Knife Hub Privacy Policy
An offline knife arcade. The games run entirely on your device. No account and no purchases — ads from Google AdMob that use your advertising ID, usage analytics and gameplay session recordings.
Overview
Knife Hub is a collection of offline knife arcade games for Android. There is no sign-in, no account system and no backend of ours. Every game is bundled inside the app and plays with no connection at all.
The games themselves make no network requests. The app around them uses the internet for four things: showing the ads described below, sending the usage analytics described below, sending the gameplay session recordings described below, and opening this app's own Google Play page when you tap Share or Rate. The Android permissions involved are listed under Permissions.
Knife Hub is published on Google Play under the package com.puzzlethrone.detour, which previously carried Photo Scavenger Hunt: Detour. If you are looking for the policy that covered that earlier app, it is still available at the Detour policy.
What Changed In September 2026
From version 2.6.0 (September 2026) Knife Hub includes ads. The app is free, and full-screen ads from Google AdMob can appear when you open it or come back to it. The Google Mobile Ads SDK that delivers them collects your advertising ID, your IP address, device information and your interactions with ads, and sends them to Google (see the Advertising section). Because the ads need the advertising ID, the app no longer removes the Android advertising-ID permission, so Google Analytics for Firebase can now read the advertising ID too.
Until this update, this page still said that the app had no ads and collected no advertising identifier. That stopped being true with version 2.6.0, and the page has been corrected to describe the app as it is now. It also now covers two smaller changes: the optional reminder notifications added in version 2.7.0, which are created on your device and send nothing, and the ad events the analytics record from version 2.8.1.
What did not change: there are still no in-app purchases, no account and no crash reporter that uploads your files, and your saved games never leave your device. The changes before these, in August 2026, added Google Analytics for Firebase (August 27) and PostHog analytics with gameplay session recordings (August 29).
Information The App Stores On Your Device
Knife Hub saves gameplay information only on your device: your current level and checkpoint, coins, which knives you have bought, your best scores and combo, your daily goal progress and return streak, and your sound, haptics and difficulty settings. This is held in the app's private on-device storage and is never uploaded. It is not part of the analytics described below, and we have no copy of it.
Analytics
The app uses Google Analytics for Firebase to understand which games people play and where they stop playing, so that the difficulty and the game selection can be improved. We look at it in aggregate: it tells us that a level is being abandoned, not who abandoned it.
The events the app sends are limited to these:
- Opening the app, and opening, starting, pausing, resuming or ending a game — with the game's name and how long the round lasted.
- A score being recorded, and whether it beat your previous best for that game.
- Interface actions: opening the menu, searching the game list (including the first 40 characters of what you type into the search box), marking a game as liked, changing language, tapping Share, and whether the rating card was shown, dismissed or acted on.
- From version 2.8.1, ad events: whether an ad loaded or failed to load and why, whether it was shown, tapped or closed, how long it stayed on screen, and the estimated earnings Google reported for it.
Alongside these, Google Analytics automatically records standard technical information: a randomly generated app instance identifier, your device model, operating system version, screen size, app version, language, and a coarse country or region derived from your IP address. The app instance identifier is not linked to your name or your Google account.
The advertising ID. Google Analytics reads the Android advertising identifier by default whenever an app holds the permission for it. Earlier versions of Knife Hub removed that permission so that it never could; the ads need it, so from version 2.6.0 the permission is back and Google Analytics can read the advertising ID as well. Ad personalisation signals remain switched off for analytics, so analytics data is not used to personalise the ads you see. You can reset or delete the advertising ID at any time; see the Advertising section.
Google processes this data on our behalf as described in the Firebase Privacy and Security policy and the Google Privacy Policy. We have not extended the retention period Firebase applies by default, so analytics data is deleted automatically once that period elapses.
Session Recordings
From the release dated August 29, 2026 the app also uses PostHog (PostHog Inc., hosted in the United States) for the same usage events and for gameplay session recordings: periodic screenshots of the game screen, replayed to us as a short film of the session. We watch these to see where players get stuck, confused or bored — the same purpose as the analytics, with the detail the numbers lack.
What a recording can contain is limited by what the app itself shows: gameplay, menus, scores and the game-list search box. The app has no sign-in, no payment screen, no camera access and no access to anything else on your device, so none of that can appear in a recording. Recordings are tied to the same random app instance identifier as the analytics — not to your name or any cross-app identity.
PostHog processes this data on our behalf as described in the PostHog Privacy Policy. Deletion requests reach both processors through the contact below.
Advertising
Knife Hub is free and is paid for by ads. From version 2.6.0 the app includes the Google Mobile Ads SDK and shows full-screen App Open ads from Google AdMob, which can appear when you open the app or come back to it after some time away. Google chooses and delivers the ads; the games themselves still make no network requests.
To deliver and measure the ads and to prevent fraud, the SDK collects the following and sends it to Google:
- Your advertising ID — a resettable identifier that Google Play services provides to apps for advertising — and the app set ID.
- Your IP address, which Google may use to estimate your approximate location.
- Device information, such as your device model, operating system version and language, and performance information about the app and the SDK, such as launch time, hang rate and energy use.
