Privacy Policy

Who we are

U STAR is made by EZ Tech Industries LLC ("EZ Tech", "we", "us"). We're responsible for the personal information described in this policy. You can reach us at privacy@ustar.world.

Who U STAR is for

U STAR is for people 16 and older. The game asks your age before you play and doesn't let you continue if you're under 16. See Children.

What we collect

Your account

• An anonymous player ID. When you first play, Unity Authentication creates a player ID for you. We don't ask for your email, phone number or real name to play.
• Your profile: the name and POPit handle you choose, your bio, your profile colour, any title you've earned, and when you were last active.

Your Star and your progress

• Your Star's look: body type, height, face, colours, hair, facial hair and outfit. It's saved on your phone and sent to the other players in your game session so they can see your Star.
• Progress: your Coins balance and a record of each change to it (what you earned and what you bought), the items you own, your Star Level and the XP behind it, shifts you've worked, workouts, fights (who you fought and the result), daily rewards and POPit boosts.
• Events: if you take part in the Auditions, your tape, the likes it gets, and the results.

What you create and share

• POPit: photos and clips you capture in the game (a clip carries the game's sound, and your voice only if you turned the camera's Mic on), captions and tags, likes, comments, follows, friend requests, LIVE titles, LIVE comments and hearts, and which posts you've already seen (so we can show you new ones and count views).
• Messages and calls: direct messages you send to friends, and a record of calls (who called whom, when, and whether it was answered). The sound of a call isn't recorded. We don't use your messages for advertising; we may look at them if we need to investigate a report or a safety concern, or if the law requires it.
• Safety: reports you make and the players you block.

POPit photos, clips and LIVE replays come from the game's own cameras, so they show the game and your Star, not your real camera.

Purchases

The App Store handles payment, so we never see your card or payment details. When you buy Coins or a membership, our server checks Apple's signed record of the purchase and keeps the product, transaction IDs, purchase date, the environment (real or test) and, for memberships, when the current period ends. We use it to give you what you bought, restore it, prevent fraud and keep accounts.

How the game is used

The game sends our server a small set of events tied to your anonymous player ID: the start of a session, your platform and app version, and steps like an offer being shown, a store result or a paid ad impression, each with a few values. We use them to count daily players, understand what's working and keep the game running well. We don't use a third-party analytics service for this. Unity, our game engine, may also collect technical information such as your device model, operating system and crash details.

Technical information

Like any online service, the servers you connect to (ours and our providers') receive your IP address and basic connection data. We don't store IP addresses in our own database, except in the one-way, salted form described under This website. We don't collect your precise location.

Camera: face scan and face tracking

U STAR uses your front camera only for features you choose. Camera pictures are processed on your phone and are never uploaded.

Face scan (in the Star creator)

• If you tap Scan my face and agree, the game uses your front camera for a few seconds while you look at it and turn your head. A face-finding model runs on your phone to measure your face shape and read your skin, hair and eye colours, and to set your Star's face sliders and colours.
• Your Star also gets a face picture made from the scan: an image of your face's colouring (your brows, skin, lips and facial hair) laid onto your Star's own face. The face picture is saved to your U STAR account on our storage, and other players see it on your Star.
• The camera's photos themselves aren't kept. Only the slider values and colours (saved on your phone with your Star) and the face picture are.
• Only scan your own face. You can undo the scan, rescan or remove the face picture in the Star creator. You can also ask us to remove it at privacy@ustar.world, and it's deleted when you delete your account.

Face tracking ("Face")

• Where it's available, Face lets your Star copy your expressions while a phone camera screen is open in the game (the POPit camera, or going LIVE). It's off until you turn it on, and the game explains it and asks first.
• The camera picture is read on your phone and never leaves it. Other players receive only your Star's expression as a few numbers (such as how open your eyes and mouth are), live, and they aren't stored.
• Turn it off with the Face button on a camera screen, in Settings → Face tracking (camera), or by removing U STAR's camera access in your iPhone's settings.

We use the face scan and face tracking only to make and animate your Star. We don't use them to recognise or identify you, for advertising, or for anything else, and we don't sell or share them beyond what's described here.

Voice and microphone

• Voice chat is opt-in (Settings → Voice chat) and runs on Vivox, a Unity service. Your mic starts muted; when it's on, your voice goes live to the players near you in the city, to the friend you're calling, to a studio room you're hosting, or to the viewers of your LIVE. Voice isn't recorded or stored by us.
• While you're LIVE with your mic on, how loudly you're talking (a single number) is also sent live to the players in your session so your Star's mouth moves. It isn't stored.
• Your voice in clips is optional: the POPit camera's Mic starts off. If you turn it on, your voice is recorded into the clips you film and posted with them, so anyone who can see a clip can hear it.
• You can mute anyone just for you, and blocked players can't hear you or be heard by you.

What other players can see

Blocking someone hides your posts, messages, voice and fight requests from each other.

