Privacy Policy

Last updated: 17 August 2026

The short version

Fairway has no accounts, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking, and it contains no third-party SDKs. It does send data off your phone, because a shared scorecard cannot work otherwise — but only the things the people you are playing with need to see: a display name, an optional handicap index, and your scores. No email address, no location, no contacts, no advertising identifier, and nothing about you beyond what you type into a scorecard.

Who you are, as far as the app is concerned

There is no sign-up. The app asks for a name on first launch and nothing else — no password, no email address, no phone number.

To tell players apart, Fairway uses an identifier that Apple's CloudKit derives from the iCloud account already on your iPhone. It is specific to this app, it is not your Apple ID, it does not contain your name or email, and it cannot be used to identify you outside Fairway. We never see your Apple ID.

What leaves your phone, and why

When you start or join a round, these are written to Apple's iCloud so that the other players in that round can see them:

• The display name you chose
• Your handicap index, if you entered one, and the course handicap derived from it
• Your score on each hole, and the putts, fairways, greens in regulation and penalties you recorded
• Which hole you are on, and when you last posted a score
• The course, tee and format for rounds you create, and the name and roster of teams you create or join

This is stored in Fairway's public CloudKit database, which is how somebody who types your round's code can find it without you having to send them an invitation. Two consequences worth being plain about:

• Anyone with the six-character code can see that round — that is the point of the code. Treat it the way you would treat a door code, and share it only with the people you are playing with.
• We can technically read what is in that database, in the same way any developer can read their own app's public store. We do not mine it, sell it, share it, or use it for anything other than running the app. But we will not pretend it is invisible to us, because it is not.

Only you can change your own scorecard. Apple's CloudKit enforces this: a record can be modified only by the person who created it, so nobody else in your round can edit your card — and neither can someone who guessed the code.

Course lookups

Searching for a course sends your search term to OpenGolfAPI, which returns the scorecard. That request carries the text you typed and nothing else — no identifier, no account, no location. Course data is provided under the ODbL licence, © OpenStreetMap contributors.

What stays on your phone

Your name and handicap index are stored in the app's own preferences. Your cards, your teams and the courses you have played are kept in a database inside the app's private container, so the app works with no signal. If your iPhone backs itself up to iCloud or to a computer, that copy is included like any other app's, and is covered by Apple's privacy policy rather than this one.

What the app does not do

• It does not use analytics, advertising identifiers, attribution or crash-reporting services.
• It contains no third-party SDKs of any kind.
• It does not track you across other apps or websites, and it does not share anything with data brokers.
• It does not ask for an account, an email address, a password or a phone number.
• It does not read your location, contacts, calendar, photos, microphone, camera or Apple Health data, and requests no system permission for any of them.
• It does not sell anything to anyone.

How long it is kept, and deleting it

Round and team records stay in iCloud so the round can still be opened later by the people who played it. Deleting Fairway from your iPhone removes everything held on the device, but it does not by itself remove the cards already shared with a round.

If you want your data removed from the shared store, email furniturewala@yahoo.com from any address with the round code, or the display name and rough date, and it will be deleted. There is no account to close, so this is the only step involved.

Children

Fairway is rated 4+ and is suitable for all ages. It collects nothing from children that it does not collect from anyone else, which is a display name that the child chooses and their golf scores. It has no chat, no messaging, no user profiles to browse and no way for strangers to contact anybody — a round is only reachable by someone who has been given its code.

Changes to this policy

If a future version of Fairway collects anything it does not collect today, this policy will be updated before that version ships, and the change will be described in the app's release notes.

Contact

Questions about this policy: furniturewala@yahoo.com.