Privacy Policy
Duffers Anonymous is an app for organizing golf trips with your friends: planning the trip, keeping score, running side games, splitting costs, and talking trash in the Clubhouse. This policy explains what we collect, why, and what control you have.
Who we are
Duffers Anonymous is operated by Carquinez Holdings LLC, a California limited liability company. For anything in this policy, contact support@duffersanonymous.com.
What we collect
Information you give us
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Email address and password, or your Google or Apple sign-in | To create and secure your account. If you use Apple's “Hide My Email”, we only ever see the relay address Apple gives us. |
| Display name, profile photo, handicap, home location, bio, phone number | So the people on your trips know who you are. Everything except your name is optional. |
| Your GHIN number, if you enter one | Optional. Stored so we can show your verified Handicap Index once we have access to the USGA's handicap service, and so we can post your qualifying scores there for you. Only you can see it — it never appears on a roster or on anyone else's screen. Today it does nothing: we have applied for that access and have not been granted it. |
| Venmo username and Cash App cashtag | Only to pre-fill a payment link when you settle up. We never process, hold, or move money — the payment happens in Venmo or Cash App, not here. |
| Trips, rounds, scores, side games, expenses and settlements | The core function of the app. |
| Messages and photos you post, including direct messages | To deliver them to the people you sent them to. |
| Friend connections, and anyone you block or report | To build your trips, and to keep your blocks working everywhere in the app. |
Information your device provides
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Location — only while you're using the app | To show your position on the hole, measure distances to the green, and find courses near you. The Apple Watch app measures from the watch's own GPS in the same way, during a round. We do not track your location in the background, and we do not store a history of where you've been. |
| Camera and photo library | Only when you take or choose a photo to post. We don't browse your library. |
| Calendar | Write-only, and only when you tap to add a tee time. We don't read your calendar. |
| Push notification token | To send you trip and message notifications. You can turn these off in iOS Settings. |
| Crash and performance diagnostics | Firebase Crashlytics and Performance Monitoring, so we can fix what breaks. |
Apple Watch and health data
The Apple Watch app records your round as a workout in Apple Health. It asks for two permissions, and only these two:
- Permission to save workouts. When a round starts the watch starts a golf workout, and when the round ends it saves that workout to Apple Health on your device — so the round counts toward your activity rings like any other exercise.
- Permission to read your walking and running distance. Used while the workout is running, so the workout it saves reflects how far you actually walked.
There is a practical reason as well as a nice one. watchOS shuts down apps that aren't doing anything, and a running workout is what keeps the watch measuring yardages while your wrist is down and your phone is in the cart.
Health data stays on your devices. The workout is written to Apple Health, which belongs to you and to Apple, not to us. The watch app has no internet connection of its own — the only things it ever sends are the score you card and the hole you move to, and it sends those to your phone, not to us. No health or fitness data reaches our servers, our service providers, or anyone else. We never use it for advertising or marketing, and we never will.
You can refuse either permission, or withdraw it later in the Health app or in Settings on your watch. Scoring, distances, the leaderboard and everything else keep working — but without a running workout the watch app may stop updating when you lower your wrist.
Who your information is shared with
Other people in the app
This is a group app, so most of what you create is visible to the people you're sharing it with — your trip's participants see your scores, photos, messages and settlement figures. Direct messages and friend groups are visible only to the people in them. Your profile is visible to people on your trips and to friends.
Service providers
We use these companies to run the app. We send them the minimum needed, and none of them are permitted to use your data for their own purposes.
| Provider | What they receive |
|---|---|
| Google Firebase (Authentication, Firestore, Storage, Cloud Functions, Messaging, Crashlytics, Performance) | Hosts the app's accounts, database, photos and notifications. Effectively all of the data above is stored on Firebase. |
| Anthropic (Claude) | Powers the AI trip planner, round recaps, trash talk and course notes. We send the relevant player names, scores and course names for the thing you asked for. We do not send your email, phone number, payment handles, photos, or private messages. |
| GolfAPI.io | Course search and hole data. Receives course names and map coordinates — no personal information. |
| WeatherAPI | Weather for a course location. Receives a location — no personal information. |
| Google Places | Place lookups and photos for destinations. Receives a search term — no personal information. |
| Telnyx | Delivers the Following Your Round text messages. Receives the phone number a golfer added for their contact and the message itself — nothing else. |
Requests to Anthropic, GolfAPI, WeatherAPI and Google Places go through our own server, never directly from your phone, so those providers never receive your device identifiers.
