Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Hunting Game is run by Jasper Aelvoet, a sole trader (eenmanszaak) registered in Belgium. He is the data controller for everything in this policy.

We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer. Questions about this policy go to the email address above, and a person reads them.

This policy covers the Hunting Game app for iPhone, iPad and Android, its Apple Watch app, its widgets and other system features (section 2.12), our servers, and hunting-game.com.

2. What we collect

2.1 Your account

You sign in with Apple, with Google, or with a 6-digit code sent to your email address.

• Apple or Google gives us your name, email address, profile picture if there is one, and an ID for your account with them. We also keep the sign-in tokens Apple or Google issue, so we can cancel them when you delete your account. If you use Apple's Hide My Email, we only see the relay address.
• Email sign-in: we store your email address and, for a few minutes, the code we sent you. When you change your email address, we send a code to both the old and the new address.
• Your display name and profile photo. If you do not choose a photo, we make one from your initials.
• Your date of birth and when you accepted our terms, asked once when you first sign in. We use your date of birth only to check that you are at least 13, that you are at least 16 before we offer marketing email, and that you are at least 18 before our server keeps or sends anything for ad measurement (section 2.15). Other players never see it.
• Your app language, which decides the language of our emails and notifications.
• Small account settings: which "How to play" lessons you finished, whether you finished the intro, your notification switches, and whether you have ever had Pro.
• Guest accounts. New guest accounts can no longer be created. If you still have one and sign in with Apple, Google or email, everything on it moves to your new account.

2.2 Your location

This is the sensitive part, so here is exactly what happens.

When. The app sends your position from the moment a game starts, including the head start, until the game ends for you: when it finishes, when you are caught as a runner, or when you leave or are removed. If the host turned on "Caught runners become chasers", a caught runner keeps playing as a chaser, and keeps sending their position. Referees send their position too.

In a lobby the app also sends your position once you tap Ready (or as soon as you host one), about every 15 seconds and only while the app is open, so the host can place the play zone around everyone. Only the host sees it, in the app, and tapping Cancel stops the sending. Our website does not show lobby positions. We delete a lobby position at most 30 minutes after your last update.

How often. The app reads your GPS at high accuracy about once a second. It sends a position when you have moved at least 3 metres, when the reading becomes clearly more accurate, or after 10 seconds without one.

What. Each position contains latitude and longitude, how accurate the reading is, your speed, and the time.

In the background. Updates continue while the app is in the background during a game. iPhone shows its location indicator; Android shows a notification for as long as sharing is on. The background task stops when the game ends.

Your route. We also keep a simplified route of your game, up to 500 points, to draw your path at the end of the game.

On your phone only. Outside a game and a lobby you are ready in, the app can read your location without sending it to us: to centre the map when a host draws a play zone, to draw your route on a share card, and to point the compass. Your phone also passes your position to your Apple Watch during a game.

If you refuse location permission, you cannot play. There is no version of the game that works without it.

2.3 What happens in a game

The game's join code, settings and play zone (including a shrinking one), your role and team, whether you are ready, catches, power-ups bought and used (including the fake position a Decoy shows), leaving the play zone, being removed from a game, distance travelled, and when you joined and left.

2.4 Chat

Messages you send in a game, up to 500 characters, to everyone in the game or to your team. We do not scan or analyse them. They are deleted within about 10 minutes after the game ends. If you are removed from a lobby, your messages in it are deleted straight away.

2.5 Friends

Who your friends are, and when you were last online, which your friends can see. You become friends by sharing or scanning a friend code or link. There is no acceptance step: anyone who uses your friend code or link becomes your friend at once, so treat it like a phone number. Your friend link contains your account ID.

2.6 Progression

XP, level, coins, achievements, statistics (such as wins and distance), daily bonus streaks and the power-ups you own. XP and coin changes are kept in a permanent ledger so your totals can always be rebuilt.

