Privacy policy
Last updated: 27 October 2026
RowingBuddy is a rowing game. You can play every world and workout without an account; then your history stays on your device, and the only things sent to us are anonymous usage numbers (see Anonymous usage numbers), which you can switch off. This policy explains that, and what happens when you create an account.
Who is responsible
Michel Rossier, Switzerland, is responsible for your data. Write to hello@mail.rowingbuddy.com. The postal address is in the terms.
What we store and why
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Email address and password (stored only as a one-way hash) | To sign you in, confirm your address and let you reset your password. |
| Username, and optionally your country | Shown above your boat, and on the leaderboards if you choose to appear there. |
| Your choices: whether to back up your rows, and whether to appear on the leaderboards | So we only keep and show what you agreed to. |
| Only if you switch on Back up my rows: your rows (workout, date, time, distance, pace, power, stroke rate, strokes, place, the world and the rower you used, and the recording of the row) | To back up your history, show it on every device you use, and, if you also choose to appear there, rank your best rows on the leaderboards. |
| Game settings that follow you (name, world, sound, music, coach) | So your other devices are set up the same way. |
| Signed-in devices (a name such as “Chrome on Mac” and when it was last used) | So you can see and sign out devices from your account. |
| The emails we send you (confirming your address, resetting your password) and whether they were delivered | So you can confirm your address and get back into your account. |
| Only if you send the beta feedback form: what you wrote, the platform and app version, the name and email address if you add them, and whether you asked for news | To make RowingBuddy better and, if you left an address, to answer you and, only if you ticked the box, to send you news about RowingBuddy. It reaches us as an email and isn’t stored in the database or linked to your account. |
| Server logs (IP address, time, request) | To keep the service running and secure, including limiting repeated sign-in attempts. |
| For a backed-up row that fails our fair-play checks: why it was held back, and our decision | To keep the leaderboards fair (see Fair-play checks). |
We only email you about your account: confirming your address and resetting your password, and an answer to your feedback if you asked for one. News about RowingBuddy only if you ticked the box for it in the feedback form; every news email lets you unsubscribe, or just reply and ask. No other marketing.
We do not use advertising or trackers that follow you to other sites or apps. We use the analytics service PostHog, without cookies unless you agree to them (see Analytics and session recordings). We do not sell your data, and share it only with the providers that run RowingBuddy for us (see below).
Your rower and your health
The game connects to your rower over Bluetooth and reads distance, pace, power, stroke rate and stroke count, and on a SmartRow also stroke length and force. This happens on your device; it is only sent to us as part of a row you choose to back up.
RowingBuddy does not process health data. Some rowers also send your heart rate; the game skips it without reading it, and never shows, stores or sends it. We don’t ask for your age, weight or anything else about your body.
Phones may ask you to allow Bluetooth, and older Android phones call this a location permission. RowingBuddy uses it only to find your rower and never reads your location.
Anonymous usage numbers
With or without an account, the game sends three kinds of short, anonymous line:
- After each workout or game: which workout or game and world, which kind of rower, how far and how long, how it ended (finished, ended early, stopped at the start, rower disconnected, or the app closed during it), how often it was paused or the rower dropped out, how far in it stopped, and whether you were signed in. While you row nothing is sent; if the app closes in the middle of a workout, the line is sent the next time you open it.
- Screens and buttons: which screens are opened and which buttons are tapped, by name from a fixed list (for example “Home, Race”), which world you picked, how connecting a rower went, whether a sign-up invitation was shown and whether an account was created, and changes to the sound, coach and graphics settings. Never anything you type.
- Once a day you open the game: rough bands for how long since you last opened it (for example “2 to 7 days”) and since the first day on this device, and whether it’s the first day this week or month. Your device keeps those two dates itself; only the bands are sent.
