Privacy

Who we are

PaddlePals is run by [legal name], [contact address]. In this policy, "we" means PaddlePals. Questions go to the contact at the end of this page.

What we collect

Your account

• Sign in with Apple. Apple gives us a private identifier for your account. We use it only to recognize you when you sign in. We do not store an email address.
• Your first name and last initial, for example "Linda B." This is what your pals see. You can change it in the app.
• Your pal code, a 6-letter code the app makes so a pal can add you. You can get a new one at any time.
• Your settings: your home court, when you usually play, who can see you, whether you've chosen Hide me today, which notifications you want, and whether Open to play is on.
• That you said you're 18 or older, and when, if you turned on Open to play. Not your birth date.
• Your level, if you pick one ("Level (self-rated)"). Only you see it.

Your pals, crews and plans

• Your pals, the pals you've starred, and anyone you've blocked.
• Crews you've started or joined, invite links you've made and who joined through them.
• Plans you've made or joined, with the court and start time.
• Pal requests you send or get through Open to play: who asked whom, when, and whether it was answered.

Your check-ins

• Your current status: I'm Here, On My Way or Later Today, at which court, since when, and when it ends. For I'm Here you can add a court number. For On My Way, how many minutes away you are. For Later Today, the part of the day.
• A short check-in history: which kind of check-in, which court and when. We keep it for 30 days to count how often people use the app (for example, how many people checked in on more than one day). It does not include your location. After that, only totals with no names are kept.
• Your Games number: how many times you've tapped I'm Here. The Games number itself is one number, not a list of where or when you played. Only you see it. (For achievements we also keep which courts you've played at, without dates: see the next part.)
• Paddle Taps you send and receive.

Experience, rank and achievements

• Your experience points: one running total, and your last 20 earnings, each with what it was for (for example a check-in), how many points and when. The earnings list has no court, no place and no other person. Your rank comes from the total.
• Your achievements: which ones you've earned, when, and whether you've seen them, plus the counts used to work them out (numbers such as how many games or Paddle Taps).
• The courts you've played at, as a list of courts with no dates or times, and the weeks in which you checked in, with no courts. We keep them only to count how many different courts, states and weeks you've played in, for achievements. No screen shows them, to you or anyone else.
• Your look: the ring and court pin you chose.
• Your "Show my rank to pals" setting. It is on unless you turn it off.
• To stop the same thing counting twice, we keep scrambled (hashed) markers such as "this check-in already earned points", which can't be read back as a history, and the number of points earned each day. Markers for a single day, and the daily numbers, are deleted after 3 days.
• If we reset someone's points because they were faked, we keep a note of the reset and the old total.

Other things you give us

• Saved courts. The courts you save in the app.
• Courts you add. If you add a court that is missing, we save its name, the number of courts, whether it's indoor or outdoor if you say, and the place you were standing when you added it, because that becomes the court's location on the list. Everyone using the app can see that court. We note that you added it, but other players can't see that.
• Reports you file about another person, a coach listing, an event or a court rental listing: who or what you reported and the reason you picked. Reports about a listing or an event don't keep who filed them.
• Alerts. A copy of each alert we decided to send you (for example "Linda B. is at Collins Park"), and up to which one you've read. On iPhone, if you allow notifications, also your phone's push notification token so we can send them.
• Bump phones. It works only when both people are checked in with I'm Here at the same court (with location on at check-in). When you knock phones with the Bump phones screen open, we hold who knocked, at which court and the exact time, for at most 30 seconds, so we can match the two phones. The knock sends no location.

Coaches

If you are a coach and sign up for a listing on this website:

• What you give us: your name as players will see it, a headline, a short about, what you teach, your price, your phone number and website if you give them, your email, your city and state, the courts you teach at, a certification and up to 4 tags if you give them, and a photo if you email us one.
• What is public: once we approve it, your listing is shown to people using the app near the courts you teach at, labeled Sponsored. That includes your phone number and website if you gave them, and your email only if you ticked the box to show it. Otherwise your email is private: only we see it, to reach you about the listing.
• Payment: Stripe processes your payment. We never see or store your card number. Stripe tells us whether you paid, and we keep that with your listing.
• Counts: we count how often your listing is shown, opened and contacted, as totals per day. We never learn which players did it.
• How long: your listing stays until you cancel or we remove it. A form that was never paid for is deleted after 48 hours. [How long we keep a cancelled listing: to be decided.]

Organizers

If you post an event on this website:

• What you give us: the event's name, type, dates and start time, its city and state and the court name, the format, skill levels and price, your registration link, your name or your club's name, your email, and your phone number if you give it.
• What is public: once we approve it, your posting is shown to people using the app near that court, labeled Sponsored, with your name or your club's name as the organizer. Your email and phone are private: only we see them, to reach you about the posting.
• Payment: Stripe processes your payment. We never see or store your card number. Stripe tells us whether you paid, and we keep that with your posting.
• How long: your posting shows until the day after the event. A form that was never paid for is deleted after 48 hours. [How long we keep a posting after the event: to be decided.]

