Treeling privacy policy

Who we are

Treeling is made by Creative Coders sp. z o.o., Warsaw, Poland, the controller of your personal data. Contact us any time at support@quorumwork.com.

Our games share one backend that we run ourselves, the Creative Coders Hub (“the hub”). This policy explains what the Treeling app and the hub process, and which partners help us.

1. Anonymous player ID

The first time the app goes online, it creates a random identifier on your device and registers it with the hub. The hub returns an anonymous player ID and a secret token. We don’t use your advertising ID, phone number, email or hardware identifiers for this.

This ID links your cloud save, friends, leaderboard scores, real-tree claims and analytics. Legal basis: providing the game you asked for (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).

2. Gameplay analytics

The app sends gameplay events to the hub, linked to your anonymous player ID: for example session start and length, level-ups, tutorial steps, minigame scores, quests, care actions (watering, sunshine, hugs…), purchases (product and price), watched reward videos and notification opens. Events are queued on your device and sent in batches, also after you were offline.

We use them to fix bugs, balance the game, understand which features people enjoy, and to count progress towards community goals (shared goals where everyone’s care plants real trees). Legal basis: our legitimate interest in running and improving the game (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). We don’t sell this data or use it for advertising.

3. Cloud save

Your game progress (trees, items, levels, settings) is saved on your device and backed up to the hub, so it survives app updates and can be merged if you play offline. If you pick a city for the weather, its name, country and city coordinates are part of your settings and therefore of this backup.

4. Friends and leaderboards

Social features are designed for players aged 13 and up, safe by design:

• Friends see your profile name (up to 20 characters, checked against a blocklist), a preset avatar, and a snapshot of your grove (tree types, growth stages, cosmetics and health). If you don’t set a name, you appear as “Player” plus a number.
• You can send daily water or sunshine gifts and reactions from a fixed list of emoji. There is no chat and no free text between players.
• We never share your location or real name with other players. If you turn on Nearby, players near you see only a distance band (see Weather and location).
• Your friend code and invite link are only shared when you share them. Adding a friend by code is mutual and instant, so share it with people you know.
• You can remove or block any player. Blocking is permanent and removes pending gifts between you.
• Leaderboards show your profile name and score.
• Invite links carry the inviter’s friend code (through Google Play’s install referrer), so both of you can receive a thank-you reward.

Legal basis: providing the features you use (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). We can review names and ban players from social features to keep the community safe (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

5. Purchases (Apple and Google Play)

In-app purchases and subscriptions are processed by Apple on iOS and Google Play on Android. We never receive your payment card or billing details.

To deliver purchases and prevent fraud, the app sends the product ID and store transaction evidence to the hub. For Google Play this is a purchase token, verified using the Google Play Developer API; stored tokens are hashed. For Apple this includes Apple-signed transaction data (JWS), transaction and original transaction identifiers, product, purchase environment and subscription or revocation information. The hub checks Apple's signature and the app and product identifiers. Verified signed transaction data is retained for validation and recovery while the account exists; account deletion clears the signed transaction and app-account binding. Store transaction identifiers and limited purchase and delivery records may remain without the game profile. The hub records verified transactions and delivery status so a purchase is not granted twice; Apple server notifications keep subscription and refund status up to date.

Purchase events (product, price and currency) are also part of our analytics. Manage or cancel Apple subscriptions in iPhone or iPad Settings → your name → Subscriptions, or Google Play subscriptions in Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions. Deleting Treeling or your anonymous account does not cancel a subscription or erase the store's own purchase records. Eligible purchases can be restored; spent consumables and deleted gameplay progress cannot be restored this way.

The iOS app uses Apple's Standard End User License Agreement. See also Apple's privacy policy.

6. Real trees with Tree-Nation

Real trees are planted with our planting partner Tree-Nation in reforestation projects such as Kenya Mangroves Restoration, Kenya. When you claim a real tree, the hub sends Tree-Nation the display name you type for the certificate. The hub also stores the type of your in-game tree, which may be used to choose the species planted. Tree-Nation plants the tree in the project’s next planting season and issues a certificate.

The hub keeps a record of your claims (type, status, certificate link) so it can show your certificates and enforce fair limits.

7. Weather and location

Real weather is optional and off by default. Without it, your tree enjoys simulated weather and the sky is estimated from your device’s time zone, on your device.

• Approximate location: if you choose “Use my approximate location”, the app asks for location permission and requests a low-accuracy position. Coordinates are rounded to 1 decimal (about 10 km) on your phone and sent in the request body to the hub, which fetches the forecast from MET Norway (the Norwegian Meteorological Institute). Coordinates are processed ephemerally: they are not stored or logged; only the rounded location is used briefly as an in-memory cache key for the forecast. MET Norway receives requests from our server, not from your device.
• City: instead, you can pick a city from a list built into the app. The selected city’s name, country and city coordinates are saved in your game settings and cloud save. These are the coordinates of the chosen city, not a record of your GPS movements.

You can turn real weather off at any time in Settings. Legal basis: your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you can withdraw by turning it off or revoking the permission. Weather data: MET Norway.

Nearby trees

If you turn on Nearby, the game sends an approximate location (a square of about 5 km) to our server to show other players’ trees near you. Other players see only a distance band (under 5 km, 5–15 km or 15–50 km), never your location. It is deleted when you turn Nearby off, or 7 days after the game last updated it.

