sprites you had caught. From a future release it is a small character you design — its colour, the scene behind it, and whether it has hair, glasses or facial hair — and that choice is stored with the rest of your profile and shown to other collectors wherever the sprite used to be. It is optional: leave it alone and you get the same standard character as everybody else. Nothing new is collected beyond the choice itself, there is no new recipient, and it replaces the old picture rather than adding to it.

Two things it takes away, which is the part worth stating. Your shareable web page at spritecatch.com/u/<your friend code> no longer shows your profile picture at all — it draws the app's mascot for everybody — and neither does the sample feed on app.spritecatch.com. Notifications sent to other people about something you did no longer carry a picture of you either. So this release publishes less about you outside the app than the one before it, not more.

It is dated from today for the reason the changes below are: no version of the app you can install right now can store one of these characters, so nothing is collected under it until the release that adds the screen arrives. Alongside it, some profile decorations become free for everyone rather than bought or earned — a change to what things cost, not to what is collected, and nothing anybody has already paid for is affected.

This version added the ability for some questionnaire answers to be sold. It has never been used, and nothing has ever been sold — see the correction at the top of this section. It is worth reading section 2 rather than this summary, but in short — the app can offer you a questionnaire about the games you play, and such a questionnaire would tell you before you start that its answers are sold to game companies as market research, and would not open until you agree. Nothing is sold unless you did that, and nobody ever has. It is never offered to an account the app has established is under 13, or one whose age it was never told. The answers travel either as totals with nobody identifiable in them, or — only where you separately agreed and allowed tracking — as one record under a made-up reference carrying no name, no friend code, no email address and nothing about your collection. There is a switch in Settings → Privacy & Safety that turns the whole thing off for good, and section 10 explains how to exercise the same right by email. (Superseded on 31 August 2026: the ability was removed from the app and the server without ever being used, and the switch went with it because there is no longer anything for it to turn off — see the entry at the top of this section.)

Two claims this policy used to make have gone with it, and it would be dishonest to let them fade out quietly: this app previously said it sold nothing, and that it showed no App Tracking Transparency prompt because it did not track you. Both were true when written. Neither is true now. The prompt appears before a questionnaire of the second kind above; from 10 August 2026 it can also be answered on its own, at any time, from Settings → Privacy & Safety → Tracking; and from 13 August 2026 the app puts the question to you while you are setting it up, so it is asked and answered before anything could apply it. Declining it costs you nothing either way: you can still answer, you still get the decoration, and your answers are then only ever counted in totals. Nothing else in the app has started tracking you, there is still no advertising identifier in use, no ad network, and no third-party analytics. (Partly superseded on 31 August 2026: the questionnaire this prompt existed for was removed without ever being used. The prompt itself was kept, and is still shown in the two places described above — but nothing in the app now tracks anybody or reads the answer, so of the two claims retired here the first, "it sold nothing", is true again as a plain statement of fact, while the second stands: the prompt is still there.)

This change takes effect on the date at the top of the page, and nothing is collected under it before the app release that carries the consent screen reaches the App Store — a build without that screen cannot offer one of these questionnaires at all.

This version is a material change: it adds the usage information described in section 2 and the email address described under Contact information. Both arrive with a future app release — neither is collected by any version of the app you can install before the effective date above — and both come with a switch in Settings. Continuing to use the app after the effective date means you accept the updated policy. This version also changes section 9 in three ways: it notes the anonymous record kept when an account is deleted — a date and nothing more; it explains that deleting an account now hides it immediately and erases it within 30 days rather than in the same instant; and it describes the scrambled fingerprint kept, for a year and only for an account erased while carrying a scam warning or suspension, so that a warned collector cannot start over by deleting and signing up again. Section 9 also now says that the same warning carries to a new account started on the same phone while the warned account still exists — which stores nothing further, is limited to warnings and suspensions a person decided on, and can be lifted through Support by anyone caught by it because they share a device.

This version also adds one thing you can send: from a future release a support message can carry a photo, usually a screenshot of the problem being reported. It is optional, it goes only to whoever answers your ticket, it is never published, and it is deleted with the account — sections 2, 4 and 9 describe it, and the paragraph at the top of this section says who that is now. Nothing is collected from your photo library unless you pick a picture and send it.

This version also records a change to who the community features are open to, which collects nothing new but changes when the information in section 2 starts to exist. From a future release, posting, replying, reacting, following, messaging and posting a want require you to sign in with Apple; the collection tracker is unchanged and still needs no account at all. An install already using the app keeps the community features for a week after it updates, so nobody loses access without notice. In privacy terms this means less is collected, not more: a collector who never signs in now has no posts, replies, follows, conversations or wants stored for them.

