The short version: you can play Little Stone Museum without an account, and then nothing leaves your phone unless you choose to send a graphics report. If you sign in with Google or Apple, we store an identifier for your Google or Apple account, the nickname you pick, a copy of your save and your best finds for the world records. We never receive your email address or your name. The game can show an ad, but only when you tap a button to watch one for a reward; Google shows it, and in the EU, the UK and Switzerland Google asks for your consent first. The Full Game purchase removes the ads; Google Play or the App Store handles the payment. There is no analytics and there are no cookies. You can delete your account from inside the game.
Little Stone Museum is developed and published under the name 4Theory Games. 4Theory Games is a trading name, not a registered company. For data protection law (the GDPR), the controller of the data on this page is Stefano Gandiglio, Via Castellamonte 32, 10010 Banchette (TO), Italy. You can reach us at support@4theorygames.com.
This policy covers the Little Stone Museum app and the pages under 4theorygames.com/stonemuseum. The rest of 4theorygames.com has its own policy.
Signing in is optional. As a guest, your game is saved only in the app's own storage on your phone. We receive nothing about you, unless you choose to send a graphics report (below).
Your Google identifier. Sign-in happens on Google's own
page in your browser. We ask Google only for the openid
permission, so the one thing Google gives us is a stable identifier for
your account (the "subject" id). It lets us recognise you on your next
sign-in and on a new phone. We do not receive your email address, your
name or your picture. Google handles your Google account as an independent
controller under the
Google Privacy Policy.
Your Apple identifier. On iPhone and iPad you can sign in with Apple instead, on Apple's own sign-in sheet. We ask Apple for no name and no email address, so the one thing Apple gives us is a stable identifier for your account (the "subject" id), used in the same way as the Google one. Apple handles your Apple Account as an independent controller under the Apple Privacy Policy. With the identifier, Apple also gives us a sign-in token for this game. We use it for one thing only: when you delete your account, we send it back to Apple, so that Apple ends the game's Sign in with Apple link to your Apple Account. It is deleted with the account.
Sign-in session. After sign-in, the server gives the app a random session token so you stay signed in. The token is stored on your phone; our server keeps only a one-way hash of it. During sign-in the server also keeps a one-time code for up to 5 minutes, to hand the session to the app.
Nickname. You get a nickname such as "Collector1234". Right after your first sign-in you can pick your own, once; it cannot change after that. Your nickname is public: it shows on the world records next to your finds. Please do not use your real name or anything that identifies you.
To keep the records fit for all ages, our server checks every nickname: first against a list of rude words, then with Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. Anthropic gets the nickname alone, with no account identifier and nothing else about you. If a nickname turns out to be rude, even some time after you picked it, we replace it with a new name such as "Collector1234" and the game asks you to pick another. We keep a note of the old nickname and the reason while your account exists, so that we can undo a mistake.
Cloud save. A copy of your game progress (coins, the stones in your tray and museum, upgrades, requests and expedition progress), and the copy before it, so you can continue on another phone and recover your game.
World records. For each stone colour and each special feature (twin, inclusion, star), your best find by value and by weight: the details of the stone (kind, colour, weight, condition, cut and grade) and the date. The best finds of all players are shown to everyone, with the finder's nickname.
Server logs. Like almost every server, ours keeps standard access logs, which include the IP address a request came from. We use them only to run and protect the server and never join them with the data above.
Our legal basis for the account, the cloud save and the records is the performance of our agreement with you (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR): it is the service you sign in for. For server logs, for removing accounts that cheat from the world records, and for checking nicknames, it is our legitimate interest in running the game safely and fairly (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).
Some phones cannot draw the stones in full detail. When the game finds this, it switches to plainer stones and asks if you want to send us a report. Nothing is sent unless you tap Send. The report holds your phone's model, its graphics chip and driver, the system version and the game version. It holds no account, nickname or save, and we do not store it with your IP address. We use it only to fix the game on those phones. Our legal basis is your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR).
The game never shows an ad by itself. Three buttons offer a reward for watching one: the welcome-back bonus, the lucky lamp and one more daily crate. The ad plays only after you tap one of them. Google AdMob chooses and shows the ad. We ask Google for ads suitable for all ages.
To show and count the ad, Google receives data from your phone, such as the advertising ID, the IP address, the phone model and system, and how you interact with the ad. Google handles this data as an independent controller under its own policy: how Google uses data in ads. We receive only totals from AdMob (how many ads were shown and what they earned), never data about you.
In the EU, the UK and Switzerland, Google's consent form asks before the first ad whether Google may use your data for personalized ads. Without your consent, Google can show only ads that are not personalized. You can change your choice at any time in Settings, under "Ad privacy choices". The legal basis is your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR). You can also reset or delete your advertising ID in your phone's settings.
On iPhone and iPad the game never asks to track you, so Google does not receive the advertising ID there.
The Full Game is a one-time purchase on Google Play, or on the App Store on iPhone and iPad. It removes the ads and makes each reward one tap.
On Android, Google Play handles the payment, refunds and your purchase history under the Google Payments privacy notice. We receive no card or payment data. When the game starts, it asks Google Play whether your Google account owns the Full Game. That answer stays on your phone; we do not store it on our server. In the Google Play Console we can see the orders for the game (order number, date, price, country and the buyer's email address), because Google shows them to every seller; we use them only to answer support requests and refunds.
On iPhone and iPad, Apple handles the payment, refunds and your purchase history under the Apple Privacy Policy. We receive no card or payment data, and Apple does not tell us who bought. The game asks the App Store whether your Apple Account owns the Full Game; that answer stays on your phone.
Your settings (sound, music, language, vibration) are stored only on your phone and never leave it. As a guest, so is your save.
Everything above is stored on a server we rent from OVH, in a data centre in the European Union. OVH is our hosting provider (a processor in GDPR terms) and does not use the data for anything of its own.
The one exception is the nickname check above. Anthropic, also a processor, reads each nickname on its servers in the United States. It does not train its models on it and keeps it only for a limited time (see Anthropic's privacy policy). The transfer is covered by the EU Standard Contractual Clauses in Anthropic's data processing terms. We do not sell your data or share it with anyone else.
You can delete your account yourself in the game: Settings > Account > Delete account. Everything listed above is deleted at once, and your finds leave the world records. The steps are also on the account deletion page.
Under the GDPR you can also ask us for a copy of your data (we send it as a JSON file), ask us to correct or delete it, or object to how we use it. Email support@4theorygames.com with your nickname. We will ask you to prove the account is yours before we act, and we answer within a month.
If you think we handle your data unlawfully, you can complain to a data protection authority. Ours is the Italian Garante per la protezione dei dati personali (garanteprivacy.it); you can also contact the authority of your own country.
If the game changes in a way that touches this policy (for example, if ads or in-game purchases are added), we will update this page and the date at the top before that version of the game is released.