Privacy policy
Last updated: 2026-10-27
This policy explains what Pickelx collects, why, who else handles it, how long we keep it, and how to delete it. Pickelx is a pickleball game for iPhone and Android phones, made by an independent developer ("we"). Questions go to support@pickelx.com.
The short version
- You can play without giving us your name or email: the app makes a guest account for you.
- We keep what the game needs: your account, your profile, your matches and progress, and your purchases.
- The app shows no ads, and has no third-party analytics or tracking. If it crashes, it sends a crash report to Google's Firebase Crashlytics, without your account, name or email (see "Crash reports" below).
- We do not sell your data or share it for advertising.
- You can delete your account at any time, in the app or by email (how to delete your account).
What we collect, and why
Your account
- An account ID, made at random when the app first needs our server, and the date it was made. Your support code, shown in Settings → Account, is the last 8 characters of this ID.
- As a guest, no name or email. The app keeps a secret key on your phone, and our server stores only a one-way hash of it.
- If you sign in with email: your email address, and your password, stored only as a one-way hash, never in readable form.
- If you sign in with Google or Apple: the account identifier Google or Apple gives us, and the email address in the sign-in, if they include one. Apple lets you hide your email, and then we receive Apple's relay address instead.
We use these to sign you in, to keep your progress when you change phones, and to find your account when you write to us.
Your devices
For each phone signed in to your account: a label the app sends (your phone's model, such as "iPhone15,2"), which of our server regions it signed in through, and when the sign-in began, was last used and ended. Settings → Account lists them, so you can sign a device out. Sign-in tokens are stored only as one-way hashes.
Your profile
Your player name, your country if you choose one, your character's look and equipment, your friend code, your notification settings, and when you finished the first-time setup.
How you play
- Matches: who played, the result, the score, and a replay of each match. A replay holds the controls each player used, moment by moment: no audio, video or camera. Our server plays matches back to check that results are genuine.
- Timing statistics for each match, such as how many shots you hit and how quickly you reacted, used to keep ranked play fair.
- Online matches: the server region, and your connection's round-trip time (ping), to place you on the nearest server and keep matches smooth.
- Progress: your ratings and rank, career and tournament progress, levels, coins, gems and tickets with every change to them, the items you own, missions, achievements, daily rewards and battle pass progress.
- Friends: the friend requests you send and receive, and your friends list.
Purchases
This version of the app has no purchases. If you buy gems in a later version, Apple or Google takes the payment. We never see your card, bank details, name or billing address. From the store we keep which store it was, the product, the store's transaction or order number, whether it was a test purchase, the gems you received, the dates, and whether it was refunded. We use this to give you your gems exactly once, and to take them back if the store refunds the purchase.
Notifications
If you allow notifications, the app sends us your phone's push token, whether it is an iPhone or an Android phone, and its time zone offset. We use them to send reminders (a daily reward, a tournament, a friend's challenge, a season ending) at a sensible hour, and never between 22:00 and 08:00 your time. You can turn each kind off in the app, or all of them in your phone's settings.
How the game is used
We record events in the game, such as finishing a tutorial step, starting or finishing a match, reaching a level, opening the shop or claiming a reward. Each event carries your account ID, the time, the app's version, whether you use iOS or Android, your phone's model and system version, and the event's own details (for example, the match's mode and result). Events never include your name, email, IP address, advertising ID or location. We use them, mostly as daily totals, to find what is broken or confusing and to make the game better. We keep events for up to 14 months; the daily totals hold no account IDs.
Crash reports
If the app crashes, or hits a serious error it recovers from, it sends a report to Google's Firebase Crashlytics so that we can find and fix the problem. A report holds:
- where in the app's code the problem happened, and the error's message, which the app's code writes;
- the app's version, whether it is a test build or the store's, and which screen was open, such as "Match" or "Settings";
- your phone's model, its operating system and version, its processor, graphics chip, memory, free storage, screen size and orientation, and whether it is rooted or jailbroken;
- the time of the crash, and a random ID that Firebase makes for this installation of the app.
Crash reports never include your account ID, support code, player name, email, matches or location. Crashlytics keeps them for 90 days.
Safety and fair play
- Reports: if you report a player, we keep who you reported, the match, the reason and any note you wrote. If someone reports you, we keep the same.
- Fair-play checks: results that did not check out, play that looks automated, and similar signals, with a score our moderators review.
- Moderation: any suspension or ban, its reason and who decided it, and a log of what our staff did and to which account.
IP addresses
Your phone's IP address is needed to reach our servers. We use it only to limit how often one address can try to sign in, keeping it in memory for about a minute. We do not store it in our database or write it in our logs. Railway, which runs our servers (see below), also sees it as it passes your connection to us, and Google sees it when a crash report arrives.
What we do not collect
Your precise location, contacts, photos, microphone, camera, advertising ID or payment details. The app has no ads and no third-party analytics or tracking: Firebase Analytics, which comes with Crashlytics, is switched off, and the app does not read your advertising ID.
What other players can see
Your player name, look, country (if you set one), rating, rank and place on the leaderboards, and the results of matches you play against them. Your friend code, if you share it. Your email and sign-in details are never shown to other players.
Who handles your data
We do not sell your data. Only these companies handle it for us, each for its own part:
- Railway, which hosts our servers and database in the United States (Virginia). Online matches for players in India and Australia run on a game server in Singapore.
- Apple and Google, which run the app stores, take payments, tell us about purchases and refunds, and handle Sign in with Apple and Google sign-in if you use them.
- Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging, which delivers notifications to your phone if you allow them. It receives your push token and the notification's text.
- Google's Firebase Crashlytics, which receives the app's crash reports (see "Crash reports" above) and keeps them for 90 days.
Each handles data under its own privacy policy. We may also disclose data when the law requires it, or to protect players and the game from fraud and abuse.
Where your data is kept
On Railway's servers in the United States, whichever country you play from. Pickelx launches first in the United States, Canada, India and Australia.
How long we keep it
- Your account, profile, progress and purchases: while your account exists.
- Game events: up to 14 months, or until you delete your account.
- IP addresses: about a minute.
- Crash reports: 90 days, at Google's Firebase Crashlytics.
- After you delete your account: see the next section.
Deleting your account
You can delete your account in the app (Settings → Account → Delete account) or by email. All at once, we delete your sign-in details, devices and notification tokens, your name, country and look, your friends and your game events, and we remove you from the leaderboards. We keep a few records that others depend on, linked only to the deleted account's ID: purchases (so that a store's refund still finds its purchase), coins, gems and items, match results and replays (your opponents' histories), and safety records. The page Delete your account lists what is deleted and what is kept, and why. Crash reports hold no account ID, so they cannot be found by account; Crashlytics deletes them after 90 days.
Children
Pickelx is for people aged 13 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, write to support@pickelx.com and we will delete it.
Your choices and rights
- Change your name, country and look in the app at any time.
- Turn notifications off in the app or in your phone's settings.
- Sign other devices out in Settings → Account.
- Delete your account at any time.
- Write to us for a copy of your data, to correct it, or with any question about it. We answer within 30 days.
Depending on where you live (for example California, Canada, India or Australia), the law may give you these rights and others, such as complaining to a data protection authority. We give the rights above to every player, wherever they live.
Security
Everything sent between the app and our servers is encrypted (HTTPS and secure WebSockets). Passwords and sign-in tokens are stored only as one-way hashes. Access to account data is limited to the people who run the game, and changes they make to an account are logged.
Changes to this policy
When we change this policy, we change the date at the top. If a change affects what we collect or how we use it, we will say so in the app before it takes effect.