Privacy Policy | Buddies On The Green

At BuddiesOnTheGreen, we value and respect your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, share, and protect your personal information when you use our website at www.buddiesonthegreen.com, our installed web app, and our mobile apps (together, the “Service”).

1. Information We Collect

We collect the following types of information when you use the Service:

Account and Profile Information: Your name, email address, password (stored securely by our sign-in provider, never readable by us), profile photo, handicap, home course, and other golf preferences you choose to add. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address, and photo from Google. If you sign in with Apple, we receive your name and email address from Apple (or a private relay address, if you choose to hide your email).
Golf Activity: Rounds, scores, statistics, side games, tournaments, events, leagues, course notes, and the equipment you add to My Bag. This includes scores and stats you enter on our Apple Watch app, which sends them to our iPhone app to save to your account.
Content You Share: Messages, group chats, comments, community posts and stories, and photos (profile, scorecard, community, and event photos).
Location: With your permission, your device’s location to show distances on the course (GPS yardages), to find courses near you, and, only if you turn it on during a round, to share your live position with the people in that round. In our iPhone app, while a round with GPS yardages is in progress, the app keeps using your location when it is in the background, so the yardages on your lock screen and Apple Watch stay current. It stops when the round ends. This background location stays on your devices and is not saved to our servers.
Apple Health (Apple Watch app): If you start a golf workout on our Apple Watch app, the workout, with its time, active calories, and distance walked, is saved to Apple Health. While it runs, the Watch app reads your heart rate, calories, and distance from Apple Health to show them on your Watch. Health information stays on your devices: we never send it to our servers, never share it with anyone, and never use it for advertising or marketing.
Payment Information: When you buy Premium or an event pass, your payment is handled by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number; we keep a record of your purchase and your Stripe customer reference.
Device and Notification Information: If you turn on notifications, a notification token for your device so we can send you alerts.
Usage Information: Information about how you use the Service, such as pages viewed, features used, device and browser type, and IP address.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

To provide and enhance our services: This includes keeping score, calculating handicaps and side games, running tournaments and events, showing golf courses and distances, and letting you message and connect with other golfers.
To improve the user experience: We may use your data to personalize the Service, such as showing golf courses based on your location or interests.
To communicate with you: We may use your contact information to send you updates, promotions, or important notices about your account and the Service.
To keep the community safe: We review content and accounts that are reported to us and may remove content or suspend accounts that break our Terms of Service.
To ensure security and compliance: We monitor and analyze usage for fraud detection, security monitoring, and troubleshooting purposes.
For support, diagnostics, and operations: Authorized BuddiesOnTheGreen administrators may view your account data, including rounds, scores, tournaments, and related activity, on a read-only basis to investigate support requests, diagnose issues, monitor service health, and understand how features are being used. This access is limited to staff who need it to operate and improve the platform.
To comply with legal obligations: If required by law or to protect our legal rights, we may use or share your information in compliance with applicable laws.

3. What Other Golfers Can See

Your profile: Your name, photo, handicap, and home course can be seen by other users of the Service. Your email address is not shown on your profile.
Rounds, tournaments, and events: The people you play with, and people you share a round with, can see your scores in that round. Tournament and event leaderboards show your name and scores to the other players, and to anyone if the organizer makes the leaderboard public.
Posts and comments: Community posts, stories, and comments can be seen by other users. Messages can be seen by the people in that conversation.

4. Sharing Your Information

We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to third parties. We share it only in the following cases:

Service Providers: Companies that help us run the Service and may only use your data to do so: Google Firebase (sign-in, data storage, and notifications), Vercel (website hosting), Stripe (payments), Google Workspace (sending email), and Google Maps (maps, course search, and venue search). When you search for golf courses or places, your search and location may be shared with Google, which processes them under its own privacy policy.
Apple: Sign in with Apple, notifications on iPhone, and, in our iPhone app, weather forecasts from Apple Weather and course locations from Apple Maps. To show a forecast, the app sends the location of your saved courses (not your own location) to Apple Weather.
AI Features (only with your permission): Three features use Google Gemini, an AI service from Google. Before any of them sends your data, we ask for your permission, and nothing is sent if you decline.
- Scorecard reading: the scorecard photo you choose and your name, used to find your row. The photo may also show the names and scores of the people you played with.
- AI support assistant: the questions you type and the recent conversation.
- Game Plan: your course notes and your scoring statistics for that course.
Google processes this data to return the result to us, under its own terms and privacy policy.
Advertising Measurement (website only): On our website, Google Ads and Reddit tags tell those companies when someone visits or signs up after seeing our ads. When you create an account on the website, your email address is shared with Google and Reddit, which match it to their own users to measure our ads. These tags are not used in our mobile apps.
Legal Compliance: We may disclose your information if required by law, such as in response to a subpoena, court order, or other legal process.