2.7 Purchases

Hunting Game Pro is sold through the App Store and Google Play and managed with RevenueCat.

• RevenueCat receives your Hunting Game account ID, whether you have Pro, whether yours is a guest account, and when the Pro screen was shown to you. While "Share diagnostics" is on, it also receives an installation ID from Firebase (section 2.9), and while "Measure our ads" is on, the ad campaign you came from (section 2.15). It does not receive your name or email address.
• We get back whether you have an active subscription and when it ends, and a record of each purchase, renewal and refund: the product, the price, and the campaign if there is one. We keep these records with your account to see what our ads earn.
• We never see your card details. Apple and Google handle payment.
• Coins are not money. You cannot buy them, cash them out, or give them to someone else.

2.8 Notifications

If you turn notifications on, we store a push token (an ID from Apple or Google, relayed through Expo) and your app language. A notification can contain another player's name and photo and, for a game invite, the join code. On iPhone, game invites are shown as messages from the person who sent them, so iOS may suggest that person elsewhere on your phone, such as in the share sheet.

2.9 Diagnostics

We use Google Firebase Analytics, Crashlytics and Performance Monitoring to see which features are used, receive crash reports, and find what is slow.

• They start only once you are signed in, and never for guest accounts.
• They are linked to your Hunting Game account ID and whether you have Pro. After a purchase, we also record which plan you chose and which screen led to it.
• We record events such as screens opened, games created, joined, started and finished (with distance, length, number of players, role and result), power-ups used, catches, friends added, lessons, shares, and steps of the Pro purchase (with price and currency).
• Performance Monitoring measures how long our network requests take.
• They are on unless you switch off "Share diagnostics" in Settings. The switch is stored on your phone, so after reinstalling the app it is on again.

2.10 Technical information

When you sign in we record your IP address and a description of your device or browser for that session, so you stay signed in and we can spot suspicious sign-ins. The app also creates random IDs for your installation and device so that changes made offline sync correctly. When the app checks for updates, it sends its version and build number.

2.11 On your device

The app keeps your settings, a copy of your game data and your sign-in on your phone, so it opens instantly and works offline. To let the widgets, the iMessage app and the Watch app work, it shares a small summary and your sign-in, encrypted, with them on the same device. Deleting the app removes its data, though iOS may keep a small encrypted item in its keychain.

2.12 Apple Watch, widgets and other system features

• Apple Watch. During a game your phone sends the Watch your position, nearby players' names, photos, positions and distances, and the play zone, every 2 to 5 seconds. Outside a game it sends your level, streak and lobby code. To point the compass at true north, the Watch reads a rough location (to about 3 km) itself; it stays on the Watch. We do not read or use any health data.
• Widgets and Live Activities. The home screen widget shows your level, streak and lobby code. During a game, the Live Activity (iPhone lock screen) or Live Update (Android) shows your role, the timers and how many players are left, but no names and no map. Anyone who can see your phone can see these.
• iMessage app. When you start a game from Messages, the app uses your sign-in to create it, and puts a message with the join code and an invite link in the conversation. Apple delivers that message to the people in the conversation.
• Voice commands, control buttons, shortcuts and the Android tile only open the app on the right screen. They send nothing to us.

2.13 Share cards and clips

At the end of a game you can make an image or a short video of your route on a map, with your name, initials and stats. It is made on your phone and not uploaded to us. To show the city name, the app asks your phone's built-in map service (Apple or Google) which city your route was in. Nothing leaves your phone until you choose where to share it: a social or messaging app, your photos, or another app. That app then receives the image under its own terms. The message we add includes your friend link.

2.14 Marketing email

Now and then we email news about Hunting Game, such as a new feature. Only to people who asked for it.

