The Turn is operated by Carson Shaner, an individual based in New York, United States. There is no company behind it. Throughout this policy, "we" and "us" mean that one person.
You can reach us at playtheturn.co@gmail.com.
The Turn is a free daily golf game. You do not sign up, you do not enter a password, and you do not have to tell us anything about yourself to play a complete round.
The rest of this policy says exactly what we hold and why.
The first time you play a ranked round, the game creates an anonymous account in the background. It is a random identifier and nothing else. It carries no name and no email.
That identifier is what your username, your scores, and your one attempt a day attach to. It is stored in your browser. If you clear your browser's storage, use a private window, switch devices, or your browser evicts the site's data — Safari does this after seven days without a visit — that account is gone, and we cannot recover it for you unless you have attached an email address to it.
Creating that account is a request to our database provider, and like any request over the internet it carries your IP address. Our provider records it in a sign-in log. We do not use those logs to identify players. See section 11.
After your first ranked round you are asked to choose a username. You can skip this, in which case you appear on the leaderboard as Anonymous.
If you choose one:
After you claim a username, we ask whether you want to attach an email address. This is optional, and it is the only way to get your name and your scoring history back if you lose your device or clear your browser. The game tells you plainly what skipping it costs.
If you give us one:
When you finish a ranked daily round, this is sent to our database:
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your account identifier | So the score is yours and lands in the right place on the leaderboard |
| The date of the course, and that the round was a daily | So it lands on the right day's board |
| Your total strokes and total quality | The score itself, and the tiebreak |
| Your strokes and quality on each of the nine holes, and the day's course seed | So your scorecard can be shown on the leaderboard, and so a round can be checked later if a score looks impossible |
A separate one-line record notes that you have used your attempt for that date, so the game can hold you to one ranked round a day.
The same is sent for a match round and a Major round (section 9), stored against the match or the week rather than the day. A round you finish with no connection is kept on your device and sent when you next have one.
If you record a hole in one, a separate record of it is kept — the course, the hole, the distance, the club, the date, and whether the round was ranked — so that it can be checked against the round it happened in.
Unranked practice rounds are never sent anywhere. They stay on your device and are discarded.
Alongside your scores we keep a record of the individual shots in a ranked round: for each shot, the club, the aim, the power and timing you set, where the ball started and where it finished, and the lie it came to rest in.
This exists for two reasons, and no others:
It is not used to build a profile of you, it is not combined with anything else about you, and it is not read except when a score is being checked or when you ask to see your own.
We keep it for 180 days, then delete it. A round under review is kept until the review is finished.
We count a small number of things about how the game is played — for example how many rounds were started today, how many were abandoned part-way and on which hole, how many people opened the how-to-play screen, how many claimed a username.
We read these only as counts. Each is sent with your account identifier, for one reason: so that it can be found and deleted with your account if you ask (section 14). Nothing is built that looks at them player by player. The raw records are kept for ninety days and then dropped; what survives is a monthly total with no identifier on it — that some number of rounds were abandoned on the third hole, never that you did.
We use them to work out which parts of the game are confusing and which are working. That is the whole purpose. They are not sold, not shared, and not used for advertising.
The first time you open the game, and only that once, we record how you arrived. This is one row, written once, and never added to again:
instagram.com. Not the address of the page you came from, and not anything you typed into a search engine. Your browser does not give us either of those, and we do not try to obtain them;We do not record your IP address, your device, or anything that identifies your browser. We do not record a second visit. No cookie is involved, and none of this is sent to anyone else — it is stored in our own database, alongside your account, and deleted with it (section 14).
We do this to answer one question: whether people find the game by searching, because somebody shared it, or from something we posted. That is all it is for.
A Club is a group of two to thirty players who have chosen to see each other. Nothing about a Club exists until you start one or join one, and you can leave at any time.
If you are in a Club, this is held about you in addition to the above:
What the other members of your Club can see: your username; your score on each day's leaderboards, filtered to the Club; your match results and, once a match is decided, your scorecard for it hole by hole; your Major rounds, standings and points; and your head-to-head record against each of them. They cannot see your email address, any other Club you are in, the shot record described in section 7, or anything about you outside the game.
Whoever started a Club can remove members and hand the Club to somebody else. Removing a member does not remove their match or Major records, which stay on the Club's books so that its results remain correct.
A Club's name is chosen by whoever starts it, is visible to every member, and is subject to the same rules as a username.