- Your interactions with the app and with ads, such as app launches, the ads you were shown and the ones you tapped.
Google uses this information to show and measure ads, for analytics, and to detect and prevent fraud and abuse. Depending on where you are, the choices you make and your device settings, the ads may be personalised using your advertising ID and other information Google holds, or not personalised. Google explains this in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services and in the Google Privacy Policy.
Consent. Each time it starts, the app asks Google's consent tool, the User Messaging Platform, whether your consent is needed before ads can be requested where you are — for example in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. If it is, Google's consent message is shown first, and ads are only requested once your choices allow it. Where these privacy options apply to you, an Ad privacy button stays at the top of the screen so that you can review or change your choices at any time.
Resetting or deleting your advertising ID. You can do either at any time in Android settings: on most devices, go to Settings > Privacy > Ads and tap Reset advertising ID or Delete advertising ID (menu names vary between devices and Android versions). Resetting replaces the ID with a new, unrelated one. Deleting removes it, after which apps, Knife Hub included, receive only a string of zeros in its place, so neither the ads nor the analytics can use it; you will still see ads, but not ones personalised through that ID. If you are signed in to a Google Account, you can also turn ad personalisation off in My Ad Center.
Personal Data
Knife Hub never asks for your name, email address, phone number, contacts, precise location, camera, photos, microphone or payment information, and it has no permission to reach any of them.
Some of what the app does send can count as personal data under privacy laws: the advertising ID, app set ID and IP address that the ads send to Google, and the identifiers and usage information sent for analytics and session recordings, all described above. The one thing you type that leaves your device is a search of the game list — up to its first 40 characters, recorded by the analytics and visible in session recordings — so please do not type personal information into the search box.
Permissions
The app declares three permissions in its own Android manifest:
INTERNET— for the ads, the analytics, the session recordings and opening the Play listing.POST_NOTIFICATIONS— for optional reminders to come back and play, which are scheduled on your device and send no data anywhere. On Android 13 and later you are asked first, and you can turn them off at any time in Android settings.RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED— so that scheduled reminders survive a restart of your phone.
The libraries the app uses add standard entries of their own. The Google Mobile Ads SDK and Google Analytics for Firebase add AD_ID, which lets them read the advertising ID, and Android's ad-services permissions (ACCESS_ADSERVICES_AD_ID, ACCESS_ADSERVICES_ATTRIBUTION and ACCESS_ADSERVICES_TOPICS). Firebase also adds access to the Google Play install referrer, which tells it how the app was installed. The rest are network-state, wake-lock, vibration and background-work entries. None of them reads your content, your files or your location.
The project's automated tests check that the app's own manifest declares only the three permissions above, and that nothing in the shipped game code references a remote address.
Purchases
There are no in-app purchases. The coins in the game are earned only by playing and can only be spent inside the game, on cosmetic knives or on a retry. They cannot be bought, they have no cash value, and no payment provider is involved at any point. Ads are covered in the Advertising section above.
Children's Privacy
Knife Hub is a general-audience game and is not directed specifically to children under 13. The app does not knowingly collect personal information from children, and it asks no one for personal information at any point. Because the app shows ads, the advertising data described in the Advertising section is collected on any device where ads are allowed, whatever the age of the person playing. If you have a concern, contact us at puzzlethrone@gmail.com.
Data Deletion
Everything the app saves about your progress lives on your device. Clearing the app's data from Android Settings > Apps > Knife Hub > Storage, or uninstalling the app, removes all of it, resets the analytics instance identifier and clears the ad consent choices stored on your device.
Your advertising ID belongs to your device, not to the app, so clearing the app's data does not change it. Resetting or deleting it, as described in the Advertising section, stops new ad and analytics data from being linked to the ID you had before. Information Google has already received for advertising is kept and deleted under Google's own policies, described in the Google Privacy Policy.
Analytics already sent is deleted automatically once Firebase's retention period elapses. If you would like us to delete the analytics associated with your app instance sooner, email puzzlethrone@gmail.com and we will action it.
Data Safety Summary
| Data type | Collected by app | Shared by app | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal information (name, email, phone) | No | No | Never requested |
| Approximate location | Yes (from IP address) | Yes (Google) | Advertising, analytics, fraud prevention |
| Precise location, photos, camera or microphone | No | No | Never requested |
| Gameplay progress and settings | No (stored on-device only) | No | Level, coins, knives, scores, settings |
| App activity | Yes | Yes (Google) | Analytics and session recordings: which games are played, scores, session length, game-list searches, what the game screen showed. Ad views and taps: advertising, fraud prevention |
| App info and performance | Yes | Yes (Google) | Analytics, advertising, fraud prevention: app and device version, how the app and the ads SDK perform |
| Device or other IDs | Yes | Yes (Google) | Advertising ID and app set ID: advertising, analytics, fraud prevention. App instance IDs: analytics |
| Financial information | No | No | No in-app purchases exist |
Policy Access And Changes
This page is the public privacy policy for the Knife Hub Android app and is referenced from its Google Play listing. If the app's data practices ever change, this page will be updated with a new effective date. Questions are welcome at puzzlethrone@gmail.com.