1. About Kanzi
Kanzi is a jigsaw-puzzle application featuring generated editorial illustrations and stories about places, landscapes, crafts and cultural traditions across Africa. The app does not require an account and does not ask for a name, email address, contact list, precise location, photo-library, microphone or camera access.
This policy explains how Bencode Studio ("we", "us") handles information when you use Kanzi.
2. Information kept on your device
Kanzi stores puzzle progress, completed puzzles, elapsed play time, earned Puzzle Tokens, ad-unlocked images, onboarding state, language and accessibility/game settings locally on your device. It also caches the last valid remote-content catalog and artwork you choose to download. We use this information to save and restore your experience and make downloaded puzzles available offline. It is not uploaded to a Kanzi gameplay account or cloud-sync service.
Your own photos
If you choose to make a puzzle from one of your photos, your device's photo picker gives Kanzi only the photo you select; Kanzi cannot see the rest of your library. Kanzi saves a resized copy inside the app, without the original's location or camera details, and never uploads it. Removing the photo puzzle in Kanzi, or deleting Kanzi's data, deletes that copy. Your original photo is never changed.
Your phone's own backup
Kanzi has no account and no cloud storage of its own, and we never receive your progress. So that progress can move with you to a new phone, it is included in your device's own backup:
- Android: only Kanzi's progress database and your photo puzzles are included in Android's backup to your Google account, and only when that backup is end-to-end encrypted with your screen lock. Google consent choices, advertising or device identifiers, caches and downloaded artwork are excluded.
- iPhone and iPad: Kanzi's progress and your photo puzzles are included in your iCloud device backup. Caches and downloaded artwork are excluded.
These backups are made, stored and controlled by Apple or Google under your account and settings; we cannot read them. You can turn them off for Kanzi in your device's backup settings. You can also export or restore a Kanzi backup file yourself from Settings; that file never contains your photos.
Settings → Reset app data clears gameplay progress, album records, photo puzzles, Puzzle Tokens, streaks and settings. The operating system manages cached downloaded artwork; it may remain until the system evicts it or you uninstall the app. Uninstalling removes Kanzi's app data from the device, subject to the platform's backup and restore behavior.
3. Advertisements and consent
Free players may see a banner advertisement in reserved space between the game board and piece tray while playing. The banner does not cover puzzle pieces or controls. Free players may also see a full-screen interstitial advertisement at a natural board transition: when continuing after every third completed board in that session, or before resuming an unfinished board after at least 30 minutes away once another board has already started in the current session. The first board of every app session is ad-free. A failed or unavailable ad does not block gameplay. You may also choose to watch a rewarded advertisement to receive a clearly described in-app reward.
Google AdMob and its consent platform may process consent choices, IP address, device or advertising identifiers where available, general device information, ad requests, ad views/interactions and diagnostics to provide, limit, secure and measure advertisements. Kanzi may request personalized ads only where Google's consent platform reports that they are permitted by the applicable ad choices, or that consent is not required. On iPhone and iPad, Kanzi also asks for permission through Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt, and requests personalized ads only if you allow tracking; you can change this at any time in iOS Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking. Otherwise Kanzi requests contextual, non-personalized ads. Kanzi does not request any ad unless Google's consent system reports that ads may be requested. Puzzle preferences and gameplay activity are not supplied to AdMob for ad selection.
For reward security, the app sends a random one-time challenge with the ad. Google sends a signed completion callback to our verification service. The service records the challenge/transaction result to prevent the same reward from being claimed twice. The challenge is not your name, email address or puzzle history.
Closing a rewarded ad early grants no reward. If Google's consent system does not permit an ad request, Kanzi continues without showing the ad. You can open Google's privacy-options form from Kanzi Settings when it is required for your region.
4. Notifications
If you enable the daily reminder, Kanzi asks the operating system for notification permission and schedules the reminder locally on your device. We do not operate a push-notification account or upload your puzzle activity for this reminder. You can disable it in Kanzi Settings or system settings.
5. Update checks and remote content
Kanzi does not include gameplay analytics or crash-reporting SDKs. It does not upload puzzle starts, completions, board activity, album activity, preferences, error reports or similar usage data to Kanzi or Firebase, except the optional summaries described below.
Optional anonymous summaries ("Help improve Kanzi"). Kanzi asks once, after you finish a puzzle, and the setting stays in Settings. It is off unless you turn it on. If you do, the app sends at most three short summaries during your first month: when you agree, and on your first visits after day 7 and day 30. Each summary contains only rounded counts and categories: the week you started, app version, platform, language, device region (country), roughly how many days you opened Kanzi and how many puzzles you finished, the piece counts and modes you used, whether you finished photographs or AI images, whether you have made photo puzzles, and whether you have watched a rewarded ad. It contains no name, account, device or advertising identifier, puzzle IDs or precise times, and it is never used for advertising. Our service adds each summary to running totals and keeps nothing else; its request logs, including IP addresses, are excluded from retention. Turning the setting off stops any further summaries.
