Effective: 29 August 2026 Last updated: 30 August 2026
App: Freemason's Encyclopedia (com.imdevelopment.fmapp)
Developer: IMdevelopment — Ilgar Mammadov, Baku, Azerbaijan
Contact: imappdevelopment@outlook.com
Freemason's Encyclopedia is a reader for a public-domain book. It has no accounts, no sign-in, and no server of its own. Everything you do inside the app — the words you read, favourite or write notes about — is stored on your phone and is never sent to us.
Three things do reach outside your phone, all of them run by Google:
Both of those are switched off until you ask for them in the UK, the EEA, Switzerland, South Korea and Turkey, and both can be switched on or off at any time: open the app's menu and tap Crash and usage reports. Everywhere else both are on by default and the same two switches turn them off.
This version of the app shows no advertisements and collects no advertising identifier. Earlier published versions did contain advertising software — if you are upgrading, please read "Earlier versions of this app" below.
This app is published by IMdevelopment, a sole developer (Ilgar Mammadov) based in Baku, Azerbaijan. For questions about this policy or about your data, write to imappdevelopment@outlook.com.
The app keeps two databases and a small settings file in its own private storage, which no other app can read:
| What | Contains |
|---|---|
| The book | The 4,821 encyclopedia articles, shipped inside the app itself |
| Your data | Your favourites, your reading history and the text of any notes you write |
| Settings | Your day/night theme choice, your two reporting switches, whether the Full Edition purchase is unlocked, and whether reviewer access has been switched on |
We have no copy of any of this. Your notes, your favourites and your reading history are not transmitted to us or to anyone else. There is no cloud sync, no account and no server holding your library. If you uninstall the app, this data is deleted with it.
The one exception is Android's own backup, described in section 6.
The Full Edition is a single non-consumable in-app product (fmapp_full_edition) sold through Google Play.
If the app crashes, a report is sent to Google's Firebase Crashlytics so the fault can be fixed. A report contains the technical circumstances of the crash: the fault itself and where in the code it happened, your device model, Android version, the app version, memory and storage state, and a randomly generated installation identifier.
It does not contain your name, your email address, your notes, or which articles you have been reading. The installation identifier is generated by Crashlytics, is specific to this app, and is not linked to your identity.
Where you are decides whether it runs at all, on the same rule as usage measurement below: in the UK, the EEA, Switzerland, South Korea and Turkey it is off until you switch on Send crash reports — in the menu, under Crash and usage reports — and everywhere else it is on by default and that switch turns it off. Reports are kept by Google for 90 days.
We would rather have them from everyone, because a crash reporter that only hears from people who went looking for a switch hears about fewer faults. But the rule that governs this is not about what an identifier is for — it is about storing one on your device at all, and a crash reporter stores one exactly as a counter does.
The app includes Google's Firebase Analytics, which records basic, automatically collected events — the app being opened, updated, brought back to the foreground, and the completion of a purchase. Alongside those it records general technical information: device model, Android version, app version, language, and an approximate region derived from your IP address (roughly, your country).
It is never told which article you are reading. The app logs no events of its own, and the automatic screen record sees a single screen, because the whole app runs inside one.
Where you are decides whether it runs at all. In the UK, the EEA, Switzerland, South Korea and Turkey it is off until you switch on Send usage data, in the menu under Crash and usage reports — nothing is collected before that, and switching it back off stops it again. Everywhere else it is on by default and the same switch turns it off. The app works out which case applies from your SIM's country, falling back to your device's region setting; where it cannot tell, it assumes the stricter one and waits to be asked.
Two things are worth stating plainly:
AD_ID permission, so Analytics falls back to an app-set ID — an identifier that belongs to this app alone, cannot be used to follow you across other apps, and resets if you uninstall the app.Analytics records are kept for two months — the shortest retention Firebase offers — and are then deleted automatically.
Firebase Analytics is operated by Google, which acts as our data processor and retains this data under Google's Privacy Policy. See How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services.
If you have Android backup switched on for your Google account, Android may copy your app data — your favourites, history, notes, theme setting and the two reporting switches — into your own Google Drive backup, and restore it when you set up a new phone. The switches travel on purpose: a reader who turned reporting off should find it still off on the new phone, rather than quietly back on. That backup belongs to you and to Google, not to us; we cannot read it. You can turn it off in your device's system settings.
