About zbyld

We build apps and games that are useful, and that don't collect information they have no business collecting. Here is why, and what we promise.

Why privacy matters

Privacy isn't about having something to hide. It's about having a say. What you read, where you go, who you talk to, what you buy and what worries you at 2 a.m. add up to a very detailed portrait of you. Whoever holds that portrait can use it to predict you, nudge you and sometimes charge you more.

Data that is collected can also be lost. Breaches, leaks, bought-and-sold databases and policy changes after a company is acquired all happen, and once personal information is out there you can't take it back. The only data that can't leak or be misused is data that was never collected in the first place.

Privacy is also a matter of dignity, especially for children, who deserve to grow up without a permanent record of every tap.

Why we miss the 80s and 90s

Software used to be something you owned. You bought a game, put it in the machine and it was yours. It didn't phone home, ask you to sign in, show you ads between levels or need an update to keep working. Arcades and cartridges were simple deals: you gave over some coins or cash, and you got an evening of fun.

The games were small, bold and made to be played. The pixels were chunky and the sound was synthesized, and nobody was measuring how to keep you tapping for one more minute. We miss that honesty, and it's why we make the Back to the 80s collection.

How apps lost their way

Many apps start out sharp and helpful. Then the pressure to grow and monetise sets in. Over the years the product can slide from serving its users to extracting from them: more prompts, more tracking, more upsells, more things that used to be free now behind a paywall. Writer Cory Doctorow calls this “enshittification”, and wrote a book about it. We prefer a gentler name: user-value erosion. Nobody has to be a villain for it to happen. Each small step makes sense on a spreadsheet, and together they leave the person using the app worse off.

That erosion has a safety cost too:

• Too many permissions. A flashlight asking for your contacts or location, or a game asking for your microphone, is a warning sign. Every permission is a door, and every door is something to defend.
• Hidden third parties. Most apps bundle code from advertising and analytics companies. You install one app and quietly deal with a dozen businesses you never heard of.
• Accounts for no reason. Needing a login to read a PDF or play a game gives a company your identity, and a way to link everything you do to it.
• Consent fatigue and dark patterns. Pop-ups designed to be dismissed, “Accept all” in bright colours and “Manage options” buried in grey text train us to click yes without reading.
• Permission creep. An update quietly adds a new permission. Few people re-read the list.

“But I never shared that”

Most of us have lived some version of this. Over dinner, a family chats about getting a puppy. They never type a word about it. By the next morning, every app on the phone is showing dog food, pet insurance and adoption centres. It feels like the phone was listening.

Usually it wasn't the microphone. The reality is, if anything, a bit more unsettling: ads are targeted using a patchwork of signals that you never consciously handed over. The signals include:

• The searches, videos and pages you looked at, even briefly.
• Your location, and the places you go with the rest of the family.
• What the people around you search for, since devices on the same home network or in the same places are linked together.
• Purchases and loyalty cards, sold on through data brokers.
• Identifiers shared between apps and ad networks, so something you did in one app shows up in another.

The result feels like mind-reading, but it's just profiling at a scale and level of detail we never agreed to. And the people building the profile have every reason to keep collecting more.

Why subscriptions can feel like a cheat

A subscription isn't wrong in itself, since software does cost money to maintain. But it often leaves people feeling cheated, for good reasons:

• Something you bought once becomes something you rent. Stop paying and you lose what you had.
• Prices creep up, features move to a higher tier and free plans shrink.
• Signing up takes one tap; cancelling takes a maze.
• Small charges multiply. A handful of “just a few dollars a month” subscriptions can quietly add up to a significant bill, for apps you barely open.
• Free trials roll into paid plans, and you forget until the renewal email.

It doesn't have to be that way. Slack's Fair Billing Policy is a good example of a subscription that tracks real use: you are billed only for members who were active in the billing period, and when someone goes inactive you get a prorated credit for the unused time. You pay for the value you actually received, not for seats or plans that sit idle. That is the spirit we think subscriptions should have.

When the price isn't clear and the value isn't ongoing, people are right to feel taken advantage of. We will always tell you plainly what an app costs before you install or buy it.

Ask first, explain why, ask for little

Two simple rules guide everything we build:

1. Be upfront about permissions. If an app needs a permission, we ask at the moment it's needed, explain in plain words what it's for, and the app keeps working as far as possible if you say no. Every app's page and privacy policy lists exactly what it requests.
2. Don't keep permissions we don't need. If a feature goes away or a permission turns out to be unnecessary, we remove it. Our rule is to ask only for what the app needs to do its job, and nothing for “maybe later”.

For example, Back to the 80s requests no permissions at all, not even internet access. zbyld scan asks for the camera, because scanning a page can't work without it.

Other things worth knowing

• “Free” usually has a price. If an app is free and has no clear way of earning money, ask who is paying, and what for.
• Check the permission list before you install. Does it make sense for what the app does?
• Review your permissions now and then. Android lets you see and change them in Settings, under Privacy.
• Use the least revealing option. “Only while using the app” beats “always” for location, and “selected photos” beats “all photos”.
• Be wary of sign-in-with-everything. Linking accounts also links the data between them.
• Delete what you don't use. An unused app can still hold permissions and data.
• Children deserve extra care. They can't weigh the trade-offs, so the safest apps for them collect nothing.
• You can ask. Under many privacy laws you can ask a company what it holds about you and have it deleted. Companies that hold little have little to explain.

What we promise

If you think we've fallen short of this, or you have an idea for something we should build, we'd like to hear from you.

• Support: support@zbyld.com
• General contact and ideas: contact@zbyld.com