Privacy Policy

The short version

Little Golf Club works without an account, and if you never sign in, nothing about you leaves your device: the only thing the app asks our server for is the hole of the day and its leaderboard, and everything the game remembers is stored on your device and deleted with the app.

Signing in is optional. It gives you one name and one record on every device you play on, and it is what shared and ranked play will need. If you sign in, we hold a small account for you: an account ID, the display name you choose, and an email address unless you sign in with Apple. We use it only to run your account. We do not sell it, share it for advertising, or track you with it, and you can delete the account from inside the app at any time.

The game has no advertising, no analytics and no tracking.

What the app stores on your device

The game saves these things so it can pick up where you left off. All of it is written to your device's own local app storage:

None of the first four leaves your device unless you sign in; if you do, they are also kept with your account (below).

If you sign in

You can sign in three ways. Each tells us a little, and only what is listed:

Then you choose a display name. It is the name other players see, for example on leaderboards, so it is public. Do not use your real name if you would rather not. Your email address is never shown to other players.

What we hold for an account, then, is: the details your sign-in method gave us (an email address, unless you signed in with Apple), an account ID, the display name, and when the account was created and last signed in.

If you play the hole of the day, we also keep, with your account: that you started it and when, your score, how long the hole took you (measured by our server, from starting to finishing), the shots you played (each one's club, how you played it: where you aimed, how hard, and the shape and spin of the swing, and where it finished), the swing you drew for each shot (the path your finger took across the screen, as points and the times between them), and the clubs in your bag with their distances, so the round can be checked and played again exactly. Your display name, score and time are public on the day's leaderboard, in the app and on our website, beside a player number. Your shots and swings are shown to other players, drawn over the hole and replayed as you drew them, once they have played that day's hole themselves, and to anyone after the day is over. Swings are kept for 30 days after the day, then deleted; a few numbers about each (how long it took, its rhythm, how smooth its line was) stay with your score.

If you play a career round, we keep the same for each of its holes, with your account: the course, the tier and when you started and finished, each hole's score, the shots you played and the swing you drew for each (swings kept for 30 days, then deleted), and the clubs in your bag with their distances. We also keep your career's progress: the points each of your clubs has earned in career rounds, which set how far it carries there. None of it is shown to other players.

If you play a Ranked Daily, we keep the same as for a career round, and your display name, score and time are shown to other signed-in players on that day's board and the week's table for your tier, beside a player number. Medals and the weeks you won are worked out from those results and shown on your profile. If you qualify for a Weekend Open, your display name and each round's score are shown the same way on its standings. At the Pro tier, those results also make a rating, shown with your display name to other signed-in players. In a tournament with friends, its players see your display name and your scores in it; nobody else does. In a ranked match, the other players in it see your display name and your scores in it. When a match or a tournament is played in turns, its players also see your shots on each hole and the swing you drew for each, drawn on the hole and replayed.

Notifications. If you play a ranked match or a tournament played in turns, the app asks whether it may notify you. If you allow it, the app gives our server this device's notification token, kept with your account, and our server asks Apple's push service to deliver a notification to it when it is your turn, when a match starts or ends, or when a turn runs out. The token says nothing about you or your device beyond where to deliver a notification to this app; we do not use it for anything else, and it is removed when you sign out on the device, when Apple tells us it no longer works, or with your account. Notifications waiting to be sent are kept for at most a week. You can turn them off in your device's settings at any time.

Fair play. Our server checks every stroke of the hole of the day and of a career round: it plays the stroke again with the same dice and compares where the ball finished with what your phone showed, reads your swing again to check it is the stroke that was played and that it was drawn in the time it had, and measures how lucky the bounce was. The checks are kept with your score. A fair-play review opens only when they say something is wrong (luck far beyond chance over many strokes, for example), or when several players report your play on more than one day; reports alone never suspend anyone. While a review is open your score keeps its place on the leaderboard, marked under review, and your swings are kept until a moderator decides, then for 90 days more in case you ask us to look again. The moderator may clear you, or suspend you from ranked play. You can report another player's play from the leaderboard: the report records who reported whom, the day and stroke, why and when; only our moderators see it, never the player reported, and it is deleted with either account.

The app proves it is the app. When you play the hole of the day or a career round, the app asks Apple to vouch that it is the genuine Little Golf Club on a genuine Apple device (Apple's App Attest): it makes a key that never leaves your device's secure hardware, Apple certifies the key to our server once, and the app signs each stroke it sends with it. We keep the key's public half, which environment certified it, how many times it has signed, and when, with the account that first certified it, and delete them with that account. They say nothing about you or your device beyond that this app made them.

Your bag, settings and rounds follow your account. If you sign in, the clubs in your bag, your settings (Academy progress included) and your completed rounds are also kept with your account on our server, so they are there on another device or after reinstalling the app. The device keeps them first, as always, and sends a change when it can. A device keeps one account's data at a time: signing in as another account brings that account's in its place, and the first account's stays on the server. They are deleted with the account.

Crash and hang reports. When the app crashes, freezes, or uses too much of the device's processor or storage, Apple's MetricKit gives it a report, usually at its next launch: the steps the app's code was taking, the app's and iOS's versions and the device model (we remove the device's region setting). If you are signed in, the app sends these reports to our server, where they are kept for 90 days without your account: a report says what went wrong, not who it happened to. A guest's are never sent, and are deleted from the device after a week. Separately, if you chose to share analytics with app developers in your device's settings, Apple may share crash reports with us through its developer tools.