• It is off unless you switch it on. The box at first sign-in starts unticked. You can change it any time under Settings → Account and security → Marketing emails.
• You must be 16 or older. If you are younger, the app does not offer it. If you said yes before you turned 16, we switched it off; once you are 16 you can switch it on yourself.
• You need a confirmed email address. Guest accounts never get these emails.
• What we use: your email address, your app language (English, Dutch, French or German), when you said yes, and your date of birth (only to check you were 16). Not your name. Everyone gets the same email in their own language.
• What we record for each email: the address, the language, and whether it was sent, delivered, bounced, reported as spam, or led you to unsubscribe.
• We do not track whether you open our emails or click their links. There is no tracking pixel, links go straight where they say, and images are the same files for everyone.
• We check again just before each email goes out, so switching it off during a send still stops your copy.

How to stop them, straight away:

• Tap Unsubscribe at the top of the email, if your email app shows it.
• Tap Unsubscribe at the bottom of the email. It opens a page on our website where one tap unsubscribes you. Tapped it by mistake? You can undo it there for an hour.
• Switch off Marketing emails in the app.

If you mark one of our emails as spam, we switch marketing email off for you. If an email bounces, we stop sending news to that address. Emails your account needs, such as sign-in codes, keep coming either way.

Each email says why you got it, who sent it (Hunting Game, Jasper Aelvoet, Klein Amerika 1B, 9930 Lievegem, Belgium) and how to reach us. They come from news@hunting-game.com; replies go to contact@hunting-game.com. Amazon SES sends them, and Amazon SNS tells us whether each one arrived. Both run in Paris.

2.15 Measuring our ads

We advertise Hunting Game through Meta (on Facebook and Instagram) and on the App Store. To learn which ads bring in players, and stop paying for the ones that do not, we measure them. On Android, once you have signed in and given your date of birth, the app includes Meta's measurement software, which tells Meta:

• that the app was started (each time it starts, not each time you switch back to it);
• that you created an account, if you did so in the last 15 minutes;
• that you finished a game.

The app sends these events for players under 18 too, until "Measure our ads" is switched off. With each event Meta receives a random installation ID created by its software on your phone, a description of your device (model, system version, screen size, language and time zone) and app version, and your IP address. Its software can also read the Google Play "install referrer", which says whether one of its ads led to the install. Meta does not receive your name, email address, Hunting Game account ID or any advertising ID: we never ask for tracking permission, and collecting advertising IDs is switched off. If the Facebook app is on the same phone, Meta may still be able to link these events to your Facebook account.

The app also sends us Meta's installation ID, the same description of your device, and that install referrer, from which we read which Meta ad led to the install. If your date of birth shows you are under 18, our server keeps none of this and sends nothing to Meta. Otherwise we keep the installation ID and device description while the switch is on; the referrer itself is not stored. When you start a Pro trial, buy Pro or renew it, our server tells Meta, with the price and currency, sending only that installation ID and device description. We also note the ad's campaign name on your RevenueCat customer record (section 2.7), so we can see what each campaign earns.

On iPhone and iPad, nothing goes to Meta: its software is never started. Instead, the RevenueCat software asks Apple whether you came from an Apple Ads ad; Apple answers with the campaign only, without any advertising ID or tracking.

Meta is not only a supplier here. We and Meta are jointly responsible for collecting these events and sending them to Meta. After that, Meta uses them on its own account: to report to us how our ads did, and to choose who sees our ads. You can use your rights (section 9) with us or with Meta. Meta's own privacy policy is at facebook.com/privacy/policy.

It is on unless you switch off "Measure our ads" in Settings. From then on nothing more is sent, we delete the installation ID we hold, and we remove the campaign from your RevenueCat record and from our own purchase records. The switch is stored on your phone, so after reinstalling the app it is on again.

2.16 Surveys

Now and then we ask some players what we should build next. Answering is optional.

• We record that you were invited, when, and whether you answered.
• Your answers are stored apart from your account: without your name, email address or account ID, with only the day you answered, and with the time you took rounded to 15 seconds. They carry a coded reference that only our server can link back to you, so that you can download or delete them along with the rest of your data.
• Each person gets only a few blocks of questions, so we hold less about any one person.
• Some questions ask about you in general terms, such as an age range or country. Skip them if you like; nothing is checked against your account.

