Privacy Policy

Effective date: October 14, 2026 · Last updated: October 14, 2026

SnowStory is a ride adventure game made by Kick-Out Concepts LLC ("SnowStory," "we," "us"). This policy explains what information the SnowStory app, watch app, and website collect, how we use it, and the controls you have. The short version: we collect what the game needs to work, we never keep a trail of where you ride, we never sell your personal data, and there are no third-party ads.

1. What we collect

Account information

Sign-in: you sign in with Google or Apple. We receive your email address and name from that provider. We never see your password. If you sign in with Apple and choose Hide My Email, we receive only Apple's relay address, and our emails reach you through it.
Age screen: before you sign in we ask for your birth month and year — only month and year — and your phone's country setting, to apply the right age of consent and confirm you are old enough to have your own account (see Children).
Profile: the display name, discipline, gear preferences, and avatar you choose.

Location (the heart of the game — and the tightest scope)

The app collects GPS location only during an active day, started by you or your squad leader, while your phone or watch is tracking. Starting a day turns tracking on; ending it (or the day ending) turns it off. When you are not playing, we do not collect your location.
The app also uses your location to list the nearest resort first, and to draw the neighborhood trial's walking route around where you're standing. We don't keep that location.
While you play, we use your location to award captures. We don't keep those GPS points: we store only what you captured and when, and your latest position (see Squad visibility, below). We do not build or store a trail of where you ride.
Background location: with your permission, tracking continues while the app is in the background during an active day — with a visible ongoing notification — so you can keep your phone in your pocket while you ride. It stops when your day ends.
Squad visibility: during an active day your squad sees your latest position on the map. You can turn this off in Settings › Safety › Show me on the squad map. For a managed rider, the squad leader controls it — and always still sees them. We keep only that latest position, overwritten as you move; your squad sees it until that day is over, and then we erase it. It is never public.

Watches

Our Apple Watch and Wear OS apps send the same GPS batches as the phone during an active day, plus whether you're riding, resting, or paused.
The watch apps work out the nearest resort, and how far away it is, on the watch itself; outside those GPS batches they don't send your position.
The watch apps don't read or write Apple Health data or any other health data.

Maps

To show the map on the phone, our map provider receives your IP address and the area you're viewing, and it counts map loads for billing. For the neighborhood trial it also receives the place the route starts from. Its usage telemetry is off and stays off unless you turn it on in the map's credits (tap the credit line at the bottom of the map). On a child's device it can't be turned on, and the neighborhood trial isn't offered.
On the watch, the map comes from SnowStory itself, with no third-party map service.

Game activity

Captures, points, moments, trips, and squad membership — the scoreboard and story of your days, visible to your squad.

Spectators

A squad leader can add up to three spectators: people who follow the squad's day without riding, like family at the lodge or at home. Spectators are free, don't take a squad spot, and never score.
A spectator sees what the squad sees: where each rider is, or was last seen, on the map during an active day, the scoreboard, the squad's story and timeline (including days from before they joined), and the day's SnowSelfies, which they can add to and vote on. A rider who turns off Show me on the squad map is hidden from spectators too.
A spectator's device never sends us their location, so spectators never appear on the map. Riders can always see who is spectating: spectators are listed in the squad, and the squad's timeline shows when someone starts or stops. The squad leader can remove a spectator at any time.
A spectator with their own account must be old enough to have one (see Children). The squad leader can also set up a managed spectator of any age, the same way as a managed rider. Before adding a spectator, the leader sees a notice that names the children in the squad, and we keep a record of that notice with the invitation (see Retention).

Photos and avatars

If you use the avatar creator, your selfie is processed by Google's image service (one of our service providers, under our instructions) to draw a cartoon avatar. The selfie itself is not kept, and it is not used to train any model.
If you choose to upload a photo as your avatar, that photo is stored and displayed as your avatar until you change it.
Children's avatars are managed by the parent (see Children).