Reports and blocks. You can report another player's name, and block a player. A report records who reported whom, why and when; only our moderators see it, never the player reported, and it is deleted with either account. A name reported by five players is hidden, shown as its player number, until a moderator reviews it; a moderator may keep it, or replace it and ask its player to choose another. A block is yours alone: the blocked player is left out of your leaderboards and is not told.

Names are checked against the List of Dirty, Naughty, Obscene, and Otherwise Bad Words (English and Spanish), used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.

Where it is held. The account service is run for us by Supabase, in a data centre in the United States (Amazon Web Services, us-east-1). Supabase processes it on our behalf and may not use it for anything else. Every request the app makes travels over an encrypted connection and, like any request on the internet, carries your device's IP address; the service also receives the version of its software library and of iOS. The service keeps short-lived logs of requests, including IP addresses, for running and securing it. Sign-in codes are emailed for us by Amazon Web Services (Amazon SES), which handles the address and the message only to deliver it. Your strokes on the hole of the day and in career rounds are checked on our own server at Amazon Web Services (us-east-1) as you play them: the account service sends it each stroke, the swing you drew, the clubs in your bag and the hole, never your account or your IP address, and it answers with the checks described under Fair play. It keeps short logs that a call was made and how long it took, not what was in it.

What we do not do with it. We do not sell it. We do not share it with advertisers or data brokers. We do not use it to track you across other apps or websites. We do not email you anything except the sign-in codes you ask for.

What the app does not do

• No advertising, and no advertising identifiers.
• No analytics. No usage data, no telemetry, no session recording, no heatmaps. Crash and hang reports only as described above, from Apple's own MetricKit, without your account.
• No tracking. The app does not track you across other apps or websites and never asks for permission to, because it has no use for it.
• No device permissions. The app never asks for your location, camera, microphone, photos, contacts, health data, or anything else.
• Nothing about you is sent without an account. Signed out, the app makes one kind of request: it fetches the hole of the day and its leaderboard. Nothing about you goes with it, though like any request on the internet it carries your device's IP address.

The app includes one piece of software not made by Apple: Supabase's own library for talking to the account service. It collects nothing of its own. When you ask for a sign-in code by email, the app also opens Cloudflare's Turnstile check, described above; it does not run for any other sign-in.

Our website

littlegolfclub.com sets no cookies and runs no analytics or tracking. Its hole of the day page (littlegolfclub.com/leaderboard.html) asks the game's server for the day's leaderboard from your browser: the names, scores and times already public, read with the same public key the app uses. Nothing about you goes with it, though like any request on the internet it carries your IP address, and it stores nothing in your browser. The home page shows the App Store and Google Play badges from Apple's and Google's own servers, so opening it also reaches them; the privacy page makes no requests of its own, and neither does the invitation page (littlegolfclub.com/join.html), which only reads a tournament's code from its own address to open the app with it.

Backups

The game's saved data lives in your device's normal app storage, so it is included in your device backups if you have them switched on, the same way every other app's data is. Those backups are made by Apple to your own iCloud account or your own computer, under Apple's terms and your own settings, and we have no access to them. You can exclude Little Golf Club from backups in your device's iCloud settings.

On Android

The Android app is the same game, playing by the same rules, and it keeps and sends what this policy describes, with these differences:

• Signing in with Google or Apple happens on Google's or Apple's own web page, opened in your browser, which returns you to the app. Apple's page may ask whether to share your name and email address with us; if you share them, they are stored with your account, and the game does not use or show them. Signing in by email works as above, with Cloudflare's check.
• No crash or hang reports from the app. The Android app sends none. Google Play may collect crash and responsiveness data from your phone (Android vitals) if your device settings allow it, under Google's terms; we see only Google's summaries, which do not identify you.
• No notifications yet. The Android app does not ask for them, and sends no notification token.
• Ranked strokes are checked without a device signature. App Attest is Apple's; the Android app does not sign its strokes, and the server checks them the other ways described above.
• Backups: the Android app keeps its data out of Android's backups, so it stays on your phone only, and goes when the app is deleted.
• Other software in the app: besides Google's Android libraries, the app includes Supabase's library for Kotlin, the networking libraries it is built on (Ktor and OkHttp), JetBrains' Kotlin libraries, and the open-source Swift runtime the game's rules are written in. None of them collects anything of its own. The app asks for one permission, internet access.

To delete your account without the app, see littlegolfclub.com/delete-account.html.

Children

The game itself is suitable for all ages, and a player who does not sign in gives us nothing at all. Signing in is for players 13 and older. A younger player should play without an account. If we learn that an account belongs to a child under 13, we delete it.

Deleting your data

Your account: Profile → Account → Delete account. It deletes the account, its display name and everything stored with it from the account service, at once, and cannot be undone. We keep only the fact that an account was deleted, and when, with nothing that identifies whose it was. You can also ask by email (below), or follow littlegolfclub.com/delete-account.html.

What is on your device: delete the app. Deleting your account leaves the rounds and settings on your device where they are, as they were before you signed in.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask what we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, or to receive a copy of it. Write to the address below and we will answer within 30 days. Deleting the account in the app does the deletion at once.

Changes to this policy

When the app starts doing something that changes any of the above (sharing your rounds between your devices, for example), this policy will be updated before that version ships, and the date at the top will change.

Contact

Questions about this policy, and requests about your data, can be sent to hello@littlegolfclub.com.

Little Golf Club is a golf game for iPhone, iPad and Android.