Court owners

If you list a court for rent on this website:

• What you give us: the place's name, its city and state, its street address if you give it, the number of courts, indoor or outdoor, the surface, your price, when it's available, what it has, a short description, your phone number, website and booking link if you give them, your email and your name.
• What is public: once we approve it, your listing is shown to people using the app near your court, labeled Sponsored. That includes the street address, phone number, website and booking link if you gave them, and your email only if you ticked the box to show it. Your name, and otherwise your email, are private: only we see them, to reach you about the listing.
• Payment: Stripe processes your payment. We never see or store your card number. Stripe tells us whether you paid, and we keep that with your listing. We take no part in what players pay you.
• Counts: we count how often your listing is shown, opened and contacted, as totals per day. We never learn which players did it.
• How long: your listing stays until you cancel or we remove it. A form that was never paid for is deleted after 48 hours. [How long we keep a cancelled listing: to be decided.]

Sponsors and Deals

• Sponsors are brands that pay to show on a court page or on Home. Each one is labeled Sponsored. We choose which sponsor shows by court, state and day, never by who you are.
• Deals are deals from pickleball brands. PaddlePals may earn a commission when you buy. Every deal says so.
• When you tap Shop, Website or Register, you leave the app and your browser opens that brand's, coach's or organizer's own website. That site follows its own privacy policy and may set its own cookies, including one that tells it PaddlePals sent you, so we can be paid a commission. We send that site nothing about you.
• If you call, text or email a coach or a court owner, they get your number or email the way any call or email does. That is between you and them. Booking and paying for a court happen with the owner, never in the app.
• We never tell a coach, organizer, court owner, sponsor or brand who you are. We count views, taps, code copies and Shop taps as totals per day, with no names. If we share numbers with them, they are those totals. Sponsor logos and coach photos load from our own website.

What we do not collect

• No location history. When you tap I'm Here, the app reads your location once and sends it with that one request so we can check you're near the court. We use it for that check and drop it. It is not saved to our database and not written to our logs. The same is true when you tap Use my location once to find courts. The app only reads your location while you're using it, never in the background. The one exception is adding a court, described above. Weather uses no location of yours, and the Bump phones knock sends none.
• No contacts. The app never uploads your address book. You add pals with an invite link, a code, by scanning a pal's screen, by tapping phones together, or by saying yes to a pal request.
• No ad networks and no tracking. No advertising identifiers, and no advertising, tracking or analytics companies in the app. Paid placements are sold directly and labeled Sponsored; nothing in the app picks ads for you based on who you are.
• No selling. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with anyone for advertising.
• No birth date. We don't ask for one.
• No analytics on this website. This website sets no cookies and runs no tracking or analytics scripts. It loads its fonts from Google Fonts, so Google receives your device's IP address when you open a page.

Who can see what

• Your status is shown to your pals and to people in a crew with you, and only while the status is active. When it ends, nobody sees it.
• Someone becomes your pal only by using an invite link you sent (it works for 14 days and a limited number of people), by using your pal code (we tell you every time), or by you both saying yes after tapping phones or to a pal request. That makes you pals both ways at once: if they can see you, you can see them. Share your link and code only with people you know. You can remove or block a pal at any time.
• Open to play is off unless you turn it on, and only people 18 or older can turn it on. When it's on and you are checked in with I'm Here or On My Way, other people who also turned it on can see your first name and last initial, the court, that you're here (and since when) or on your way (and about how long), and your court number. Only people whose home court it is, or who are checked in or on their way there right now. Later Today is never shown. You see them by the same rule, and while you are hidden you see nobody. To send you a Paddle Tap or a pal request they must be checked in or on their way at that same court; you say yes or no to every request. A home court can be changed at most twice a day. They can't message you, see a profile, your pals, your home court or where you played before, and they can't search for people. Starred pals only, No one and Hide me today also hide you from Open to play. Turning it off hides you at once; pal requests already sent or received stay until someone answers or they expire.
• Without Open to play, people who are not your pals or crew-mates cannot see your status or search for you. There are no crowd counts.
• If either of you has blocked the other, neither sees the other anywhere in the app.
• In Who can see me you can choose All my pals, Starred pals only (only pals you've starred), or No one. Hide me today hides you from everyone until midnight.
• If 3 different people report someone within 30 days, that person is hidden from everyone except their own pals who did not report them, until a person at PaddlePals reviews it.
• Your first name and last initial are shown to your pals and crew-mates, and to Open to play players as described above.
• Your Games number and your level are shown only to you.
• Your rank and how many achievements you have are shown only to your pals and crew-mates (never across a block), and only while "Show my rank to pals" is on. Turn it off in the app and they see neither.
• Your look (ring and court pin) is shown only to your pals and crew-mates. The "Show my rank to pals" setting does not hide it; to show the plain look, choose No ring and Standard pin.
• Your experience points, what you earned them for and which achievements you have are shown only to you. The courts you've played at are shown to no one. People who see you through Open to play, Bump phones or an invite link never see your rank, achievements or look.
• Someone you blocked can't see or join your plans. While you are hidden, your plans are not shown to others.
• Anyone who opens an invite link you made sees your first name (and, for a crew invite, the crew's name). Never a court and never your status. Only a crew's owner can make its invite link, and the owner can remove a member.

