Privacy policy

This policy covers the Skibuddy iPhone app, its Apple Watch companion and the website at xcskibuddy.com. Skibuddy collects what it needs to record, analyse and share your skiing. It shows no ads, sells no data and runs no advertising trackers or third-party analytics in the app.

Who we are

Skibuddy is made by Kaine Ventures, LLC, a limited liability company registered in Texas, USA. Kaine Ventures, LLC decides how and why your personal data is processed (it is the "controller"), and "we" in this policy means Kaine Ventures, LLC. Questions and requests go to hello@xcskibuddy.com.

What Skibuddy collects and why

Your account

Skibuddy signs you in through Clerk, with the methods the sign-in screen offers (Sign in with Apple or your email address). It stores your email address, your name and the username you choose, and uses them to sign you in, show your profile to the people you connect with and reach you about your account. If you hide your email with Sign in with Apple, Skibuddy receives Apple's relay address instead of your own. When you sign up you confirm that you are 16 or older and accept the terms; Skibuddy stores the terms version and the time you accepted it.

Your profile

Everything beyond your name and username is optional: bio, location, birthday, gender, weight, height, maximum and resting heart rate, and a profile and cover image. Skibuddy uses your heart rates to set your heart-rate zones and shows your profile to the people described under who can see what. Your coach sees your birthday, gender, weight, height and heart rates only if you allow it for that coach.

Your sessions

For every session you record, Skibuddy stores the GPS route, laps and times, distance and elevation, heart rate from a Bluetooth heart-rate strap, stride rate, glide, left/right balance, the technique, and what you add after the session: the snow condition, your skis and wax, notes, how the session felt, and photos and videos. Skibuddy uses them to show you your laps, routes, climbs, progress and wax-room rankings, and to share the session with the people you choose.

Coaches, clubs and the feed

Skibuddy stores the comments and likes you leave, the clubs you create or join, your coach and athlete connections with the permissions you set for each coach, and the sessions a coach plans for you. These exist so you can train with your coach and club.

Notifications

If you allow notifications, Skibuddy stores your device's push token, your app language and your time zone. Apple Push Notification service uses the token to deliver notifications, and Skibuddy uses the language and time zone to write them in your language with the right days. Skibuddy also keeps your notification inbox and the notification types you switch on or off.

Safety and moderation

Skibuddy stores the reports you file, the reports filed about your content and the people you block. The person you report doesn't see who reported them. When you post a comment, a session note or other text that others see, Skibuddy checks it against a list of objectionable words and rejects it if it matches. These records let us review reports, remove content and suspend accounts that break the terms.

Crash reports

After the app crashes, Skibuddy asks whether to send the crash report. Only if you choose Send does Google Firebase Crashlytics receive it: the error and where in the code it happened, the app's recent diagnostic log lines, your device model, iOS version and app version, and your Skibuddy user id so we can follow up on a problem you report to us. If you choose not to send it, Skibuddy deletes the report from your phone.

Apple Health

With your permission, Skibuddy writes each finished session to Apple Health as a cross-country skiing workout with its route, distance and heart rate. It reads your resting heart rate to fill in your profile; once you save the profile, Skibuddy stores that value with your profile like any other profile field. While a session runs, the Apple Watch app reads your live heart rate to show it on the watch when no chest strap is connected; that reading is neither saved nor sent anywhere. Skibuddy reads nothing else from Apple Health.

Skibuddy never uses data from Apple Health for advertising or marketing, never sells it, never shares it with data brokers and never stores it in iCloud. You can change or withdraw Apple Health access at any time in the Health app or in iOS Settings.

Location

Skibuddy asks for location access "While Using the App" and uses your location only while you record a session, to draw the route, time laps and climbs and measure distance. While a session is recording, Skibuddy keeps using your location with the screen locked until you finish the session. Skibuddy doesn't track your location outside a session and never asks for "Always" access. A session's route shows where you skied, including where you started and finished, to everyone who can see that session.

Motion data and technique recognition

During a session Skibuddy reads your phone's motion sensors, calculates stride rate, glide, balance and technique on the phone and saves only those results with the session.

If you switch on "Help improve technique recognition" in Settings, Skibuddy also uploads the session's per-second motion record, with position, heart rate and the technique labels you tap during the session, and uses it only to develop and test technique recognition. No feature of the app uses it, and nobody else sees it. The setting is off until you switch it on, applies to sessions recorded while it is on, and you can switch it off at any time.

Who can see what

You choose a visibility for every session:

• Private: only you.
• Connections & Clubs: you, your coaches, the athletes you coach and the members of your clubs.
• Public: every signed-in Skibuddy user. Skibuddy doesn't publish sessions on the open web.