SnowSelfies (squad photos)

A SnowSelfie you add to a day is stored on our servers and shown to the members of your squad for that day and in your squad's story. SnowStory never shows it outside your squad, and there is no public feed. Squad members can save or share a day card that includes the day's winning photo. Once shared, it's outside SnowStory.
Before it is stored, the photo is resized to our frame and stripped of embedded metadata (including any GPS location the camera wrote into it).
Every squad member can hide a photo for themselves, report it to us, or block another rider. Reporting keeps a copy of the photo as it was reported, so we can review it even if it is later replaced.
Our team can access stored photos when needed to review a report, respond to a support request, keep the service safe, or meet a legal obligation. We do not use your photos for advertising or to train any model.
The squad leader can remove any photo from a day before it is sealed. A photo is deleted when you replace it, when it is removed, or when your account is deleted.

Purchases

Passes are purchased through Google Play or the Apple App Store. We receive purchase confirmations (which pass, when) through our payments partner so the game can activate your pass. We never receive your payment card details.

Diagnostics and analytics

Crash reports and app-usage statistics help us fix problems and improve the game. Your precise GPS location is never part of the usage statistics.
Like every app, we also receive basic device and technical information as part of crash reports, analytics, and ordinary server logs: device model, operating system and app version, language, IP address, and app-instance identifiers. Server logs are kept for 90 days. We use it to fix problems and keep the Service secure — not to build advertising profiles, and we keep analytics ad-personalization features turned off. The app doesn't collect your device's advertising ID.

This website

This website, snowstory.app, uses Google Analytics to count visits, but only if you accept in the cookie banner. Until you do, it loads nothing from Google and sets no analytics cookies. Your choice applies to every page of the site.
If you accept, Google Analytics sets two cookies (_ga and _ga_ plus our ID) that last up to 13 months. It tells us which pages you viewed and the page that sent you here, your approximate location (city or region, worked out from your IP address), and your device type, operating system, browser, and screen size. Google Analytics uses your IP address only to estimate that location. It doesn't log or store the address, and we never see it there. Detailed visit data is kept for two months. After that, we see only totals.
Google's advertising features stay off: no Google signals, no ad personalization, and no advertising cookies. Google handles this data for us under its data-processing terms, and we use it only to learn how people find SnowStory.
Changed your mind? Use Cookie settings at the bottom of any page. If you decline there, we delete the analytics cookies from your browser. Separately, our hosting provider keeps ordinary server logs for 90 days, and our fonts are served from our own site.

2. How we use information

To run the game: referee captures, score points, maintain squads, trips, and recaps.
To operate your account, passes, and entitlements.
To send email: welcome, purchase receipts, and pass reminders; the invite a squad leader sends to an email address they enter; your neighborhood trial wrap-up; the outcome of reports and safety notices; and a last email when your account has been deleted — with unsubscribe controls for anything non-essential.
To keep the Service safe, prevent cheating, and fix problems.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not show third-party advertising.

Your squad (its riders and any spectators) sees your display name, avatar, captures, points, moments, SnowSelfies, and your latest on-mountain position during active days (unless you turn it off — see Squad visibility above).
Nothing you do in SnowStory is shown outside your squad. Squad members can save or share a day card (with the day's winning photo and the name of the rider who added it, the mountain, the date, the squad's name, and the squad's totals for the day) or a moment card (with the riders' names). Once shared, it's outside SnowStory.
Service providers that run parts of the Service for us: hosting, sign-in, analytics, maps, purchases (the app stores and our payments partner) and email. They process data for us under their own commitments and do not get to use it for themselves.
Legal and safety: we may disclose information if required by law or to protect users' safety. In particular, if ski patrol or emergency services contact us while searching for a missing person, we will share that player's last recorded on-mountain position — if we can help save a life, we will.

4. Children and families

Children below the age of digital consent never create their own accounts. That age is 13 in the United States (and everywhere we don't say otherwise) and up to 16 in parts of the EEA — see section 7. A parent or guardian creates a managed profile from their own device, makes an explicit declaration that the child is below the age that applies where the guardian lives, and — for such children — reviews and accepts a direct notice describing what the app collects from the child before the profile can be used. We record which age and region the declaration was made against. SnowStory's children's features are designed to comply with the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), including the parental notice, consent, and control rights described in this section.

