The short version
Cat & Mouse needs no sign-up and asks for no personal details: it knows nothing about you beyond a randomly generated ID and whatever nickname you type in. If you choose to sign in with Google to back up your progress, we also hold your Google email address — and you can delete that account from inside the game. It shows ads, and those ads come from Google, which does collect data. You can change your ad choices at any time from the in-game Settings screen.
What the game stores on your device
Saved locally and never sent anywhere unless noted below:
- Your best survival time, cheese balance, and which mouse skins you own
- Your chosen nickname
- Sound, music, haptics and notification preferences
- Daily login streak and weekly challenge progress
Uninstalling the app deletes all of it — unless you signed in with Google, below.
What the game sends to our servers
We use Google Firebase (Authentication and Cloud Firestore) to run the global leaderboard. When you finish a run we send:
- A randomly generated anonymous user ID — not linked to any email, phone number, Google account, or device identifier
- The nickname you chose
- Your survival time, cheese collected, and selected skin for that run
- A timestamp
That record is what appears on the daily, weekly and all-time leaderboards, so it is visible to other players. Nothing else leaves the device. Leaderboard data is stored in the United Kingdom.
We do not collect your name, email address, phone number, contacts, photos, files, precise location, or any health or financial data.
Signing in with Google (optional)
Settings → Sign in with Google backs up your progress so it comes back after a reinstall or on a new phone. If you use it we store, with Google Firebase:
- Your Google account's email address and a Google account identifier
- Your progress: nickname, cheese balance, skins, best time, login streak, weekly challenge progress and run counters
We use these only to restore your progress. They are not shown to other players and not used for advertising. Sign-in is entirely optional — the game works fully without it.
Delete your account
In the game: Settings → Delete account. This immediately and permanently deletes your Google sign-in with us, your saved progress, and every leaderboard score you have posted.
Without the app: email services@linkxai.ai from the Google address you signed in with, asking us to delete your Cat & Mouse account. We will delete the same data within 30 days and confirm by reply. Nothing is kept afterwards, except that reports you filed against other players' nicknames may be retained until reviewed.
Nicknames and reporting
Nicknames are public, so the game refuses obviously offensive ones and every leaderboard row has a report button. Reporting a nickname sends us your anonymous ID, the reported player's anonymous ID, the nickname and which board it was on. Reports are visible only to us — never to the player you reported. We use them to review the name, and may stop a player's scores appearing on the leaderboards if their nickname breaks these rules.
Advertising
Reviving after being caught is paid for by watching a rewarded ad, served by Google AdMob. Google may collect and process data to serve and measure those ads, including your device's advertising identifier, coarse location inferred from IP address, and ad interaction events. Google acts as an independent controller for this data. See how Google uses data from apps that use its services.
Your choices:
- In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland we show Google's consent form the first time you open the game. You can reopen it any time from Settings → Ad privacy settings and change or withdraw your consent. If you decline, the game still works in full — you simply cannot revive, because reviving is what the ad pays for.
- On any device you can reset or delete your advertising ID from the Android system settings under Settings → Privacy → Ads.
Ad content is capped at a PG rating.
Crash reports
When the game crashes or hits an error it recovers from, we send a report to Firebase Crashlytics so we can fix it. A report contains the technical details of the failure — the error, where in the code it happened, the device model and Android version — plus a short trail of what the app was doing beforehand: which screen you were on, and how long your last run lasted. It carries the same anonymous ID as your leaderboard entry, and nothing that identifies you.
You can turn this off at any time under Settings → Send crash reports. The choice sticks, including for crashes that happen while the game is still starting up.
Children
Cat & Mouse is a general-audience game. It is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect data from them. If you believe a child has provided us with data, contact us and we will delete it.
How long we keep things
Leaderboard entries are kept while the relevant board is live — daily boards for a day, weekly boards for a week, and the all-time board indefinitely — so that scores stay comparable. Ask us and we will remove yours. Reports are kept until they have been reviewed and acted on.
Your rights
Depending on where you live you may have the right to access, correct, delete or export the data we hold, and to object to or restrict how we process it. Because accounts are anonymous, we will need the nickname and an approximate time of your last run to find your record. Requests go to services@linkxai.ai and we will respond within 30 days.
Security
Leaderboard writes are protected by Firestore security rules: a player can only write their own record, and only to improve on their own previous best. Data in transit is encrypted by Firebase.
Third parties we rely on
| Service | Purpose | Their policy |
|---|---|---|
| Google Firebase | Anonymous ID, the global leaderboard, and crash reports | Policy |
| Google AdMob | Rewarded ads that fund revives | Policy |
Changes
If this policy changes materially we will update the effective date above and note the change in the app's release notes.