2.17 When you contact us

Whatever you send us. Feedback sent from the app also includes your email address (you can change it before sending) and technical details: app version, device model, operating system, language, and whether you have Pro. Emails to contact@hunting-game.com are stored in our mailbox, which Apple hosts (iCloud Mail).

2.18 Trying out changes (A/B tests)

Sometimes we try two versions of part of the app to see which works better, for example two designs of a button. When you first open a screen with such a test, our server picks a version for you at random, and you keep it from then on.

• We record that you reached the test, which version you got or that you were left out and why (for example, it was only for new accounts or some phones), whether you use an iPhone or Android, and when.
• To compare the versions, we count what the players of each version did afterwards, using data we already hold: games played and hosted, play time and distance, friends added, coins spent, Pro purchases and what they earned us, and time in the app (section 2.19). We look at totals per version, not at what one person did.
• If you played as a guest and then make an account, your versions move to your account.
• Some tests run on the first screen, before you have an account. Then the app picks the version on your phone, and only tells us that a phone saw it: a count, with nothing that identifies you or your phone. If you then sign in, the version you saw is recorded with your account like any other test.

2.19 Time in the app

To tell whether a change makes the app better or worse to use, the app counts, per day, how many seconds it is open on your screen and how many times you open it. Only those two numbers reach us, with your account ID and a random counter ID that changes whenever the count starts over. What you looked at is not recorded.

• This also counts for guest accounts.
• It is on unless you switch off "Share diagnostics" in Settings. Counting then stops, and counts not yet sent are deleted from your phone.

3. Why we use it, and our legal basis

The GDPR requires a legal basis for each purpose.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, you can object (section 9). Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time; that does not undo what happened before.

Your location is a contractual requirement: without it you cannot play. An email address is needed for an account you can recover.

We make no decisions about you by automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects. We do not build profiles of you ourselves. Meta may use the ad-measurement events in section 2.15 to choose who sees our ads.

4. Who can see your information

4.1 Other players

This matters more than anything else in this policy.

• Everyone in your game: your display name, photo, role and team.
• Chasers: other chasers' live positions. A runner's position only at the interval set for the game, and not while Stealth is on for the runners. A Scan shows every runner's current position once, even during Stealth. In Hide and Seek, chasers see no runner positions in the app.
• Runners: the chasers and other runners, only their own team, or nobody, depending on the game's settings and power-ups such as Map. During a Decoy, runners are sent only the chaser's fake position.
• Referees (Family mode): every player's live position, all the time.
• The host, in a lobby: the position of each player who tapped Ready, about every 15 seconds.
• Players who were caught or left: they keep watching the game with their own team's view.
• Anyone with the join code: the game on our website, without an account. That means the names, photos and roles of all players, referees included, and who is hit by a Scan or Blackout. Positions only from the end of the head start until the game ends, and each player only as the other team sees them: a runner where the chasers last saw them, a chaser where the runners can see them (during a Decoy, its fake spot). No positions in the lobby, none of referees, and none at all in Hide and Seek.
• Your friends: whether you are online or when you were last seen, invitations, and notifications when you level up or add them.
• The host of a full lobby: your display name, if you ask to join it.

These rules are applied on our servers: a player's phone only receives the positions their role, the game's settings and their power-ups allow, and our website only receives each player's position as the other team sees it. Referees are hidden from other players in the app once the game starts. Blackout hides the map on a player's screen.

Join codes. Anyone who has your game's join code can watch it on our website, so only share it with the people in your game. To stop people from trying codes at random on our website, it refuses codes from an IP address for up to 10 minutes after too many wrong ones (section 10). The website stops showing a game when it ends.