Kanzi fetches a small static file from Firebase Hosting to check the current store version and update links. Hosting may receive the ordinary IP address, request, device, network and security-log information needed to deliver and protect that file. It does not receive Kanzi puzzle progress, gameplay events, preferences or album activity.
The app also fetches a content catalog and puzzle artwork from Firebase Hosting. Like other web hosts, Hosting may process the IP address and basic request, device, network and security-log information needed to deliver and protect those files. Full artwork is downloaded only when you start the corresponding puzzle.
Kanzi still has no user accounts, no cloud gameplay sync, no social features and no leaderboard.
Game Center and Google Play Games achievements
Kanzi's achievements are earned and stored on your device. If you are already signed in to Apple Game Center (iOS) or Google Play Games (Android), Kanzi also sends the achievements you earn, and on iOS your progress toward them, to that service so they appear in your platform profile. Kanzi never asks you to sign in at launch, does not create a Kanzi account, and does not receive or store your Game Center or Play Games identity. Apple or Google handles that information under their own privacy policies. You can stop this sharing at any time in Kanzi Settings → Achievements, or by signing out of the service in system settings. If these practices change, we will update this policy and the store disclosures before enabling the change.
6. Service providers and disclosures
We disclose information only as needed to operate the features described above:
- Apple or Google for app distribution, and Apple Game Center or Google Play Games for achievements when you are signed in to them;
- Google AdMob for in-play banner, automatic interstitial and optional rewarded ads, consent, advertising security and reward verification;
- Google Firebase Hosting for update configuration, legal/support pages, the content catalog and static puzzle artwork, and Google Cloud for the reward-verification endpoint;
- authorities or other parties when reasonably necessary to comply with law, protect users, prevent fraud, or defend legal rights; and
- a successor in a merger, financing, acquisition or asset transfer, subject to applicable notice and protection requirements.
We do not sell personal information or use gameplay activity for marketing. AdMob personalization, when permitted, relies on Google's ad-specific consent system and not Kanzi puzzle preferences. Advertising providers may still process the information described above to deliver, limit, secure and measure ads, subject to the choices and rights available in your region.
7. Retention
Local gameplay information, including photo puzzles, remains until you reset the app or uninstall it; copies in your own Apple or Google device backup follow that backup's retention. The cached remote catalog remains until app storage is cleared or the app is uninstalled. Downloaded artwork remains in operating-system-managed cache until it is evicted, app storage is cleared, or the app is uninstalled. Kanzi retains no gameplay analytics or crash reports because the app does not collect them. The reward-verification service keeps its random challenge, reward kind and amount, signed transaction ID and verification time in a restricted Firestore database for 10 minutes to confirm the reward and prevent a duplicate claim across service restarts and concurrent instances. Expired records are rejected immediately when read, and Firestore's time-to-live policy deletes them asynchronously. This short-lived replay-protection store is not a reward ledger and has no Kanzi account or player-identity link. Its own operational logs contain reason categories and error types, not request values or identifiers. Automatic Cloud Run request logs are excluded from storage for this service. Other sanitized Cloud Logging entries use the project's configured retention, currently 30 days. These limits are enforced by the reward-verification service's deletion and logging controls.
Apple, Google and other hosting providers retain information under their own policies and our agreements with them.
8. Security and international processing
We use reasonable technical and organizational safeguards appropriate to the information handled, including signed, single-use reward verification. No method of storage or transmission is completely secure.
Our service providers may process information in countries other than your own, including the United States. Where required, we rely on contractual or other lawful transfer safeguards supplied by those providers.
9. Children
Kanzi is intended for a general audience and is not directed to children under 13 or the minimum digital-consent age in their country. We do not knowingly ask children for personal information. Contact us if you believe a child has provided personal information through a service associated with Kanzi.
Kanzi is offered as a general-audience app and is not enrolled in a child-directed or Made for Kids program.
10. Your choices and rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to processing, withdraw consent, or receive information in a portable format. You may also complain to a local data-protection authority.
Because Kanzi has no account, include the device platform and approximate dates when contacting us. We may need to verify a request and may retain information where law permits or requires.
You can also:
- reset gameplay data and settings in Kanzi Settings, and clear all Kanzi app storage through your device settings or uninstall the app;
- change notification permission in system settings;
- change advertising consent through the available Google consent controls.
11. Changes
We may update this policy when Kanzi's features, providers or legal obligations change. We will post the revised policy with a new effective date and provide additional notice where required.
12. Contact
Privacy requests: privacy@bencodestudio.com
- Publisher: Bencode Studio LLC
- Address: Washington, DC, USA
- Support: info@bencodestudio.com