Every line also carries the platform (web, iPhone, Android) and the app version. The workout and once-a-day lines also say, in rough groups, what you play on: a phone, tablet or computer; the system family (for example iOS or Windows) and, on the web, the browser family (for example Chrome or Safari), without version numbers; whether it can connect to a Bluetooth rower; and a screen size group (small, medium, large or extra large), never the exact size. This tells us which devices to build and test for. If you first opened the game from a link we tagged with where it was posted (for example ?utm_source=reddit in the address), your device remembers that source name and the usage lines carry it, so we can see whether a post brought players who row and come back; it’s only ever a source name from a short list, never the page you came from. Workout lines carry the hour they happened, the others only the day. None of them carries a name, email, account, device or install id, session or IP address, and the lines aren’t linked to each other, so they can’t be linked to you or put together into what one person did. (Like every request, they briefly appear in the server logs, see below.) The same lines also go to PostHog, with more detail added there (see below). We use them to see how many people play and come back, which workouts, games, worlds and parts of the game are used, and where people stop, to make the game better. The lines are kept for 13 months. You can switch this off at any time in Settings (Share anonymous usage); then nothing is sent, and what was waiting on your device to be sent is deleted, along with the two dates and the source.
Analytics and session recordings
We use PostHog to see how people find the game and how they use it. When you first open the game we ask whether you agree to analytics cookies: accept them, or choose under Manage settings, where they are off until you switch them on. You can change your answer at any time with Cookies at the bottom of the home screen or in Settings.
Always, unless Share anonymous usage is off: PostHog gets the usage lines above, each screen you open as a page view, and with each workout how smoothly the game ran (the average frame rate, the share of slow frames and the graphics setting). With them it gets, from your browser or app: the browser and system with their versions, the screen and window size, the language, the address the game was opened with and the site that linked to it (including tags such as ?utm_source=reddit). Every request also brings your IP address and browser identification string. PostHog uses them to work out roughly where you are (country, region, city) and, until you agree to cookies, to count visitors without cookies: a one-way code made with a key that changes every day, so the same person can’t be recognised from one day to the next. PostHog doesn’t keep your IP address. Before you agree, nothing that identifies your device is stored on it; only a note that you haven’t agreed.
Only if you agree to analytics cookies: PostHog stores a random id on your device (a cookie and an entry in local storage, for a year), so your visits and sessions can be joined up. It also records your sessions: what the screens show and where you tap, click and scroll, recorded as the page’s layout rather than as a video, so we can see where people get stuck. Everything you type is hidden in recordings, and so is your email address on the account screen. The 3D view of the water isn’t recorded. We don’t tell PostHog who you are, even when you’re signed in, but a recording can show your username where the game shows it.
On the website (the home page, the blog and these pages, outside the game itself): PostHog counts page views and which Play button was used, with the same browser details as above, but always without cookies. Nothing is stored on your device, nothing is recorded, and visits aren’t joined up, so the website doesn’t ask. If you switched Share anonymous usage off in the game in the same browser, the website sends nothing either. To show Continue rowing, the home page reads the game’s saved rows on your device; they don’t leave it.
Videos from YouTube. Some blog posts show a video hosted on YouTube. Nothing is loaded from YouTube until you press play. Then the video plays in YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode, and Google (YouTube) receives your IP address and browser details and may store data on your device, under Google’s own privacy policy.
Taking your agreement back in Settings stops the recordings and deletes the id from your device; switching Share anonymous usage off stops everything going to PostHog. Session recordings are deleted after 30 days, the rest of PostHog’s data after 12 months.
What you choose
When you create an account you choose two things, both off unless you switch them on: Back up my rows and Show me on the leaderboards. The leaderboards rank backed-up rows, so appearing there needs the backup too. You can change both at any time on your account screen. Switching the backup off deletes your rows from our server straight away (they stay on your devices) and takes you off the leaderboards.
