Last updated: August 1, 2026

FairwayBets ("the app") is a golf scoring and bet-tracking app. This policy describes what information the app handles and where it goes. The short version: we collect the minimum needed to run the app's social features, we store it with Apple, and we never sell it or use it for advertising.

Information you provide

• Public profile: your chosen username, golf handicap, Venmo handle, optional profile photo, and — unless you turn it off — a summary of your playing record. These are stored in Apple's iCloud (CloudKit) service so other FairwayBets players can find you by username, see your handicap in rounds, and settle bets with you. Your profile is visible to other users of the app.
• Career summary (optional, on by default): a rolled-up total of your play — rounds played, wins, win rate, the net and total dollar amounts across your bets, a breakdown by game format, and your five biggest wins (format, amount, stake, number of players, date). It is stored on your public profile, so any FairwayBets user who looks you up by username can see it — not only your friends. It covers rounds you scored on your own as well as rounds played with others. Individual hole scores, course names, and the names of people you played against are never part of it. Turn it off any time in Profile → Career; turning it off removes the summary from your profile.
• Phone number: entered when creating an account, used only for display on your own device. Your phone number never leaves your phone. To let friends find you, the app stores a one-way cryptographic fingerprint (SHA-256 hash) of your number — the number itself cannot be recovered from it.
• Contacts (optional): if you allow contacts access on the Add Friends page, the app computes the same one-way fingerprint of your contacts' phone numbers on your device and matches those fingerprints against FairwayBets profiles. Contact names, numbers, and any other contact details never leave your phone, and your contact list is never stored on our servers. You can decline or revoke access in Settings at any time — friend search by username works either way.
• Round and betting data: courses, scores, game formats, stakes, and the resulting who-owes-whom amounts. Rounds you score on your own stay on your device — with one exception: their totals feed the optional career summary described above, if you leave it on. When you invite friends to a live round, that round's scores are shared through iCloud with the players in it.
• Friend connections: friend requests and friendships are stored in iCloud so they work across devices.
• Suggestions: if you send us a feature suggestion, its text and your username are stored so we can read it.

What we don't do

• No advertising, no trackers, no third-party analytics.
• No selling, renting, or sharing your information with anyone.
• No payment processing: FairwayBets tracks bet outcomes but never moves money. The optional Venmo shortcut simply opens Venmo; any payment happens entirely in Venmo under Venmo's own terms and privacy policy.

Where your data lives

All server-side data is stored in Apple's iCloud (CloudKit) infrastructure and protected by Apple's security practices. Identity comes from your iCloud account; the app never sees or stores an email address or password.

Course database

Course searches (name or location text you type) are sent to GolfCourseAPI, a golf course database service, to return course details like par and slope. No account or personal information is included in those requests.

Scorecard scanning

If you use "Scan scorecard," the photo you take is sent to our scan service and to Anthropic's Claude API solely to read the pars and stroke indexes off the card. The photo is processed and discarded — it is not stored on our servers and is not used to train AI models (per Anthropic's API terms). An anonymous device identifier (a random ID created by the app, not tied to you or your Apple account) is sent with each scan solely to enforce the daily limit and is kept for at most 48 hours. If the scan service can't be reached, the photo is processed entirely on your device instead. Scans are limited to 10 per day per device.