List of Countries
world.country.guide.oz
Privacy Policy

What this app knows about you

List of Countries is a reference almanac. It has no accounts, no sign-in and no profile, and its whole dataset — 249 countries, their flags, facts and outlines — is bundled in the app and read offline. This page sets out the little that does leave your device, who receives it, and how to stop it.

Effective 27 July 2026 Version 1.0.0 Android · Google Play
At a glance
Section 01

Who is responsible

This app is published by the developer of List of Countries ("we", "us"), an independent developer based in the Republic of Türkiye. We are the controller of the limited personal data described here.

This policy covers the Android application List of Countries (world.country.guide.oz) and nothing else. Other apps we publish have their own policies, and the services listed in section 3 have their own.

Section 02

What stays on your device

Most of what the app remembers never leaves your phone. It is written to the app's private storage, which no other app can read, and it is deleted when you uninstall.

  • Your settings — theme, app language, chosen search engine, notification toggles, map preferences and your subscription status.
  • Your lists — the collections you create, their names, colours, icons and the countries in them.
  • Your Ask AI conversations — kept per country so a chat is still there when you come back. Turning off Settings → AI Assistant → Save chat history stops this and erases everything already stored.
  • A few counters — for example how many country pages you have opened, which is only used to decide when to show the "Rate us" prompt.

Android Auto Backup

Android may copy some app data to your own Google Drive backup, so that it returns when you set up a new phone. That backup belongs to your Google account, is subject to Google's terms, and we cannot read it. We deliberately exclude the settings store from it; your lists and chat history are included, because losing them on a new phone would be worse than backing them up. You can turn backup off in your device's system settings.

Section 03

What leaves your device

Everything the app sends out, in full:

Google AdMob Advertising
Serves the app-open and interstitial ads shown to free users. Google's SDK may receive your Advertising ID, IP address, device and OS information, coarse location derived from that IP, and interactions with an ad. Not requested at all for Premium subscribers, and not requested before consent where consent is required.
Firebase Analytics Usage
Which screens are opened (as fixed names such as country_detail — never which country), whether the paywall was shown, whether a trial started, and that a message was sent in Ask AI (the fact only, never the text). Your Premium status rides along as a property. Google assigns an app-instance identifier; we never attach a name or e-mail.
Firebase Crashlytics Diagnostics
If the app crashes or hits a handled error: the stack trace, device model, OS version, app version and the state of the Premium flag. Used to fix defects, nothing else.
Firebase Realtime Database — launch log Anonymous
One record each time the app comes to the foreground, containing exactly four fields: the date and time (Türkiye time), the fixed platform label android LC, and a country code. No identifier of any kind is stored — no user id, device id or session id — so the records cannot be tied together or traced back to you. The country comes from your mobile network or SIM, falling back to your device's region setting; it is not GPS, and no permission is involved.
Firebase Remote Config Configuration
The app fetches configuration values (such as the key used to reach the AI service). This is a download; no personal data of yours is sent to obtain it.
OpenAI Only in Ask AI
Only when you send a message in the Ask AI tab: your message, the recent messages in that same country's conversation, the country's name and your app language. See section 5.
Google Play Billing Subscription
Google processes the purchase and tells the app one thing: whether the subscription is owned. We never see or handle your card, billing address or Google account.
Google Maps One screen only
The optional "Show on world map" screen loads Google's map tiles and is therefore governed by Google's own privacy policy. The Map tab is not: it is drawn by the app from bundled data and works with no network at all.
What is never sent. Your lists and the countries in them, which country pages you open, your contacts, photos, files, calendar, precise location, or anything you view in the in-app browser. The flags, facts, outlines and rankings are read from files inside the app, so browsing the almanac itself generates no request at all.
Section 04

Advertising and consent

Free use of the app is funded by two ad formats: a full-screen ad when the app is opened, and an occasional one when you close a country page. There are no banner ads and no rewarded ads.

If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland

On first launch the app shows Google's consent form (via the Google User Messaging Platform) and requests no ad, and initialises no ad SDK, until you have answered. You can change or withdraw your answer at any time from Settings → About → Ad privacy options, which is shown wherever that form applies.

Everywhere

  • Subscribe to Premium and no ad is ever requested — the ad code is switched off entirely, not merely hidden.
  • Reset or delete your Advertising ID in Android's Settings → Privacy → Ads. Deleting it stops personalised advertising app-wide.
  • US residents: we do not sell personal information for money. Personalised advertising may count as "sharing" or "targeted advertising" under some state laws; the controls above are how you opt out, and Google's own opt-outs apply as well.
Section 05

The Ask AI tab

Every country page has an optional Ask AI tab. It does nothing until you type something and send it. When you do, the app sends to OpenAI — over an encrypted connection — your message, a short tail of the earlier messages in that same country's conversation, the country's name, and your app language, so the reply comes back in the right language.

