Privacy Policy

Last updated 17 July 2026 · Quantum Ghost for iOS · Embay, LLC

What the app accesses, and why

Bluetooth (used during app use)

Quantum Ghost is a game built on the radio environment around you. While the scan screen is open, the app passively observes Bluetooth Low Energy advertisements — the beacons that nearby devices broadcast publicly by design.

What is read from each nearby device: signal strength (RSSI) and its variance over time, advertised service UUIDs and manufacturer-data prefix, the advertised device name if any, advertisement interval, and detection duration. These characteristics are used as a random seed — they determine which ghost manifests, what it looks like, and how it behaves. That is the entire purpose.

What is NOT accessed:

• No MAC addresses. iOS does not expose them, and the app does not attempt to obtain them by any means.
• No connections. The app never pairs with, connects to, or exchanges data with any nearby device. The scan is strictly passive observation of public broadcasts.
• No device contents. The app cannot see, and does not attempt to see, what any nearby device contains or transmits.
• No background scanning. Scanning happens only while the app is open and the scan screen is in the foreground.

What is retained: signal characteristics are held in memory during a scan session. When a ghost is documented, a one-way hashed fingerprint of its originating signal is stored with the capture as provenance. Nothing that identifies a nearby device or its owner is stored.

Location (used during app use)

Coordinates determine which of the twelve Quantum Zones you are hunting in, and place captures on your personal Haunting Map.

• Coordinates are coarsened to approximately 100 meters (rounded to three decimal places) before they are used or stored. The app never retains a precise fix.
• Location is read only while the app is in use — no background location, no geofencing, no history beyond the coarse coordinates attached to captures you chose to create.
• Location is optional. Decline it and the app works; every zone simply resolves as Temperate.

Barometric altitude (Motion & Fitness) is read on supported devices only to distinguish high-altitude Alpine zones. It is not stored.

Camera (used during app use)

The camera provides the augmented-reality view that anchors entities in the space around you, and captures the still frame saved with a documented ghost. Camera frames are processed on-device in real time and are not recorded. The only image retained is the ghost portrait you create by documenting an entity — and that image is rendered from the app's own particle system, not from the camera feed.

Where your data lives

• On your device. Your Codex, captures, encounter history, streaks, and settings are stored locally using Apple's SwiftData.
• Nowhere else. There is no advertising SDK and no server of ours that receives your game data. The one third-party service the app uses is Google Firebase, for the anonymous diagnostics described below — your captures, Codex, map, and scan data never go there. A future update may add optional iCloud sync through your own iCloud account's private database; today all game data stays on-device.

Apple's role

Two features involve Apple as a service provider, governed by Apple's own privacy policy: Game Center (if you sign in, achievement progress is reported to Apple) and App Store purchases (the Pro unlock is processed by Apple; we never see your payment details — the app only asks Apple whether a purchase exists).

On-device intelligence

Ghost names, lore, and EVP transcripts are generated on your device, using Apple Foundation Models where available and hand-authored fallback content otherwise. No prompt, generation, or capture is ever sent to any server.

Analytics & crash diagnostics

To understand which parts of the game work and to fix crashes, the app uses Google Firebase (Google Analytics for Firebase and Firebase Crashlytics) as a service provider:

• What is collected: anonymous usage events (for example "a ghost was documented", the species and zone involved, whether the paywall was shown) and crash/performance reports. Events are keyed to a random app-instance identifier — no advertising ID (IDFA), no name, no email, no account, and nothing that identifies you or any nearby device. Coordinates are never sent.
• Consent, by region: in the EU, UK, and Switzerland nothing is collected until you explicitly allow it on the first-run prompt. Elsewhere, collection is on by default and can be turned off at any time.
• Your off switch: Profile → Settings → "Share anonymous usage data". Turning it off stops analytics immediately.
• Not tracking: no data is used to track you across other companies' apps or websites, and none of it is linked to your identity.

Your control

• Withdraw any permission at any time in iOS Settings → Quantum Ghost. Bluetooth and camera are required for scanning; location is not.
• Delete everything by deleting the app: all local data goes with it.
• Spectral audio can be disabled in Profile → Settings.
• Anonymous diagnostics can be disabled in Profile → Settings ("Share anonymous usage data"). EU/UK/Swiss users are asked before anything is collected at all.
• There is no account, no sign-up, and no profile to delete.

This website

Everything above describes the app. This website (quantumghost.app) is different in one respect: it uses Google Analytics 4 to measure aggregate traffic — pages visited, approximate region, and how visitors found the site — so we can understand interest in the app. We do not use it for advertising, and it tells us nothing that identifies you personally. You can block it with any content blocker, or opt out with Google's opt-out browser add-on.

Children

Quantum Ghost is not directed at children under 13 and collects no personal information from anyone.

Changes

Material changes to this policy will be reflected here with an updated date and noted in the app's release notes.

Contact

Questions about privacy: support@quantumghost.app