4.2 Companies that process data for us

The subprocessor list names each company, what it receives and where. In short: Amazon Web Services hosts everything, sends our emails and delivers our website and photos through its CloudFront network; Expo relays push notifications; RevenueCat manages subscriptions; Google Firebase provides diagnostics; Mapbox draws the Pro map styles; Cloudflare runs our domain names; Apple hosts our email inbox (iCloud Mail).

Companies that work on our instructions must protect your data and use it only as we ask. Some companies act on their own account, under their own privacy policies: Apple and Google for sign-in, the app stores, payments, push delivery and the city name on share cards; OpenFreeMap for the free map; the OpenStreetMap Foundation for the map on our website's game page; and any app you choose to share a card or clip with. Meta is partly both: see section 2.15.

4.3 Other reasons

We may disclose information when the law requires it, to protect someone's safety, to investigate cheating, fraud or abuse, or to establish or defend legal claims. If Hunting Game is ever sold or transferred, your information goes with it, and we will tell you first.

We do not sell your personal data. The only data that goes to an advertising company is the ad measurement in section 2.15, which you can switch off.

5. Where your data is

Our database, the store that holds live game positions, our file storage and our servers are in Paris, France. Our website and profile photos are also delivered through Amazon CloudFront, which keeps copies on servers in Europe, North America and Israel so they load quickly.

Some suppliers process data in the United States: Apple (including our email inbox), Google (including Firebase), RevenueCat, Expo, Mapbox and Meta. These transfers rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the company is certified under it, and otherwise on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses. You can ask us for a copy of the safeguards for any supplier.

6. How long we keep things

When you delete your account, all of the above is deleted straight away, including your photo, apart from what Meta holds, emails you sent us (ask, and we delete those too), and records of refunds we paid you ourselves, which accounting law makes us keep. We also cancel your Apple or Google sign-in tokens, delete your RevenueCat customer record, and ask Google to delete your Firebase data. In other players' game history, your entry becomes "Deleted player": no account ID, name or photo, only your role, whether you hosted, the result, your distance and when you were caught, removed or left, which they need to see their own game. An encrypted record that the deletion happened is kept for 10 days, so that restoring a backup cannot bring your account back.

Database backups are kept for 7 days and then overwritten. If we ever restore one, we delete again whatever was deleted since. The store that holds live positions keeps them in memory only and is never backed up. An old profile photo can stay in CloudFront's cache for up to 10 minutes.

7. Security

Your data is encrypted in transit and at rest. The database and the live-position store cannot be reached from the internet. Only the operator has access to production systems. App updates are signed, so your phone only installs updates that come from us.

Profile photos are at web addresses without a password, so they load quickly for other players and on game pages. Anyone with the address can open the photo. Only upload a photo you are happy for others to see. When you replace or delete it, the old file is deleted.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach puts your rights at risk, we will tell the Belgian Data Protection Authority within 72 hours, and tell you directly when the risk is high.

8. Children

Hunting Game is for ages 13 and up. At first sign-in we ask for your date of birth. If you are under 13, the app stops there, does not keep the date and asks you to sign out. The account created when you signed in (your name, email address, sign-in ID and profile photo) is not yet deleted automatically: delete it at hunting-game.com/account/delete, or email us and we will. We do not otherwise check your age, so the date is your own statement.

Marketing email is only for ages 16 and up (section 2.14).

Families play together, and there is a Family mode for that. Everyone who plays, children included, must be 13 or older. Because the game shares a precise, live location, parents: please play with your teenagers rather than letting them play with strangers, and only share join codes with people you know.

If you think a child under 13 has an account, email contact@hunting-game.com and we will delete it. See our Child Safety Policy.

9. Your rights

Your right to object

You can object at any time to anything we do on the basis of legitimate interests (Art. 21 GDPR). Email contact@hunting-game.com and tell us what you object to. We will stop unless we have compelling reasons that override your interests, or need the data for a legal claim. You can switch off diagnostics and ad measurement yourself in Settings, straight away.

You can stop marketing email at any time, for any reason. Tap Unsubscribe in any email, or switch it off in the app.