How we use information

• To run the game: sign you in, save your progress, put you in the city with other players, deliver messages, calls and posts, and give you what you buy or earn.
• To keep it fair and safe: check purchases and rewards, stop cheating, farming and fraud, enforce our Terms and Community Guidelines, and act on reports.
• To improve it: fix problems, balance the game and understand which features people enjoy.
• To show rewarded ads you choose to watch, and to pay out their rewards.
• To contact you, only if you've joined the launch list or written to us.

If you're in the European Economic Area or the UK, our legal bases are: performing our contract with you (running the game and its features); our legitimate interests (security, preventing cheating and abuse, moderation, and improving the game); your consent (face scan, face tracking, voice chat, your voice in clips, personalised ads and launch emails, which you can withdraw at any time); and legal obligations (such as keeping purchase records).

Ads

U STAR shows video ads only when you choose to watch one for a reward. They're served by Google AdMob and are limited to content rated for teens. When an ad is shown, Google may collect information such as your IP address, device information, how you interact with the ad and, on iPhone, your device's advertising identifier, but only if you allow tracking when iOS asks. Where the law requires it (for example in the EEA and the UK), you're asked for consent first through Google's consent form, and you can change your choice later in the game's Settings → Ad privacy choices (shown where this applies).

When you finish a rewarded ad, Google sends our server a signed confirmation (a transaction ID and which ad unit it was), and only then do we give you the reward. POPit also shows a sponsored card every so often, for the plaza's shops, our events or brands we work with. We choose these cards ourselves and they don't involve any tracking. U STAR Plus and Ad-free members don't see them.

Google's use of information is described in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.

Who we share it with

We don't sell your personal information. We share it only with the companies that help us run U STAR, who may use it only to provide their service to us, and in the situations listed after the table.

We may also share information if the law requires it, to protect the safety of players or others, to investigate fraud or abuse, or as part of a merger, sale or reorganisation of our business (you'd be told about any change to how your information is handled).

This website

• No tracking. ustar.world doesn't use cookies, analytics or advertising trackers. Our host, Vercel, and the font service, jsDelivr, receive your IP address when you load a page.
• The launch list. If you ask us to email you when U STAR launches, we keep your email address, which part of the site you signed up from, the time, and a one-way, salted hash of your IP address that we use only to stop abuse. We use your email only to tell you when U STAR launches. Every email will have a way to unsubscribe, and you can ask us to remove you at any time at privacy@ustar.world.
• POPit share pages. A link to a POPit post opens it on ustar.world, with the post and its author's public profile (name, handle, colour, Star Level and title). Posts that are deleted or taken down stop showing. Share pages ask search engines not to list them.
• Abuse limits. To stop the site being flooded, we count requests per visitor using the same one-way, salted hash of the IP address, and clear the counts within a day.

How long we keep it

Deleting your account

In the game, open your Star Phone → Settings → Delete my account, then Delete everything. You need an internet connection. This permanently deletes, on your phone and on our servers: your profile, your Star, Coins, items and Star Level, your POPit posts and their files, your face picture, your likes, comments, follows, friends, messages, notifications, calls and LIVEs, your fights and game events, and your Unity sign-in. It can't be undone. Purchase records are kept without your player ID, as explained above.

Deleting your account doesn't cancel a membership: cancel it in your Apple ID settings. If you can't use the game, see Delete your account for how to ask us by email.

Your choices and rights

• Voice chat: on or off in Settings → Voice chat. Your mic starts muted.
• Your voice in clips: off unless you turn on Mic on the POPit camera.
• Camera: face scan only when you start it; face tracking only when you turn it on. You can also remove U STAR's camera or microphone access in your iPhone's settings.
• Ads and tracking: say no when iOS asks to allow tracking, change it any time in iPhone Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking, and use Settings → Ad privacy choices in the game where it's offered.
• Blocking and muting: block or mute any player from their profile or their player menu.

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access the personal information we hold about you, get a copy of it, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to some uses, withdraw consent, and opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information or of targeted advertising. We don't sell personal information, and you can turn off personalised ads as described above. To use any of these rights, email privacy@ustar.world. Include the Player ID shown in Settings so we can find your account; we may ask you to confirm the account is yours before we act. We'll respond within the time the law requires, and we won't treat you differently for using your rights. If you're not happy with our answer, you can ask us to reconsider, and if you're in the EEA or the UK you can complain to your data protection authority.

Children

U STAR isn't directed to anyone under 16, and the game asks your age before you can play. We don't knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 16, we'll delete it. If you're a parent or guardian and think your child is using U STAR, contact us at privacy@ustar.world.

Where your information is processed

Our database and file storage are hosted in Canada. Our providers, including Unity, Google, Apple and Vercel, may process information in the United States and other countries. When information leaves the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, we rely on safeguards the law recognises, such as standard contractual clauses or adequacy decisions.

Security

Connections to our servers are encrypted, our database isn't open to the public (the game reaches it only through our own server functions, which check each player's sign-in), and access to our systems is limited to the people who need it. No online service is perfectly secure, so we can't promise that information will never be accessed without permission. If something goes wrong, we'll let you know when the law requires it.

Changes to this policy

We'll update this policy when U STAR changes. We'll change the date at the top, and if a change is significant we'll tell you in the game before it takes effect.

Contact us