Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Film Heaven is built and published by Orcas Informatica Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, at Flat 11 Wolsey Court, Windmill Lane, Cheshunt, Waltham Cross, EN8 9AA, United Kingdom.

For the purposes of the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, Orcas Informatica Ltd is the data controller for personal data processed by the Film Heaven app. You can reach us at [email protected].

2. The short version

3. What we collect

Everything the app holds falls into one of the rows below. Nothing else is collected.

What we deliberately do not collect

• No advertising or device identifiers.
• No location data, of any precision.
• No contacts, calendar, SMS, call log, microphone or camera-roll scanning.
• No behavioural analytics — the app ships with no analytics or crash-reporting SDK, so we do not receive a record of which screens you opened.
• No payment details. Film Heaven is free and has no in-app purchases.

4. Children's data

Film Heaven is a family app, and a family record can contain children. We take that seriously, so please read this section even if you skip the others.

A family member's name, date of birth and photograph are personal data about a child. We hold them for one purpose only: to work out what each person is old enough to be offered. They are never used for profiling or advertising, are never shared with a third party, and are readable only by your own signed-in account.

• A date of birth is the point of the feature. If you would rather not give a real one, the app still works — the age filtering is simply less accurate.
• Photographs are optional. An avatar can be a drawn costume instead, and the dressing room exists partly so that no real photograph of a child ever needs to leave the phone.
• A family member's name is shown only inside your own app. The single exception is the Films Wanted board, which shows the household display name you chose — pick something you are happy for other families to read.
• Deleting the account deletes the children's data with it, in the same operation. See section 13.

If you believe a child's data has reached us without a responsible adult's involvement, write to [email protected] and we will delete it.

5. What stays on the device

The phone is the source of truth for that phone. Every save is written to the device first and uploaded second, so the app keeps working with no signal — and a failed upload is recorded and retried rather than losing your edit.

These never leave the device at all:

• Your game tallies and the awards read off them.
• The sky you picked and the tune you picked.
• Whether sound is on.
• The answer to the "what do you like watching?" question asked on first run.

Uninstalling the app removes all of the above. It does not remove your account or your synced family record — for that, see section 13.

6. What is synced, and why

If you sign in, one document per account is kept in Google Firebase Firestore, keyed to your account's unique identifier: your family name, contact email, country, the list of members, and — in collections underneath it — your marked films and your unfound-film notes.

The reason is simply that a phone gets lost, dropped or replaced. Without this, a new phone means retyping every family member and every film you have ever marked.

Photographs are dropped rather than truncating anything else. If a family record with photographs would exceed the size a Firestore document allows, the app removes the photographs — and only the photographs — before uploading. Names, dates, countries and costumes are what the account is for. The phone that took the photograph still has it.

7. What other families can see

One screen, and one only: Films Wanted. When a search comes up empty the app offers a notepad, and a request you choose to publish appears on a board that every signed-in household can read. A published request contains:

• the film title you asked for,
• the household display name on your account,
• an optional note of up to 140 characters, and
• the date.

Nothing else. The requests are stored in a separate collection precisely so that opening them up does not also open up the family records sitting beside them — the children's names and dates of birth are in a different place entirely and are readable only by your own account. You can delete a request you posted.

Do not write anything into a request note that you would not want other households to read.

8. Third parties

We do not sell personal data. We do not share it for anybody's independent marketing. Firebase acts on our instructions as a processor; OMDb receives a search query, which is not tied to your identity.

9. Lawful basis

• Performance of a contract — holding your account, your family members and your lists so that the app does what you installed it to do.
• Legitimate interests — keeping the service running and secure, and answering the messages you send us. We have considered your interests and rights, and since the data is minimal and never used for profiling or advertising, we consider this balance appropriate.
• Consent — publishing a film request to the shared Films Wanted board, and adding an optional photograph. Both are entirely optional and can be withdrawn by deleting the request or the photograph.

10. How long we keep it

• Your family record and film lists: until you delete your account. They are not on a timer — an account nobody touches for two years still has its children's names in it, which is exactly why deleting it is one screen away.
• Published film requests: until you delete them, or until your account is deleted.
• On-device data: until you uninstall or clear the app's storage.
• Support and deletion-request correspondence: up to 24 months, so we can show a request was actioned.

11. Security

• Everything travels over HTTPS/TLS.
• Server-side security rules — not app-side checks — are what separate one family's record from another's. Every read and write is verified against the signed-in account's identity on Google's servers, so an unpacked copy of the app cannot reach another household's data.
• Passwords are handled by Firebase Authentication; we never see or store them.
• No system is perfect. If a breach affects your rights and freedoms we will notify the Information Commissioner's Office within 72 hours and tell you where required.

12. Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• Access a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Rectify anything inaccurate — most of it you can edit in the app.
• Erase it, which the app does in one screen.
• Restrict or object to processing.
• Portability — receive your data in a machine-readable format.
• Withdraw consent where consent is the basis.

Write to [email protected]. We respond within 30 days. If you are not satisfied you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk, 0303 123 1113).

13. Deleting everything

If you have already uninstalled the app, use the account deletion request form on this site. Tell us the email address the account uses. We will confirm receipt and complete the deletion within 30 days.

A deletion removes: your Firebase Authentication account, your family document, every family member's name, date of birth, photograph and costume, every film you marked, every unfound-film note, and any film requests you published. On-device data goes when you uninstall the app or clear its storage.

14. International transfers

Firebase is operated by Google. Data may be processed on servers outside the United Kingdom, including in the United States. Where that happens, transfers are covered by the safeguards Google provides — the UK International Data Transfer Addendum and the EU Standard Contractual Clauses — under Firebase's own data-processing terms.

15. Changes to this policy

If we change what the app collects, this page changes with it and the "last updated" date at the top moves. A change that materially affects how your data is used will be announced in the app before it takes effect. The current version is always the one on this page.

16. Contact us