5. Cookies, Analytics, and Tracking Technologies

We use cookies, local storage, and similar technologies to keep you signed in, remember your preferences, and make the Service faster. We use Google Analytics and Firebase Analytics to understand how the Service is used. On our website we also use the advertising tags described above. In our mobile apps, we do not track you across other companies’ apps or websites. You can control cookies through your browser settings, but doing so may affect your ability to use some features.

6. Data Security

We take reasonable precautions to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. However, no data transmission method or electronic storage system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

7. Your Choices

Accessing and Updating Your Information: You can view and update your personal information in your Profile or by contacting us.
Notifications: You can turn notifications off in your Profile or in your device settings.
Location: You can turn off location access in your browser or device settings, and stop sharing your live position at any time during a round. Some features, such as GPS yardages, need location to work. In our iPhone app you can also turn off “Lock screen yardages” in the GPS panel during a round, so the app stops using your location in the background.
Apple Health: A golf workout is never started without you choosing it on your Watch. You can turn off our access to Apple Health at any time on your iPhone in Settings › Health › Data Access & Devices.
AI Features: You can decline the permission request and use the Service without them, for example by entering scores by hand.
Opting Out of Communications: You can opt out of marketing emails by clicking the unsubscribe link in those emails. You may still receive important account-related emails.

8. Deleting Your Account

You can delete your account at any time from Profile › Delete Account. You are signed out right away and your account is permanently deleted 30 days later. If you change your mind within those 30 days, email support@buddiesonthegreen.com and we will restore it. If you pay for Premium, it stops renewing when you delete your account.

When your account is deleted, we delete your profile, photos, posts, saved courses, notes, and rounds that only you played. Your messages and comments are replaced with “Message deleted” so other people’s conversations still make sense. Scores in rounds you played with other golfers are kept so their results do not change, shown under “Former member”. Tournament leaderboards keep your name and scores as played, but not your contact details. Records we must keep for payments or legal reasons are kept without your name or email.

9. How Long We Keep Information

We keep your information for as long as your account is open. After you delete your account, we remove it as described above within 30 days, apart from limited backups and records we must keep for legal, tax, or payment reasons.

10. Children’s Privacy

The Service is not intended for children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we become aware that we have collected information from a child under 13, we will take steps to delete that information.

11. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the “Effective Date” at the top of this page. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to stay informed about how we are protecting your information.

12. Contact Us

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us at:

BuddiesOnTheGreen
Email: info@buddiesonthegreen.com

1. Information We Collect

We collect the following types of information when you use the Service:

Account and Profile Information: Your name, email address, password (stored securely by our sign-in provider, never readable by us), profile photo, handicap, home course, and other golf preferences you choose to add. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address, and photo from Google. If you sign in with Apple, we receive your name and email address from Apple (or a private relay address, if you choose to hide your email).

Golf Activity: Rounds, scores, statistics, side games, tournaments, events, leagues, course notes, and the equipment you add to My Bag. This includes scores and stats you enter on our Apple Watch app, which sends them to our iPhone app to save to your account.

Content You Share: Messages, group chats, comments, community posts and stories, and photos (profile, scorecard, community, and event photos).

Location: With your permission, your device’s location to show distances on the course (GPS yardages), to find courses near you, and, only if you turn it on during a round, to share your live position with the people in that round. In our iPhone app, while a round with GPS yardages is in progress, the app keeps using your location when it is in the background, so the yardages on your lock screen and Apple Watch stay current. It stops when the round ends. This background location stays on your devices and is not saved to our servers.