• Off by default and optional: nothing is shared until you turn on Nearby (in More or in Settings). The app explains it first, then asks for approximate location permission. Precise location is never requested, and the game works fully without it.
• Only a square leaves your phone: the app rounds your position on the phone and moves it to the centre of a map square of about 5 km before sending it. The hub keeps only that square’s 5-character code and a small tree summary (tree type, growth stage, level, look and pot, as preset values and numbers). It never stores, logs or returns coordinates.
• What other players see: your profile name, preset avatar, tree summary and a distance band between the two squares. No map, no direction, no exact distance, and no messages. Only players of Treeling who have also turned on Nearby can see you, and the admin dashboard shows counts only.
• Watering and safety: a nearby player can water your tree once a day, which reaches you as a gift in the game. You can block or report any nearby player; reporting also blocks, and players reported by several people are hidden.
• Refresh and expiry: while Nearby is on, the app refreshes your square at most once a day when you open it. A square that has not been refreshed for 7 days disappears at once and is deleted within minutes.
• Turning it off in Settings or on the Nearby screen deletes your square and tree summary from the hub at once. Deleting your account or resetting this device turns Nearby off first.

Legal basis: your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you can withdraw at any time by turning Nearby off or revoking the location permission.

8. Ads (Google AdMob)

Treeling shows only rewarded videos that you choose to watch, for example for a free cure. They are capped per day. Ads are provided by Google AdMob.

• Where consent is required (for example in the EEA and the UK), we ask through Google’s User Messaging Platform (UMP) consent form.
• AdMob may use your device’s advertising ID and information about your device and app usage to show and measure ads, and to prevent fraud.
• If consent is required and you don’t give it, we request non-personalised ads only.
• You can change your choice anytime in Settings → Ad privacy options, and review advertising or tracking permissions in your device’s privacy settings.

Learn more: How Google uses information from apps that use its services and the Google Privacy Policy.

9. Camera and photos

Photo mode uses the camera only when you open it. Photos and timelapses are created on your device and we never upload them. If you share one, your phone’s share sheet sends it to the app you pick.

10. Notifications

Reminders (a thirsty tree, frost or a heatwave ahead, your daily gift, your streak) are local notifications scheduled on your device. No push server is involved. You can turn each type off in Settings or block them in your phone’s settings.

11. Who helps us

• Render hosts the hub (servers and database). Like any web server, it processes your IP address to answer requests and to limit abuse; we don’t use it to identify you.
• Google (Google Play, Play Billing, AdMob and its consent platform) as described above.
• Apple processes App Store purchases and subscriptions, provides transaction verification data and handles TestFlight distribution for beta testers.
• Tree-Nation plants real trees and issues certificates.
• MET Norway provides the weather forecasts (it receives only rounded coordinates from our server).
• OpenAI: if you leave a public review on Google Play, we may use an AI service to help draft our public reply. Your in-game data is not sent to it.

Some of these providers may process data outside the European Economic Area. In that case we rely on appropriate safeguards such as an adequacy decision or the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

12. How long we keep data

• On your device: until you reset the game in Settings or uninstall the app.
• On the hub: your cloud save, profile and social relationships are kept while your anonymous account exists. Account deletion removes that account and its associated personal game data. Gameplay events and aggregate counters are detached from the deleted player identifier and retained as anonymised statistics.
• Limited purchase and planting records are detached from your deleted account and may be retained for transaction integrity, fraud prevention and legal or accounting obligations. Apple, Google and Tree-Nation manage their own records under their own policies.
• Planted trees stay planted, and Tree-Nation certificates remain public. We can ask Tree-Nation to change the name on your certificate.
• GPS-derived coordinates are not saved. A manually selected city’s details are part of your game settings and cloud save and are removed when those records are deleted.
• Nearby: your approximate 5 km square and tree summary are kept only while Nearby is on, and at most 7 days after the game last refreshed them. Turning Nearby off or deleting your account removes them at once.

13. Deleting your data

• In the app: Settings → Delete my data → Reset this device erases your game on this device and unlinks it from your anonymous player.
• Delete your account: Settings → Delete my data → Delete account and data. After you confirm, the app requests deletion from the hub. Your local game and account credentials are removed only after the server confirms success. If the request fails, the app keeps your local account and progress so you can retry.
• Contact support: you can also email support@quorumwork.com and quote your friend code (shown in Settings → Delete my data and on the Friends screen). Note the code before resetting. We act on requests without undue delay and within one month at most.

Turning off Nearby deletes your nearby square at once. Deleting your account and resetting this device turn Nearby off first.

Step-by-step instructions: How to delete your Treeling data.

14. Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask us for access to your data, a copy of it, correction, deletion, restriction of processing, and you can object to processing based on legitimate interests. Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time. Write to support@quorumwork.com and include your friend code so we can find your anonymous player.

You can also complain to a data protection authority. In Poland this is the President of the Personal Data Protection Office (Prezes Urzędu Ochrony Danych Osobowych, UODO), ul. Stawki 2, 00-193 Warsaw.

15. Children

Treeling is not directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect personal data from them. Social features have no chat and no free text, and Nearby shows other players only a distance band, never a location. If you are below the age at which you can consent to online services in your country, please ask a parent or guardian before using online features. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

16. Changes and contact

If we change this policy, we’ll update this page and the date at the top, and tell you in the app if the change is important.

Questions? support@quorumwork.com
Creative Coders sp. z o.o., Warsaw, Poland