Segment leaderboards show a session's time only to people who can see that session, and never show your heart rate to others. Other signed-in users can see your public profile: name, username, profile and cover images, bio, location, club and, if you coach, your coach profile. Your email address stays visible only to you. For each coach, you decide whether that coach can plan sessions for you and see your health profile. A coach who can plan sessions can create, edit and delete only the planned sessions that coach created, never your recorded sessions. When you block someone, Skibuddy hides your content from them and theirs from you.

Skibuddy stores photos, videos and route files at long, random web addresses and gives those addresses only to people who can see the session or profile they belong to. Anyone who obtains an exact address can open that file, so share it with care.

The website

If you join the waitlist, we store the email address you give us, with the page language, in PostHog (EU cloud) and use it for one thing: telling you when Skibuddy launches. If you apply to the first-snow cohort, we store your application (name, email, role, club, country, ski center, group size, technique and notes) in PostHog and use it to select and contact cohort members. No newsletters, no sharing, no selling.

We use PostHog (EU cloud) to understand how the site is used: which pages are read, which buttons are clicked and which errors the site hits. Requests go through our own domain. PostHog tells page views apart with a random identifier that lives only in the open page: the site sets no analytics cookies and stores nothing for PostHog in your browser. The site remembers your theme choice in your browser. No ad networks, no social media pixels and no third-party fonts or content delivery networks at runtime.

Service providers

Skibuddy runs on these providers. Each processes your data only to provide its service to us:

• Clerk (USA): sign-in and account identity.
• Convex (USA): the database and server functions that store and serve your account, profile, sessions and social content.
• Cloudflare R2 (global network): file storage for session routes, photos and videos, profile and cover images, club logos and banners, and opted-in motion records.
• Google Firebase Crashlytics (USA): crash reports, only the ones you choose to send.
• Apple: Sign in with Apple, Apple Push Notification service and Apple Health on your device.
• PostHog (EU): website analytics, the waitlist and cohort applications. PostHog is used on the website only, not in the app.
• Vercel (USA): hosting for the website.

We may also disclose data when the law requires it, to protect people's safety, or as part of a sale or reorganization of the business, in which case this policy continues to apply to your data.

International transfers

Kaine Ventures, LLC is based in the USA, and the app's data is stored and processed in the USA and on Cloudflare's global network. If you live in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, your data is transferred to the USA. For these transfers we rely on the safeguards our providers offer, such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses in their data processing terms and, where a provider is certified, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and its UK and Swiss extensions.

How long we keep data

• Account, profile, sessions and social content: as long as your account exists, or until you delete them.
• After you delete your account: Skibuddy deletes your data from the database and file storage, and your sign-in identity, within 30 days. Our providers delete the remaining copies in their backups and logs on their standard schedules.
• Crash reports: Firebase keeps them for 90 days.
• Waitlist emails and cohort applications: until Skibuddy no longer needs them for the launch and the cohort, or until you ask us to delete them.
• We keep data longer only where the law requires it or to handle a dispute or a moderation appeal.

Your rights and choices

In the app you can:

• Edit or clear your profile fields and change each session's visibility.
• Set each coach's permissions or remove a coach.
• Switch technique recognition and each notification type on or off, and choose whether to send each crash report.
• Change location, Apple Health and notification access in iOS Settings.
• Delete your account and all its data in Settings > Delete Account.

By email to hello@xcskibuddy.com you can ask for a copy of your data in a machine-readable format, ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, or object to how we use it. We answer within one month and may ask you to confirm the request from the email address on your account.

EEA, UK and Switzerland. You have the rights of access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability and objection, and you can withdraw consent at any time without affecting processing before the withdrawal. We process your data to provide the service you signed up for (contract); with your consent for Apple Health, location, crash reports, technique recognition, the health details in your profile and the waitlist; and in our legitimate interests for security, abuse prevention, moderation and understanding how the website is used. You can complain to the data protection authority where you live.

California and other US states. You can ask to know, correct and delete the personal information we hold about you, and we won't treat you differently for asking. We don't sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we use sensitive personal information only to provide the service.

Children

Skibuddy is for people aged 16 and over, and every account confirms this at signup. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If you believe a child under 16 has an account, email hello@xcskibuddy.com and we will delete it.

Security

Skibuddy uses TLS for all traffic between the app, the website and our providers, and our providers encrypt stored data at rest. The app uploads files through short-lived upload links and never holds storage credentials. Access to production data is limited to what running and supporting Skibuddy requires. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes. We announce material changes in the app before they take effect.

Contact

Kaine Ventures, LLC, Texas, USA. Privacy questions and requests: hello@xcskibuddy.com. Help with the app is on the support page.