Two items are deliberately excluded from that backup: the copy of the book (the app rebuilds it) and the record of your purchase (Google Play is asked again on each new device).
The Full Edition can write your favourites, notes and history to a file that you choose the location of, through Android's own file picker, and read such a file back in.
The file is written to wherever you send it and the app's involvement ends there. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is sent to us, and there is no account or sync behind it. This is not a backup service — if you place the file in a cloud folder, send it to yourself, or share it with someone, its privacy from that point is governed by wherever you put it. The file contains your notes in plain, readable text.
This version of the app carries no advertising software of any kind. This is a change, and it is worth being explicit about what came before it.
Versions up to and including 3.1 (the version published before this one) included the AppLovin MAX advertising SDK together with the Meta Audience Network mediation adapter, and declared the Android advertising ID permission (com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID). Where those versions displayed advertisements, that software could collect and transmit to AppLovin and its mediation partners, including Meta, information of the kind ad networks ordinarily use to select and measure advertisements: your device's Google Advertising ID, device and operating-system details, network and coarse location information derived from your IP address, and records of ads requested, shown and interacted with.
Some things to understand about that:
AD_ID permission were taken out of the app entirely — not merely switched off. The version you are reading this in requests no ads, loads no ad code and reads no advertising identifier.If you are reading this because the Play listing used to say "Contains ads": it no longer does, and this section explains why.
The app does not ask for, collect or transmit: your name, email address, phone number, contacts, photos, files outside those you explicitly choose in the file picker, precise or GPS location, microphone or camera input, or any biometric data. It requests no runtime permissions at all.
The app declares two Android permissions of its own, neither of which prompts you:
Firebase and Google Play services add a few housekeeping permissions of their own to the finished app: network state, wake lock, install referrer, and ACCESS_ADSERVICES_ATTRIBUTION. None of them is a runtime permission, none of them prompts you, and none of them reads an advertising identifier. The last one is worth naming despite its off-putting name: it measures app installs and nothing else, and the advertising-ID permissions that do read an advertising identifier — AD_ID and ACCESS_ADSERVICES_AD_ID — are explicitly removed from this app, as described in section 5.
The book itself is stored inside the app; reading, browsing and searching all work with no network connection at all.
This app is a reference work for adults and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. It is not enrolled in Google Play's Designed for Families programme.
Where the UK GDPR or EU GDPR applies to you:
You have the right to ask for access to, correction of, or deletion of personal data relating to you, to object to processing, and to complain to your data protection authority. In practice:
If you are in California or another US state with similar rights: we do not sell or share your personal information, and we do not use it for cross-context behavioural advertising.
Data on your device is kept until you delete it. Crash reports are retained by Google on our behalf for 90 days; analytics records are retained for two months, the shortest period Firebase allows. Both are then deleted automatically.
The developer is based in Azerbaijan, and the Google services described above process data on servers in the United States and elsewhere. Where personal data is transferred out of the UK or EEA, that transfer is covered by the safeguards Google applies as our processor, described in Google's data processing terms.
The developer reads the crash and usage reports from Azerbaijan, which is outside the UK and the EEA. That access is to the technical data described in sections 4 and 5 and to nothing else: there is no account, no contact record and no copy of your notes to look at, because none of it is ever collected.
The complete list of third-party services in this version of the app:
| Service | Purpose | Their policy |
|---|---|---|
| Google Play Billing | Selling and verifying the one-time purchase | policies.google.com/privacy |
| Firebase Crashlytics | Crash reports | firebase.google.com/support/privacy |
| Firebase Analytics | Basic usage counts | firebase.google.com/support/privacy |
There are no advertising networks, no social media SDKs, and no analytics, attribution or tracking services beyond the two Google ones named above. Firebase Analytics does measure app installs through Google Play's install referrer, which is the reason the app carries the ACCESS_ADSERVICES_ATTRIBUTION permission described in section 9; that measurement reads no advertising identifier and is not used for advertising.
If this policy changes, the version at this address is updated and the date at the top changes with it. Material changes — anything that adds a new kind of data collection — will be described in the app's release notes on Google Play.
IMdevelopment — Ilgar Mammadov
Baku, Azerbaijan
imappdevelopment@outlook.com