Legal
Privacy Policy
The short version. Mawtini has no accounts and no servers of its own. It does not collect, transmit or sell any personal data. Your progress is stored on your device and, if you use iCloud, in your own private iCloud database that only you can read. There is no analytics, no advertising, no tracking and no third-party SDK in the app. Apple's privacy label for Mawtini is Data Not Collected. Everything below explains that in full.
1. Who is responsible
Mawtini · Palestine is an independent app developed and published by Ibrahim Qraiqe, an individual developer based in Norway, who is the data controller for the limited processing described in this policy.
Contact: mawtini@qraiqe.no. A postal address is available on request for anyone who needs it in order to exercise a legal right.
2. What Mawtini collects
Nothing. The app has no user accounts, no registration, no login, no profile and no server operated by the developer. It does not ask for your name, email address, phone number, contacts, photos, location, microphone or camera. It contains no analytics or measurement framework, no advertising network, no attribution or install-tracking service, no crash-reporting service, no social login and no third-party software development kit of any kind.
The developer receives no information about who you are, which villages you play, how long you play, or whether you use the app at all.
3. Data stored on your device
The app stores your progress locally so that it is still there next time you open it. This data stays on your device (and, if enabled, in your private iCloud — see below). It consists of:
| What | Why it exists |
|---|---|
| Villages you have located, with your best distance and score for each | To draw your Memory Map and to know what you have already learned |
| Sessions and rounds you have played, including dates and durations | To show your progress and to calculate badges |
| Which regions you have solved or aced | To mark regions as complete and to allow replays |
| Daily-village completions and your streak | To keep the daily streak and to fill the widget |
| Badges you have unlocked | To show the Badges screen |
| Your settings — language preference, numeral style, sound on or off, challenge mode | To remember how you like the app configured |
None of this identifies you. It is game state, not a profile, and it never leaves your Apple ecosystem. Deleting the app deletes the copy held on that device.
4. iCloud sync
If you are signed in to iCloud and have iCloud Drive enabled, the progress described above also syncs through CloudKit, using the private database of your own Apple Account. This is what lets your iPhone and iPad show the same Memory Map.
The private database belongs to you. It is operated by Apple under Apple's own privacy policy, it is tied to your Apple Account, and the developer has no access to it and no ability to read, export or delete its contents. There is no shared or public CloudKit database in this app.
You can switch this off at any time in iOS Settings → your name → iCloud, and you can delete the stored data from Manage Account Storage. See Your Privacy Choices for step-by-step instructions.
5. Network connections
Gameplay is entirely offline. All maps, village names, histories, images and audio are contained in the app itself; playing makes no network requests at all, and the app works identically in airplane mode.
The app opens a network connection in exactly these situations, and no others:
| When | What is sent | To whom |
|---|---|---|
| iCloud sync, in the background, if you have iCloud enabled | Your own game progress, to your own private database | Apple (CloudKit) |
| You open Settings → More apps | A single request for the developer's public App Store listings. It contains no identifier, no device information beyond what any HTTPS request necessarily reveals, and nothing whatsoever about you or your play | Apple (iTunes Lookup) |
| You tap a link — a village's source, the App Store, this website | An ordinary web request, made by Safari or the App Store, at your instruction | The site you chose to open |
The More apps request exists so that app icons are current and newly released apps appear. It is confined to that one screen; if it fails, the screen simply shows the list built into the app and you see no error. If you never open that screen, the app never makes it.
6. Apple's own processing
Because Mawtini is distributed through the App Store, Apple processes some information independently of the developer — for example your purchase or download record, and the aggregate, anonymised statistics Apple shows developers in App Store Connect (such as total downloads per country, or crash counts). The developer sees only aggregate numbers through Apple's dashboards and cannot connect them to any individual.
If you choose to leave a rating or review, or if the app shows Apple's built-in "rate this app" prompt, that interaction happens inside Apple's own system. The developer sees only what Apple publishes publicly. Apple's handling of all of this is governed by Apple's Privacy Policy.
7. If you write to me
If you email mawtini@qraiqe.no, I receive your email address, whatever you write, and any attachment you send. That is used solely to answer you and, where relevant, to fix the problem or correct the content you reported. It is never used for marketing, never added to a mailing list and never shared or sold.
Correspondence is kept only as long as it is useful for support and for any record I am legally required to keep, and is then deleted. You may ask me to delete your messages at any time.
8. This website
This site is plain static HTML. It sets no cookies, runs no analytics, embeds no trackers, loads no advertising, and pulls in no fonts, scripts or images from third-party servers — everything is served from this domain.
The web server hosting the site keeps ordinary technical access logs (IP address, time, page requested, browser user-agent) for a short period, as any web server does, for security and operational purposes. The site is hosted by Simply.com, acting as a processor on standard hosting terms.
Links from this site to the App Store, PalestineRemembered.com, Wikipedia or Wikidata will take you to services with their own privacy policies, which apply once you arrive there.
9. Children
Mawtini is suitable for all ages and does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, children included. There is no account creation, no chat, no user-generated content, no advertising and no in-app purchase, so there is nothing for a child to disclose and nothing directed at them commercially.
10. Legal basis (GDPR)
For the very limited processing that does take place, the legal bases under the EU/EEA General Data Protection Regulation are:
- Support correspondence — legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)) in answering the people who write to me, and in fixing what they report.
- Server logs on this website — legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)) in operating and securing the site.
- iCloud sync — carried out under your control on Apple's infrastructure using your own Apple Account; the developer is not a controller of that data.
Data protection in Norway is supervised by the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, Datatilsynet.
11. Your rights
If you are in the EEA or the UK you have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and data portability, and the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. If you are in California or another US state with comparable law, you have rights of access, deletion, correction, and to opt out of sale, sharing and targeted advertising.
In practice, the only personal data I hold about anyone is the content of emails they have sent me. There is no user database to search, because there are no user accounts. To exercise any right, email mawtini@qraiqe.no and I will respond within one month. For your on-device and iCloud data, which I cannot reach, Your Privacy Choices explains the controls that are entirely in your hands.
I do not sell or share personal information, and I never have. There is no personal information to sell.
12. Retention
- Game progress — kept on your device until you delete the app, and in your iCloud until you delete it there. Entirely under your control.
- Emails — kept while relevant to supporting you, then deleted.
- Website logs — kept for a short operational period by the host, then rotated out.
13. International transfers
The app transmits nothing to the developer, so there is no data flow to be transferred. Email reaches me in Norway, within the EEA. This website is hosted in the EEA. iCloud data is handled by Apple on its own global infrastructure under Apple's terms and safeguards.
14. Security
Game data on your device is protected by iOS's own file protection and by your device passcode and encryption. Data synced through iCloud is protected by Apple's account security and encryption. All network requests the app makes use HTTPS. Since no personal data is ever collected by the developer, there is no developer-held database to be breached.
15. Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the revised version is published on this page with a new effective date and version number. Material changes — anything that would alter what leaves your device — will also be noted in the app's release notes. Continuing to use the app after a change means the revised policy applies.
16. Contact
Questions about privacy, or about anything in this policy, go to mawtini@qraiqe.no. If a question concerns data held by Apple rather than by me, I will say so plainly and point you to the right place rather than leave you guessing.
See also: Your Privacy Choices · Terms & Conditions