What the app keeps, and what it doesn't.
This is the privacy policy for the Long Story Short app on iPhone and Android, and for the game at sheets.works/long-story-short. It is written to be read. Last updated 1 October 2026.
Who we are
Long Story Short is made by Honey Bright Path, a partnership registered in India, at 107 Subhanjali Sehkari Awas, Etawah, Uttar Pradesh 206001. GSTIN 09AATFH6567L1ZD. For anything in this policy, write to akash@sheets.works.
The short version
The app works without an account. If you sign in, we keep your email, the name you give us, your game record and the stories you keep, so they follow you to another phone. There are no ads, no advertising trackers, and we do not sell or share your data with anyone for their own use. You can ask for the account to be deleted from inside the app, and within a day everything tied to it goes.
What stays on your phone
Without an account, everything stays on the device: which stories you have read and kept, the sections you picked, your game boards, your streak, your stickers, your appearance setting. Deleting the app deletes all of it.
What we collect when you sign in
Signing in is optional. If you do, we keep:
- Your email address. By email, we send you a six-digit code to prove it is yours. With Google or Apple, their sign-in tells us your email and, if you allow it, your name. We never see your Google or Apple password.
- The name you give us and where you read from. At sign-up the app asks for your location once, with your permission, and keeps only the state and country it resolves to; the coordinates are not stored. You can type the place instead. The place picks your edition and your local stories, and later which offers you see.
- Your game record. Which days you played, won, how many tries, your streak, your Hard games, and the stickers you have earned.
- The stories you keep and the sections you picked, so they appear on another phone when you sign in there.
- A device token for notifications, only if you turn notifications on. We use it to send the morning knock and nothing else. Turn notifications off and we stop.
Purchases
Everything you buy is sold by Apple's App Store or Google Play. They take the payment and hold your card details; we never see them. What we receive from the store is a receipt that says which item you bought, so we can switch it on in your account. We keep that receipt for as long as the law on tax records asks us to.
If you gift or sponsor a day, the sentence you write and the name you ask us to show appear on that day's puzzle for every player, on the site and in the app. That is the point of the product, and you should write it knowing it is public.
What we do not do
- No advertising, and no advertising identifiers.
- No third-party analytics inside the app. The app reports to our own server how many stories were read and shared, as counts, so we know what people use.
- No selling, renting or trading of anything about you.
- No reading of your contacts, photos or microphone. The app asks for none of those permissions. Location is asked for once, at sign-up, and only coarsely.
Where it is kept
Account data lives on Google Cloud (Firebase) and Amazon Web Services, in the United States, with the usual encryption in transit and at rest. The stories and photographs themselves are public files on a content delivery network; nothing about you is attached to them.
Who else sees anything
- Apple and Google, for sign-in and for purchases, under their own policies.
- Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, which host our servers and process data on our behalf.
- The news outlets. Tapping an outlet on a card opens their page in your browser, and from there their policy applies. We send them nothing.
We would hand data to a court or a government only if the law required it, and we would tell you if we were allowed to.
How long we keep it
For as long as the account exists. Delete the account and we remove your email, name, place, game record, kept stories and device token within 30 days. Purchase receipts stay as long as tax law requires, with nothing beyond the receipt itself. Backups roll off within 35 days.
Deleting your account
In the app: Account, then Delete account. That sends us one email from your address, and we delete the account by hand within a day. Or write to akash@sheets.works from the address you signed in with.
Your rights
Wherever you are, you can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Email the address above. If you are in the European Union, the United Kingdom, California or another place with its own privacy law, you have these rights by law as well as by our promise, and you can complain to your local regulator. We will answer within 30 days.
Children
The app is for people 13 and over. We do not knowingly keep an account for anyone younger. If a child has made one, write to us and we will remove it.
The website
The game on sheets.works uses the same account and the same rules. The site uses Google Analytics and a Cloudflare performance beacon to count visits; neither is used for advertising. The rest of sheets.works has its own privacy policy.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, the app will say so the next time you open it, and the date at the top will move. Small wording changes will just appear here.
Contact
Honey Bright Path, 107 Subhanjali Sehkari Awas, Etawah, Uttar Pradesh 206001, India. akash@sheets.works.