Privacy Policy

1Who we are

Video Downloader is an Android app published by Hello World Games & Apps ("we", "us"). This policy covers the app distributed on Google Play under the package name research.web.browser.oz, and nothing else.

The app is a web browser that finds and saves downloadable video from pages you open in it. Using it does not require an account, and we do not operate a server that the app reports back to.

2What we collect

Nothing. We operate no backend, and the app sends us no data of any kind.

Specifically, the app contains no analytics library, no crash-reporting library and no usage-measurement code. We do not receive your browsing history, the addresses you visit, the videos you detect or download, your file names, your IP address, your device identifiers or your location.

This is a statement about us. The advertising and billing services described in section 4 are separate companies with their own collection practices, and the sites you browse to are separate again. Those are the parts worth reading closely.

3What the app stores on your device

All of the following is written to your phone's own storage and is readable only by the app (except downloaded files, which are yours to use anywhere):

Uninstalling the app deletes every item above except the finished downloads, which stay in your Downloads folder because they belong to you.

4Third-party services

Three Google services are built into the app. Each has its own privacy policy, and data they collect is handled under those policies rather than this one.

Google AdMob — advertising (free version only)

The free version shows banner advertising supplied by Google AdMob. To serve and measure those ads, Google may collect your device's advertising ID, IP address (from which approximate location can be derived), device and OS information, and your interactions with the ads. The app declares the AD_ID permission for this reason.

In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, a Google-provided consent form (the User Messaging Platform) appears before any personalised ad is requested, and your choice is what decides whether ads may be personalised. You can revisit that choice at any time in the app under Settings → Consent preferences. The row is shown only where consent rules apply, so it will be absent elsewhere.

See How Google uses advertising data and the Google Privacy Policy.

Google Play Billing — the Premium subscription

Premium is sold and processed entirely by Google Play. Payment happens inside Google's own purchase sheet, and we never see or receive your card details, billing address or Google account. The app asks Play a single question — whether this account currently holds the subscription — and stores only the yes-or-no answer. See the Google Privacy Policy.

Google Play services

The app is distributed through Google Play and uses Google Play services, which may collect diagnostic and device information independently of the app. See Google's privacy policy and, for delivery and update data, Google Play's terms.

5Permissions the app requests

The app does not request access to your contacts, photos, microphone, camera, precise location, call logs or messages, and it does not read the files of other apps.

6Browsing and downloading

When you open a page, you are connecting to that website directly from your device. That site — and any service embedded in it — can see your IP address and set cookies exactly as it would in any other browser. Their privacy policies apply to those visits, not ours.

Anything you type into the address bar that is not a web address is sent to your chosen search engine: Google, DuckDuckGo or Bing, selectable under Settings → Search engine. That query goes to the search provider, not to us.

When a download starts, the app requests the media file from the server that hosts it. So that the server treats the request the way it treated the browser tab the video was found in, that request carries the page address it was found on and, where the site set them, the cookies your browsing already stored for that site — the same cookies the page itself would send. They go only to the host serving the file, exactly as they would during normal playback. No copy of the file, its address, its name or those cookies is sent anywhere else, and none of it reaches us.

The built-in ad and tracker blocker matches requests against a host list bundled inside the app. The matching happens on your device; no browsing data is sent anywhere to perform it.

7Backups and device transfers

Android can back an app's data up to your Google account and restore it onto a new device. We deliberately exclude the sensitive parts from both channels:

• Excluded — browsing history, the download queue, partly downloaded files, and the Premium flag (which is re-derived from Google Play instead).
• Included — your theme choice, ad-blocker toggle and other simple preferences, so a new device feels the same.

In other words, your browsing history never leaves the device in a backup. Any backup that does occur is held in your own Google account under Google's terms; we have no access to it.

8Your controls

• Clear browsing data — Settings → Clear browsing data removes your history, cookies and cached pages in one action. Downloaded files are kept.
• Clear history only — the History screen can delete individual pages or clear the list entirely.
• Delete downloads — remove any file from the Downloads screen, or from your device's file manager.
• Ad choices — Settings → Consent preferences, where consent rules apply. You can also reset or delete your advertising ID in Android's own Settings → Privacy → Ads.
• Notifications — turn them off in Android's app settings at any time.
• Uninstall — removes all app data described in section 3, keeping your downloaded files.

9How long data is kept

Because we hold no data, we have no retention period. On-device data stays until you clear it, delete it or uninstall the app. Data collected by Google's advertising and billing services is retained according to Google's policies.

10Children

The app is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. As a general-purpose web browser it can reach the open internet, so a parent or guardian should supervise its use. If you believe a child has provided personal information through a service linked to the app, contact us and we will help you address it with the relevant provider.

11Security

App data sits in Android's private per-app storage, which other apps cannot read. Downloads, ad requests and every page the app itself opens are required to use encrypted HTTPS connections; unencrypted traffic is refused by the app's network configuration.

No method of transmission over the internet or of electronic storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. What we can say is that the smallest attack surface is data that was never collected — which is the design this app takes.

12Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete or export personal data held about you, or to object to its processing. Because we hold no personal data, there is nothing for us to produce or erase — the controls in section 8 already put on-device data entirely in your hands.

For data collected by Google's advertising services, those rights are exercised through Google. Start with your Google Ad Settings and Android's own advertising-ID controls, and see the Google Privacy Policy for how to make a request.

13Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app changes. The effective date at the top of this page always reflects the current version, and the current version is always the one published at this address. Material changes will be reflected here before the app version that introduces them is released.

14Contact

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