Your other rights

Wherever you live, you can:

• get a copy of your data (access and portability), in a machine-readable file you can take elsewhere: in the app under Settings (once a day), or at hunting-game.com/account/export;
• correct anything that is wrong (rectification): your name, photo and email address can be changed in Settings;
• delete your account and data (erasure): in Settings, or at hunting-game.com/account/delete;
• restrict our use of your data (restriction of processing) in the cases in Art. 18 GDPR;
• withdraw consent for anything based on consent;
• not be subject to automated decisions: we make none.

The app and website are immediate. By email, we answer within one month; for a complex request we may need two more months, and we will tell you why within the first month. We only ask you to prove who you are if we have real doubt, and never for more than we need.

You can complain to a data protection authority. Ours is the Belgian one:

Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit / Autorité de protection des données (APD/GBA)

Drukpersstraat 35, 1000 Brussels, Belgium

+32 2 274 48 00 — contact@apd-gba.be — www.dataprotectionauthority.be

You can also complain where you live or work; in the UK, that is the Information Commissioner's Office. You are welcome to come to us first: email contact@hunting-game.com with "Complaint" in the subject.

10. Our website, cookies and your device

Our website sets no cookies on its public pages and uses no analytics, advertising or tracking tools, so it asks for no consent. In detail:

• Like any website, our servers see your IP address and the page you ask for, so they can send it to you. We keep no logs of website visits.
• The text font comes from our own servers, not from a font service.
• The App Store rating on our home pages is fetched by our server from Apple, about once a day. Your visit sends nothing to Apple.
• Get the app buttons look at which kind of device you use, only to send you to the right store, and record nothing. In the App Store or Google Play, Apple or Google then receive your visit under their own terms; our Google Play links tell Google which part of our website you came from.
• The plain-text versions of our pages (such as /llms.txt and the .md pages, made for apps and search tools) contain the same public text.
• The game page (hunting-game.com/spectate) remembers the last join code you entered, in your browser only, until you leave the game or it ends. To stop people from trying codes at random, our servers count wrong join codes per IP address (on IPv6, per block of addresses one connection uses), in memory only and for 10 minutes. After 10 wrong codes within those 10 minutes, the website refuses every code from that address, including a game already being watched, until the 10 minutes are up. The page's map is loaded straight from OpenStreetMap into your browser, so the OpenStreetMap Foundation receives your IP address and the area you are looking at. Player photos come from our own servers.
• The account pages (download your data, delete your account) use the email address you enter and the code we email you (section 6). To stop abuse, our server counts requests per IP address and per email address, in memory only and for 15 minutes. The unsubscribe page uses only the link in your email.

The app stores the things in section 2.11 on your phone. Diagnostics (section 2.9) and ad measurement (section 2.15) each store an installation ID on your phone; you can switch either off in Settings. Time in the app (section 2.19) keeps its counts and counter ID on your phone until they are sent.

11. If you are in the United States

We do not sell personal information. Because Meta can use the ad measurement in section 2.15 to choose who sees our ads, your state may treat it as "sharing" or "targeted advertising": the Measure our ads switch in Settings is your opt-out. Precise location, which several states treat as sensitive, is used only to run the game.

Depending on your state, you may have the right to know, correct, delete or get a copy of your personal information, to opt out of its sale or sharing, and not to be treated differently for using these rights. Use the tools in section 9; they work wherever you live. To appeal one of our decisions, reply to it and say you are appealing.

Do Not Track: our website does not respond to Do Not Track signals, because it does not track you.

12. Changes

When we change this policy we update the date at the top. If a change affects you in a meaningful way, we tell you in the app before it takes effect. Earlier versions are available on request.

13. Contact

contact@hunting-game.com, for anything in this policy: requests, complaints, and reports about a child's account.

Post: Jasper Aelvoet, Klein Amerika 1B, 9930 Lievegem, Belgium.