A managed child's activity is visible to their squad only — including the squad's spectators, whom only the squad leader can add.
A child can also be a managed spectator, set up by the squad leader: they follow the squad from a phone or tablet, never score, and their device sends us no location.
The parent controls the child's profile, avatar, sharing, and experience settings, and can delete the child's profile at any time. Deleting it removes the child's name, picture, photos and settings. Their rides stay in the squad's history under a number, without their name, unless the parent deletes the riding record too.
The squad leader can turn off a child's SnowSelfies. While they're off, the child can't add a photo, but can still see and vote on the squad's.
Children's devices link via a code from the parent — no email or password record is ever created for a child.
We collect from a child's device only what the game needs: the managed profile, game activity, SnowSelfies taken in the app, location during active days, and crash reports with basic device information. Children's devices send no usage analytics. They have no in-app chat, no contact-list access, and no microphone access (SnowStory never requests those permissions from anyone).
Parents can contact support@snowstory.app to review their child's information, receive a copy of it, or have it deleted.
A parent can withdraw consent at any time — by deleting the child's riding record and profile in the app, or by contacting support. When consent is withdrawn, we stop collecting from the child and delete the child's personal information.

5. Retention and deletion

We keep your information while your account is active.
You can delete your account in the app (Settings → Delete My Account) or by following snowstory.app/delete-account. Deletion takes effect immediately (your account is disabled) and becomes permanent after a 14-day grace window — contact support within that window to undo an accidental deletion.
Deleting a squad leader's account also deletes every managed member it created, children and adults alike. Members who signed in with their own accounts are not deleted.
After deletion, your personal details are removed. Your points and captures stay in your squad's history without your name; purchase records, reports and the moments a squad completed together keep your account ID, without your name.
Purchase records are retained by the app stores under their policies.
Reports and the copies made for them, and the consent record for any managed member you added, are kept to keep SnowStory safe. Backups roll off within 90 days.
A record of each spectator invitation — who added whom, when, and the notice the leader accepted — is kept to keep squads safe, including after an account is deleted.

6. Security

Your data is encrypted in transit and stored with access controls. No system is perfectly secure, but we limit access to your information to what the Service needs.

7. Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask to access, correct, delete, or export your personal information, and where the law in your country gives you more rights, we honor them too. The in-app tools cover the common cases; for anything else, email support@snowstory.app and we will respond within 30 days. SnowStory is operated from the United States; if you use it from elsewhere, your information is processed in the US.

If you live in a US state with a privacy law

(California, Colorado, and a growing list of others.) You may have the right to know what personal information we have about you, to correct or delete it, and to receive a copy. We do not sell your personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, as those terms are defined in these laws, so there is nothing to opt out of. We will never treat you differently for exercising a privacy right. To exercise one, use the in-app tools or email us; if we decline a request, you can appeal by replying to our response and a person will take a second look.

If you live in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland

We process your information to provide the game you signed up for (contract), to keep the Service safe and working (legitimate interests), and — for optional things like background location and analytics on our website — with your consent, which you can withdraw any time in the app's settings or, for the website, under Cookie settings. You also have the rights to object to or restrict processing, to data portability, and to complain to your local data protection authority. Your information is transferred to and processed in the United States; our providers process it under EU-approved Standard Contractual Clauses.

To use these rights, or to ask how we handle your information, contact us directly (see section 9).

Some countries set an "age of digital consent" higher than 13 (up to 16 in parts of the EEA, under Article 8 of the GDPR). If you are below that age where you live, you may use SnowStory only through a managed profile created and consented to by your parent or guardian — the same way under-13 profiles work everywhere. The guardian's declaration is made against the age of digital consent that applies where the guardian lives, and we record that age with the consent.

8. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a material way, we will notify you in the app or by email before the change takes effect, and — where required for children's information — obtain fresh parental consent.

9. Contact us

Kick-Out Concepts LLC
2522 Scranton Rd, Cleveland, OH 44113, USA
Phone: 330-419-1056
Email: support@snowstory.app