It also adds one control rather than any collection: you can now delete a conversation, which ends your copy of it and leaves the other collector's alone. Sections 4 and 9 describe what that does and does not remove.

It changes how a public profile is found rather than what is stored about it: collectors can now search for a public profile by display name, Fortnite tag or friend code, and search the text of recent posts. Nothing new is collected, and nothing becomes visible that a public profile did not already show — search only makes it reachable by typing rather than by browsing. A private profile is never returned by a search, and direct messages are not searchable at all.

This version also adds profile personalization, which is new collection and is why the effective date above has moved. Three things arrive with it, all optional and all described in section 2: a profile description you can write, which other collectors read inside the app and which is deliberately kept off the shareable web page; answers you choose to give when you complete an in-app questionnaire, which are stored as written and which I read; and a record of which reward offers you completed and which decorations your account holds and shows. None of it is collected before the effective date above, and none of it exists for you unless you write a description or complete an offer. Two things worth being explicit about: a completed offer is recorded against your account, unlike a promo-card tap, which stays an anonymous counter and is unchanged; and none of this involves uploading a picture — the decorations are artwork I made, and that release still asked for no access to your photo library.

It also records one change to section 2. An under-13 result used to switch the community feed, trades, other profiles and messaging off by itself; it no longer does, and those features are now turned off only by a person on the Parental Controls screen. What an under-13 result still does is narrower and entirely about data: no usage information is collected, no email address is kept, and the profile starts private. Nothing new is collected by that change. Section 11 has been corrected to match it — it still described the old automatic behaviour.

One further change to section 2 is new collection, and arrives with the same future release. Where the iPhone app asks how old you are — which it does only when Apple's age service declines to answer, and now during setup rather than afterwards — the age you give is kept with your account instead of being used once and discarded. An earlier version of this policy said your exact age was never stored; that is no longer true, and the sentence has been removed rather than quietly softened. What has not changed: your date of birth is still never asked for and never stored, Apple still does not reveal a birthday to the app, and your age is shown to no other collector anywhere. It is erased with your account like everything else in section 9.

This version adds a way of earning a decoration that involves a person reading a picture. From a future release, some rewards are claimed rather than completed: you do something outside the app, send a screenshot of it through Support, and I look at it and hand the decoration over. This uses the support conversation and the support photo already described in section 2 rather than adding anything new — no new upload, no access to your photo library beyond the picture you picked, and nobody new receives anything. What is new is a note of which reward a conversation is claiming, so it can be given once. Sections 2, 4 and 9 describe it, and it collects nothing for anyone who does not claim. It is worth being blunt about one thing: a screenshot of another game may carry your name in that game, so send the part that shows what you did and nothing more. Nothing you send is passed to Epic Games, and claiming a reward makes no call to them at all.

This version adds one more control and no collection at all. From a future release you can delete a request to chat that you sent, once it has been answered or has gone quiet, out of the list the app keeps of them. It is worth saying plainly what it does and does not do, because the word "delete" means different things to the two people involved: it clears your copy of that list, and where the request was never answered it takes the ask back from the other collector too, so it cannot be accepted afterwards. What it does not touch is a conversation — a request somebody accepted leaves the chat it opened where it is, for both of you — and the record that you sent the request stays on the server. That record is not kept to hold anything over you — it is the count that stops one person being asked to chat over and over, and it is what makes a "not again today" stick — so a delete that took it away would undo both. One consequence follows from taking the ask back: the same collector cannot be asked again for a day. Nothing new is collected and nothing is kept for longer. Sections 4 and 10 describe it.

This version adds a warning and no collection whatever. From a future release, a photo somebody sends you in a conversation can arrive covered, with a note that it may contain nudity, until you choose to see it — and on a phone with Communication Safety switched on in Screen Time, the app also asks before a photo like that is sent. The check behind it is your iPhone's, not mine. It runs on your device, it is switched off unless you or a parent switched it on, no photo is sent anywhere for it, and its answer never reaches me — I am not told that a photo was covered, and not told if somebody looked. Apple requires that of any app using the check, and this page now says so in section 3. Nothing new is collected, nothing extra is kept, and what is stored about a photo and who can read it are unchanged (section 4).

14. Contact

Mateo Duran — Uruguay
contact@spritecatch.com