How long we keep things

• I'm Here ends on its own after 2 hours, unless you tap Leave sooner or choose a different time (never more than 8 hours from when you checked in).
• On My Way ends 30 minutes after the arrival time you picked.
• Later Today ends at midnight in the court's time zone.
• An ended status is hidden right away and erased from the database within about an hour.
• Check-in history, Paddle Taps and the copies of alerts are deleted after 30 days. Totals with no names (for example "40 people checked in this week") are kept.
• Pal requests expire after 14 days if nobody answers, and are deleted 30 days after they were sent, or at once if either person blocks the other.
• Bump phones knocks are deleted within 30 seconds.
• Plans are deleted after the day they were for has ended at the court.
• Sign-ins end when you sign out. One you haven't used for 180 days stops working and is deleted.
• Reports are kept as a record. If you delete your account, your name is taken off them.
• Everything else (your account, pals, crews, saved courts, settings, Games number, experience points, rank, achievements, look, and the courts and weeks you played) stays until you delete it or delete your account.

Deleting your account

In the app, go to Me and tap Delete my account. It asks you twice, then deletes at once. This removes:

• your account, name, pal code, settings, level and Games number, and the link to your Apple sign-in;
• your experience points and recent earnings, achievements, look, "Show my rank to pals" setting, and the courts and weeks you played;
• your pals, stars and blocks, both ways, and pal requests you sent or got;
• your status, check-in history and Paddle Taps;
• your saved courts and your Open to play choice;
• your crew memberships, invites and plans (a crew you started passes to its longest-standing member, or is deleted if you were alone);
• your push notification tokens, the alerts sent to you or naming you, and which alerts you'd read.

Reports you filed, and reports about you, are kept as records, but your name is taken off them. Courts you added stay on the list for everyone, but we remove the note that you added them. Signing out ends that sign-in, but it is not the same as deleting your account.

Children

PaddlePals is not for children under 13, and Open to play is only for people 18 or older. We don't ask for a birth date, so we can't tell anyone's age. If you believe a child under 13 is using PaddlePals, or someone under 18 has turned on Open to play, contact us and we will delete the account or turn it off.

Companies that help us run PaddlePals

• Cloudflare runs our servers and our database, and hosts this website. Your information is stored there. Like any web host, Cloudflare sees your device's IP address when the app or this website connects.
• Apple handles Sign in with Apple and, in the iPhone app, delivers push notifications. When we send you a notification, its words (for example a pal's name and a court) pass through Apple to reach your phone.
• The National Weather Service (a U.S. government agency) supplies the weather shown for a court. We ask it about the court's location only, never yours.
• OpenStreetMap is where our list of courts comes from. We copy that public map data; we send nothing about you to OpenStreetMap.
• Google Fonts supplies the fonts on this website (not the app).
• Stripe processes payments from coaches who list their lessons, organizers who post events and court owners who list a court for rent. Players never pay anything, so Stripe gets nothing about players.

We do not give your information to anyone else, unless the law requires it.

Security

Connections between the app and our servers are encrypted. When you sign in, the app gets a sign-in key; our database stores only a scrambled (hashed) version of it. Who can see your status is checked against the "who can see what" rules above every time someone's app asks for it. No system is perfectly secure, and we can't promise yours will never be exposed, but we keep as little as we can so there is less to lose.

Your choices

• Change your name, home court, usual times and who can see you in the app at any time.
• Turn Open to play on or off in the app under Me. Off works at once.
• Switch each kind of notification on or off in the app, or turn them all off in your iPhone's Settings. Two can't be switched off in the app: when someone adds you with your code, and when someone joins because of you.
• Get a new pal code at any time. The old one stops working at once.
• Say no to location. You can still check in; the app just can't check you're near the court.
• Delete your account in the app at any time.
• Depending on where you live (for example [state]), you may have more rights, such as asking for a copy of your information. Contact us to use them.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top. If a change affects what we collect or who sees it, we'll tell you in the app before it takes effect.

Contact

Email support@getpaddlepals.com (not set up yet). This address is not working yet. Post: [legal name], [contact address].