  • Your conversation is stored on your device. Turning off Save chat history deletes all of it immediately.
  • We send OpenAI no identifier — no account, device id or advertising id — so the messages are not linked to you by us.
  • Answers are generated by a language model and can be wrong. Treat them as a starting point, not as fact, and never as legal, medical, financial or travel advice.
Please don't type anything sensitive. The chat is a general-knowledge tool about countries. Do not enter your name, address, passport or ID numbers, payment details, health information, or anything about another person you would not want processed by a third-party service. OpenAI's handling of API data is governed by OpenAI's privacy policy.
Section 06

Permissions

The app declares four permissions and no more:

INTERNET
Ads, the AI tab, the in-app browser, the Google map screen and crash reporting. The reference data itself needs no connection.
ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE
To tell whether you are online, so online-only sections show an "offline" notice instead of failing.
POST_NOTIFICATIONS
Asked once, after the launch screens, only so the daily country notification can appear. Say no and everything else keeps working; the two toggles in Settings → Notifications turn it off later. Premium subscribers receive no notifications at all.
AD_ID
Added by Google's advertising library so ads can be measured and, where you allow it, personalised.

There is no location, camera, microphone, contacts, storage or phone permission, and there is no way for the app to acquire one — it would have to be declared here first.

Section 07

Links and the in-app browser

Country pages can open Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, YouTube, Google Maps or a web search in the app's built-in browser or in your own browser. Those are other people's websites: once a page loads, what it collects is governed by its own privacy policy, not this one. You choose which search engine is used in Settings → Preferences → Search engine.

We do not record which links you follow, and the app sends no browsing history anywhere.

Section 09

Keeping and deleting

On your device
Kept until you delete it. Uninstalling the app removes all of it. You can also clear it from Android's Settings → Apps → List of Countries → Storage → Clear data, or erase just the chats with the Save chat history toggle.
Analytics and crash reports
Held by Google for the retention period configured in Firebase, then deleted or aggregated by Google. We do not keep our own copy.
Ad data
Held by Google under Google's own retention rules. We receive none of it.
The launch log
Old date nodes are pruned periodically. Because the records contain no identifier, an individual record cannot be found or removed on request — there is nothing in it to search by.
Ask AI messages
Retained by OpenAI under its API terms, on our behalf; we do not store them on any server of ours, because we operate none.
We run no server and hold no database of users. There is nothing for us to look up, export or delete on request, which is the whole point of building it this way.
Section 10

Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live you may have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to the processing of your personal data, to portability, and to lodge a complaint with your data protection authority. Because we hold no account and no identifiable record, the practical routes are:

  • Delete everything — uninstall the app, or clear its data.
  • Stop ad personalisation — the ad privacy options row, your Advertising ID settings, or Premium.
  • Stop notifications — either toggle in Settings → Notifications, or the system permission.
  • Delete your chats — turn off Save chat history.
  • Ask us — write to the address in section 15 and we will help as far as the data allows.

For data Google or OpenAI hold about you as their own controller, please use their controls: Google · OpenAI.

Section 11

Children

The app is a general-audience reference tool. It is not directed to children under 13 (or the equivalent minimum age where you live), and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has provided personal data through the app — realistically, only by typing it into the AI chat — contact us and we will act on it. Parents should note that the app contains a web browser and an AI chat, and that Google Play's parental controls apply.

Section 12

International transfers

Google and OpenAI process data on servers outside your country, including in the United States. Where data is transferred out of the EEA or the UK, those providers rely on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses and, where applicable, the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. We transfer nothing ourselves beyond what is listed in section 3.

Section 13

Security

Data on your device sits in the app's private sandbox, which Android keeps from other apps. Every request the app makes goes over HTTPS. No system is perfectly secure, but the app's design limits the damage of any single failure: there is no account to steal, no password to leak and no server-side database of readers to breach.

Section 14

Changes

If the app starts collecting something new, this page changes first and its effective date moves. Material changes will also be noted in the Google Play release notes. Continuing to use the app after a change means you accept the updated policy; if you don't, uninstalling ends all collection immediately.

Section 15

Contact

Questions about this policy, or about anything the app does with data:

thehelloworld.apps@gmail.com

Write in whichever language you prefer. We answer data-protection requests within 30 days.