Fair-play checks
When a row is backed up, the server checks automatically whether it looks possible (for example, a pace or power no human can row). A row that fails is not put on the leaderboards until one of us has looked at it and approved or rejected it. Nothing else follows from it: your account and your history are not affected. If you think we got it wrong, write to us and we will look again.
What others can see
Only if you choose to appear on the leaderboards, and once your email is confirmed, your username, your country’s flag if you set one, and your best result on each workout are shown on the public leaderboards. Your email address and the rest of your history are never shown to other players.
Where it is stored, and who helps us
We use these providers to run RowingBuddy. They process your data only on our behalf and only for the purpose shown.
| Provider | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Laravel Cloud (Laravel Holdings Inc., USA) | Runs the game and our server, and holds the database with your account, rows and settings, and the server logs. | Frankfurt, Germany, on Amazon Web Services servers |
| Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., USA), through Laravel Cloud | Stores the recordings of your rows. Also the network in front of the game and our server, which protects it against attacks. | Recordings: in the European Union. Network traffic passes through Cloudflare’s nearest data centre, which can be outside Europe. |
| PostHog (PostHog Inc., USA) | Web analytics, the usage numbers and, if you agree, session recordings. | European Union (Frankfurt, Germany) |
| Resend (USA) | Sends our emails to you. | Sent from Ireland. Your email address, the message and its delivery status are stored in the USA. |
Your data is therefore stored in Germany and the European Union, and some of it can be accessed from or stored in the USA. Laravel, Cloudflare, PostHog and Resend are US companies. Where data goes to the USA, it is protected by the providers’ data processing terms, based on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses (adapted for Switzerland) and, where a provider is certified, the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework.
Why we are allowed to use it
- Your account, sign-in and the emails about it: needed to provide the account you asked for.
- Backing up your rows and showing you on the leaderboards: your consent, which you give and take back with the switches on your account screen.
- The feedback form, and news if you ticked the box: your consent, given by sending it. You can take it back at any time.
- Server logs, fair-play checks, the anonymous usage numbers and PostHog’s analytics without cookies: our legitimate interest in keeping RowingBuddy secure, fair and getting better.
- Analytics cookies and session recordings: your consent, which you give and take back in the cookie banner or in Settings.
How we keep it safe
All connections are encrypted. Passwords are stored only as a one-way hash, sign-in attempts are limited, and only we and our hosting provider can reach the database. If something ever goes wrong that puts your data at risk, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.
How long we keep it
- As long as you have an account. When you delete it, your account, rows, row recordings and settings are deleted straight away. Copies in Laravel Cloud’s daily database backups disappear as their backup cycle ends.
- Accounts whose email was never confirmed and that hold no rows are deleted after 90 days.
- Emails we sent you, and their delivery status, are kept by Resend for 30 days.
- Server logs are kept for at most 30 days.
- PostHog: session recordings for 30 days, everything else for 12 months.
- Feedback emails are kept in our inbox while we work on what they ask for, and deleted when you ask us to. If you asked for news, your email address is kept for that until you unsubscribe.
Your rights
You can see, correct, download and delete your data at any time, take back a consent you gave, and object to or ask us to limit how we use it. In the game, open your account (the name at the top right of the home screen): Download my data gives you everything we hold as a file, and Delete account removes it. You can also write to us at the contact above, and we will answer within 30 days. You may also complain to the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) or, in the EU, to your data protection authority.
Children
You can play without an account at any age. To create an account you must be at least 16, or have a parent’s or guardian’s permission. If we learn that a younger child has an account without it, we will delete it.
On your device
The game stores your settings, history and, when you sign in, a sign-in token on your device (in the browser’s local storage, or in the app’s own storage on phones). The game itself sets no cookies. Only if you agree to analytics cookies, PostHog stores a random id on your device for a year (the cookie and local storage entry ph_…_posthog). PostHog also stores your answer (__ph_opt_in_out_…), which holds no id. Cloudflare’s protection may set a short-lived technical cookie to tell people from automated attacks.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will say so in the game before it applies.