Apple Health (Apple Watch app): If you start a golf workout on our Apple Watch app, the workout, with its time, active calories, and distance walked, is saved to Apple Health. While it runs, the Watch app reads your heart rate, calories, and distance from Apple Health to show them on your Watch. Health information stays on your devices: we never send it to our servers, never share it with anyone, and never use it for advertising or marketing.

Payment Information: When you buy Premium or an event pass, your payment is handled by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number; we keep a record of your purchase and your Stripe customer reference.

Device and Notification Information: If you turn on notifications, a notification token for your device so we can send you alerts.

Usage Information: Information about how you use the Service, such as pages viewed, features used, device and browser type, and IP address.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

To provide and enhance our services: This includes keeping score, calculating handicaps and side games, running tournaments and events, showing golf courses and distances, and letting you message and connect with other golfers.

To improve the user experience: We may use your data to personalize the Service, such as showing golf courses based on your location or interests.

To communicate with you: We may use your contact information to send you updates, promotions, or important notices about your account and the Service.

To keep the community safe: We review content and accounts that are reported to us and may remove content or suspend accounts that break our Terms of Service.

To ensure security and compliance: We monitor and analyze usage for fraud detection, security monitoring, and troubleshooting purposes.

For support, diagnostics, and operations: Authorized BuddiesOnTheGreen administrators may view your account data, including rounds, scores, tournaments, and related activity, on a read-only basis to investigate support requests, diagnose issues, monitor service health, and understand how features are being used. This access is limited to staff who need it to operate and improve the platform.

To comply with legal obligations: If required by law or to protect our legal rights, we may use or share your information in compliance with applicable laws.

3. What Other Golfers Can See

Your profile: Your name, photo, handicap, and home course can be seen by other users of the Service. Your email address is not shown on your profile.

Rounds, tournaments, and events: The people you play with, and people you share a round with, can see your scores in that round. Tournament and event leaderboards show your name and scores to the other players, and to anyone if the organizer makes the leaderboard public.

Posts and comments: Community posts, stories, and comments can be seen by other users. Messages can be seen by the people in that conversation.

4. Sharing Your Information

We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to third parties. We share it only in the following cases:

Service Providers: Companies that help us run the Service and may only use your data to do so: Google Firebase (sign-in, data storage, and notifications), Vercel (website hosting), Stripe (payments), Google Workspace (sending email), and Google Maps (maps, course search, and venue search). When you search for golf courses or places, your search and location may be shared with Google, which processes them under its own privacy policy.

Apple: Sign in with Apple, notifications on iPhone, and, in our iPhone app, weather forecasts from Apple Weather and course locations from Apple Maps. To show a forecast, the app sends the location of your saved courses (not your own location) to Apple Weather.

AI Features (only with your permission): Three features use Google Gemini, an AI service from Google. Before any of them sends your data, we ask for your permission, and nothing is sent if you decline.

Scorecard reading: the scorecard photo you choose and your name, used to find your row. The photo may also show the names and scores of the people you played with.
AI support assistant: the questions you type and the recent conversation.
Game Plan: your course notes and your scoring statistics for that course.

Google processes this data to return the result to us, under its own terms and privacy policy.

Advertising Measurement (website only): On our website, Google Ads and Reddit tags tell those companies when someone visits or signs up after seeing our ads. When you create an account on the website, your email address is shared with Google and Reddit, which match it to their own users to measure our ads. These tags are not used in our mobile apps.

Legal Compliance: We may disclose your information if required by law, such as in response to a subpoena, court order, or other legal process.

5. Cookies, Analytics, and Tracking Technologies

7. Your Choices

Accessing and Updating Your Information: You can view and update your personal information in your Profile or by contacting us.

Notifications: You can turn notifications off in your Profile or in your device settings.

Location: You can turn off location access in your browser or device settings, and stop sharing your live position at any time during a round. Some features, such as GPS yardages, need location to work. In our iPhone app you can also turn off “Lock screen yardages” in the GPS panel during a round, so the app stops using your location in the background.

Apple Health: A golf workout is never started without you choosing it on your Watch. You can turn off our access to Apple Health at any time on your iPhone in Settings › Health › Data Access & Devices.

AI Features: You can decline the permission request and use the Service without them, for example by entering scores by hand.

Opting Out of Communications: You can opt out of marketing emails by clicking the unsubscribe link in those emails. You may still receive important account-related emails.

8. Deleting Your Account