Plain English summary
Made Up News is a free, ad-supported reader for our satirical news site. The app keeps your reading habits between you and your device wherever it reasonably can. We use Google AdMob to serve banner ads at the bottom of articles, and that’s the main place data leaves your device. If you opt in when iOS asks, ads will be personalised; if you don’t, they’ll still appear but won’t be tailored to you.
We do not run user accounts. We do not collect your name, email address, phone number, or location.
What the app does on your device
- Saved articles: when you tap the bookmark on an article, the article’s title, excerpt, body, author name, publication date and image URL are stored locally on your device using Apple’s SwiftData framework. We do not send this list anywhere. Deleting the app removes it.
- Settings: your preferred daily push time, theme (light / dark / system) and notification opt-in flag are stored locally in iOS user defaults. They never leave the device.
- Daily push notification: if you turn this on in Settings, iOS itself schedules a daily local notification. The notification fires on your device; no server is contacted to deliver it.
What we collect, and through whom
- App Tracking Transparency (ATT): when you first open an article, iOS asks whether you allow Made Up News to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites. This question is asked once per app install. Your answer is held by iOS and respected by us and by AdMob.
- Google AdMob (banner ads): Google’s SDK runs in the article reader to request a banner ad from AdMob’s network. If you allowed tracking, AdMob receives your Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) and standard request metadata (device type, iOS version, IP address, advertising context) which Google uses to serve personalised ads. If you did not allow tracking, AdMob still serves an ad but without the IDFA, and the ad is non-personalised. Google’s full handling of this data is described in Google’s Privacy & Terms.
- Article content: the app fetches articles from
https://madeupnews.co.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts. Standard HTTP request
metadata (IP address, user-agent) is visible to our hosting provider and to Cloudflare, which fronts the site for caching and security. We do not associate that traffic with you personally.
We do not use analytics SDKs in v1. No PostHog, no Firebase, no Crashlytics.
Children
The app is rated 12+ for satirical content. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 13. Made Up News is satire and may not be appropriate for younger readers.
Your choices
- Tracking: change at any time in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking → Made Up News.
- Notifications: turn off in Made Up News → Settings → Daily push, or in iOS Settings → Notifications → Made Up News.
- Saved articles: delete individual items by swiping in the Saved tab, or all of them by deleting the app.
Changes
If we change what data the app collects or shares, this policy will be updated. Material changes will be flagged on the website and in the next app update’s release notes.
Contact
Please submit a message via the contact page if you would like to get in touch.