Text messages
If a golfer adds you as a Following Your Round contact, we text you when their round finishes. Reply STOP to any message to stop them, or ask your golfer to remove you. Your mobile information will not be sold or shared with third parties for promotional or marketing purposes.
Website analytics
This website — not the app — uses Plausible Analytics to count visits. Plausible sets no cookies, stores no personal data, and does not follow you to any other site. It records the page you viewed, the site or search engine that sent you, and rough details like country, browser and whether you are on a phone or a computer. None of that identifies you, and it is never combined with anything in the app. There is nothing to opt out of because there is nothing stored about you individually — though any content blocker will stop it, and we would rather have imperfect numbers than ask you to accept a banner.
If you join the Android list, we also count that a signup happened and which page it came from, so we know which parts of this site are useful. That count carries no email address — your address goes to us directly, as described above, and never to Plausible.
We do not
- Sell or rent your personal information.
- Show targeted advertising, or share your data with advertisers or data brokers. The booking links described below are chosen by your trip's destination and dates — never by anything about you personally.
- Track you across other companies' apps or websites.
- Use health or fitness data for advertising or marketing, share it with anyone, or store it on our servers. It stays in Apple Health on your own devices.
We may disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect someone's safety.
Booking links
The app may show links to booking partners — places to stay, tee times, shipping your clubs, golf packages. If you book something after following one of those links, we may earn a commission from that partner. It never costs you anything extra, and it does not change the price you are shown.
Which links appear is decided by your trip's destination and dates. It is not based on anything about you, your profile, your scores or your messages.
We do not tell those partners who you are. The link identifies us as the referrer so the booking can be credited to us — it does not carry your name, email, account or device identifiers.
Following one of these links opens your browser and takes you out of the app. From that point you are on the partner's website, and that partner — and any affiliate network they work with — may set cookies or use similar technologies in your browser to record that the visit came from us. That happens in your browser rather than inside the app, and it is governed by the privacy policy of the partner and network concerned, not by this one. You can control it through your browser's cookie and tracking settings, and through any opt-out those companies offer.
We keep a record of which booking links are tapped, and on which trip, so we can tell which partners are actually useful to people. That record stays with us and is not shared with the partner.
AI features
Trip planning, post-round recaps, course notes and trash talk are generated by Claude, an AI model from Anthropic. AI-written text is always labelled in the app so you can tell it from something a person wrote. Content generated about a round is based on the scores and names in that round. If you'd rather not have AI recaps posted to your trip, the trip organizer can turn them off in the trip's settings.
How long we keep things
We keep your information while your account exists. When you delete your account (Profile → Delete Account) we remove your profile — your name, email, photo, handicap, GHIN number, bio, location, phone number and payment handles — and your ability to sign in, and this cannot be undone. Because HealthKit data remains locally within Apple Health and never touches our servers, we do not store, retain, or delete your health records.
If you'd like something removed that account deletion doesn't cover, email support@duffersanonymous.com and we'll do what we reasonably can.
Your choices and rights
- Access and correction — edit your profile at any time in the app.
- Deletion — Profile → Delete Account, or email us.
- Permissions — location, photos, camera, calendar and notifications can each be revoked in iOS Settings. The app keeps working; the features that need them stop.
- Blocking — blocking someone hides their messages and photos from you everywhere in the app. They are not told.
- Booking links — simply don't follow them. Nothing is shared with a partner unless you tap through, and your browser's settings control what happens after that.
Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights to access, correct, export or delete your personal information, and to object to certain processing. Email us and we'll honour them.
Security
Traffic is encrypted in transit. Access to your data is enforced by server-side security rules — for example, direct messages can only be read by the people in that conversation. Passwords are handled by Firebase Authentication and are never visible to us. No system is perfectly secure, and we can't promise otherwise.
Children
Duffers Anonymous isn't intended for children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has created an account, email us and we'll remove it.
International users
The app is operated from the United States, and your information is stored on Google Firebase infrastructure. If you use the app from elsewhere, you're sending your information to the United States. This does not apply to HealthKit data, which stays entirely on your devices and is never transferred internationally.
Changes
If we change this policy we'll update the date at the top, and we'll tell you in the app if the change is significant.