Privacy Policy

DRAFT: not yet reviewed by a lawyer. Placeholders in [brackets] must be filled in before publishing.

Effective date: [date] App: [App name] (“the app”, “we”, “us”) Run by: [Legal name of the person or company], [city], Tennessee Contact: [support email]

The short version: we collect as little as we can to help you set up private pickleball games. We never track your location. We don’t sell your data, show ads, or use advertising or analytics tools.

Who this is for

The app is for people 18 or older. We don’t knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If you think someone under 18 has an account, email us and we’ll remove it.

What we collect, and why

Your name (first name and last initial). So players recognize each other. Other players who can see you in a game, search, or “played with” lists can see it.
Sign in with Apple. You sign in with your Apple ID. Apple tells us a private account identifier and, if you allow it, your name and email. We never see your Apple password.
Your phone number. You verify it with a text-message code. We use it for account safety and to enforce bans. Nobody else sees it. If you and another player in the same game both choose to share numbers for that game, you each see the other’s number for that game only.
Email (optional). Only if you add one, for product updates you opt into.
A photo (optional). Shown only to people you are or were confirmed in a game with, and to people you and they have each added by scanning a QR code, through short-lived private links. Everyone else sees your initials.
Skill level, home city and time zone. Your level and city are visible to other players. Your time zone is visible only to you.
Your answers to “who would you play with again.” Visible only to you. We use them inside the database to decide which games you can see. We never show anyone another player’s answer, and we never show a list of matches.
Games and attendance. The games you host, request, join or leave, and whether you showed up. This produces “reliability” counts (for example, “Showed up to 9 of 10 games”) covering the last 12 months. Hosts see your counts when you ask to join their game, and you see theirs. You always see your own.
Game updates. Announcements from hosts and one-tap status messages (such as “on my way”). Visible to the host and confirmed players.
Private places. If you host at a private place, the address, optional map pin and notes are visible only to you and confirmed players.
Your connect code and the players you add by scanning it. Visible only to you. The person you add isn’t told.
Your device’s push notification token, so we can send you alerts you’ve allowed.
Reports and blocks. If you report or block someone, we keep that so we can act on it.
Age and terms. We store that you confirmed you are 18 or older and the date and version of the terms you accepted. We don’t collect your birth date.

What we don’t collect

Your location. The app never asks for location permission and never reads your position. Distances are measured from the center of a city you pick by name. The only coordinates we hold are public courts, a pin you drop by hand, and the rounded center (about half a mile) of the city a private game is in.
Contacts, advertising identifiers, payment information, government IDs, or health information.
We don’t store IP addresses or build device fingerprints, and we don’t use third-party analytics or advertising tools. Like any web service, our hosting provider’s technical logs briefly record the IP address of each request; we don’t use them to identify or track you.

We don’t sell your data. We use a few companies to run the app, and they process data only for us:

Supabase: hosts our database, sign-in, photo storage and server functions.
Twilio: sends the text-message verification code to your phone number. Twilio keeps a record of the messages it sends under its own retention rules.
Apple: Sign in with Apple, push notifications (APNs), and Apple Maps city search (the city name you type is sent to Apple Maps to find it).
[Email provider, e.g. Resend]: emails us safety alerts (such as a new report). [Describe what’s in them once decided.]

We may also share information if the law requires it, or to protect someone’s safety.

How long we keep it

Your profile, photo, answers, notices and device token: until you delete your account.
Private-place address, pin and notes: erased 30 days after the game.
“Can’t make it” notes: deleted after 1 day.
Game updates: deleted 7 days after the game.
Activity notices: 30 days.
Reports: up to 12 months.
Reliability counts: calculated over the last 12 months.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account in the app (Settings, then Delete account). This erases your profile, photo, answers, alerts and device token, and removes you from games. Games you host that haven’t started pass to the player who joined first if the game is full, and are otherwise cancelled; players are told. Games you hosted that are over stay for the other players, shown as hosted by a deleted player.

What we keep for 12 months after deletion: so that deleting and signing up again can’t erase a no-show record or get around a block, we keep, for 12 months and then erase:

an unreadable one-way code (a “hash”) of your phone number, which can’t be turned back into the number;
your no-show and late-cancel counts, only if you had any;
the same kind of unreadable codes for the phones of people who blocked you or whom you blocked.

No names are kept with this. If you sign up again with the same number within 12 months, these come back to the new account. If we ban an account, we keep an unreadable code of the number until we lift the ban.

Backups: our hosting provider keeps backups for a limited time, so deleted data can remain in backups for [number] days before it ages out.

Your choices and rights

Edit your name, level, city, photo and email in the app any time.
Turn notifications on or off in the app and in iOS Settings.
Delete your account in the app.
To ask what we hold about you, to correct it, or to ask for removal that you can’t do in the app, email [support email]. We’ll answer within [30] days. [Lawyer: add any state-law rights that apply.]

Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Photos are in a private storage area. The app doesn’t store passwords. Access to your information is limited by rules in the database itself, so the app can only read what it needs. No system is perfectly secure, and we can’t promise absolute security.

Changes

If we change this policy in a meaningful way, we’ll update the date above and tell you in the app.

Contact

[Legal name], [mailing address] [support email]