The game stores the following in your browser's local storage. It is how the game plays offline and how it remembers you between visits.
| Stored as | What it holds | Removed when |
|---|---|---|
turn.session |
Your account identifier, your sign-in tokens, and your email address if you gave one | Your sign-in is rejected, or a sign-in link brings a different player |
turn.username |
The name you claimed | A sign-in link brings a different player |
turn.round, turn.round.pitch, turn.round.ctp, turn.round.event |
A ranked round you are part-way through — one slot per game, and one for a match or a Major | The round is submitted, or its window has passed |
turn.outbox |
A finished round that has not yet reached our database because you had no signal, waiting to be sent | The database confirms it, or after fourteen days |
turn.prev_user |
The identifier of the account this device was signed in as before, if that ever changed — so that a lost account can be traced if you ask us to | Not automatically |
turn.events |
Usage counts waiting to be sent, described in section 8 | They are sent, or sending fails |
turn.recovery |
Whether you have already answered the email question | Not automatically |
turn.seen.howto, turn.seen.pitch, turn.seen.ctp, turn.news.seen |
Which one-time notes you have already seen: the how-to-play screen, the notes on the two other games, and the what's-new note | Not automatically |
turn.home.seen |
Whether the front door has been shown this visit | When the tab is closed |
turn.played.<date>, and the same with pitch or ctp in the name |
That you have played that game on that date | Not automatically |
turn.course.<date>, and the same with pitch or ctp in the name |
That day's course layouts | Automatically, after ten days |
turn.textsize, turn.buzz, turn.meter.slow |
Your settings: the text size, whether the meter vibrates, and whether the practice meter runs slower | Not automatically |
turn.hints |
Which of the first-round tips you have already used | Not automatically |
None of this is a cookie, and none of it is used for advertising. All of it is there to make the game work.
You can remove all of it by clearing site data in your browser — but be aware that this permanently deletes an anonymous account that has no email attached to it, along with the scoring history behind it.
We use a small number of service providers and have no other data-sharing arrangements with anyone.
Supabase — our database and sign-in provider. They hold your account, your username, your email address if you gave one, your scores, the shot records described in section 7, and your Club, match and Major records. Their sign-in system also keeps a log that includes the IP address a sign-in came from. The data is stored in the United States. https://supabase.com/privacy
Cloudflare — hosts the site and delivers the page. As with any web host, their systems handle your IP address and browser type in the course of serving the page, and they keep short-term logs for security and abuse prevention. We do not read those logs to learn anything about individual players. https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/
Resend — delivers account recovery email, and any message about a hole in one. They handle your email address for the purpose of sending those messages. https://resend.com/legal/privacy-policy
Google Fonts — the page loads its typefaces from Google's servers, which means your IP address is disclosed to Google when the page loads. This is the only third party the page contacts that is not needed to run the game itself, and we intend to remove it. https://policies.google.com/privacy
Other players — see your username, your total score, and your score on each of the nine holes, all on the daily leaderboard. Tapping your name there opens your scorecard for the day. They cannot see the record of individual shots described in section 7, your email address, or anything else about you. Members of a Club you have joined also see what section 9 lists: your match results and cards, your Major rounds and standings, and your record against them.
Everything is held in the United States, and we operate from the United States. If you are playing from outside the US, this means your username, your scores, your play records and your email address if you gave one are stored on servers in the US and are subject to US law.
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Scores and per-hole results, match results, Major results and holes in one | Indefinitely. The game is a permanent record of what everyone shot on a given day, and historical leaderboards, match results and season standings depend on it staying intact. |
| The shot record (section 7), for daily, match and Major rounds alike | 180 days, or until a review of the round is finished |
| Usage records (section 8) | 90 days with your identifier on them; the monthly totals without it, indefinitely |
| Club membership | Until you leave the Club, are removed from it, or the Club is closed |
| Your username and email address | For as long as your account exists, or until you ask us to remove them |
| Sign-in logs held by our database provider | As long as that provider keeps them; we do not extend it |
Wherever you live, you can ask us to give you a copy of what we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or stop sending you email. Email playtheturn.co@gmail.com and we will act on it.
There is one honest limitation. Accounts are anonymous by design. If you have not attached an email address, we have no way of knowing which account is yours, and we will not be able to act on a request — not as a matter of policy, but because the same design that means we know almost nothing about you also means we cannot find you. If you have attached an email, write from that address and we can.
Deleting your account removes your username, your email address, your Club memberships, your account record, your shot records and your usage records. Your past scores, match results and Major results stay on the leaderboards and Club records they are already on, shown as [deleted], so that historical results remain correct — a leaderboard with holes in it is not a record of anything. If you own a Club, hand it to another member first, or it closes with you. Once that is done there is nothing left connecting those rows to you, and we cannot undo it or find them again.
If you are in the UK or the EEA, our legal bases are: performance of a contract (running the game, recording your score, showing the leaderboard); legitimate interests (keeping the game fair, preventing abuse, and keeping historical results intact); and consent (attaching an email address, and any email beyond recovery). You may withdraw consent at any time. You also have the right to complain to your national data protection authority; in the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office, ico.org.uk.
If you are in California or another US state with a privacy law, we do not sell or share personal information as those laws define it, and we do not use anything about you for targeted advertising. The rights above are available to you regardless of whether we meet the thresholds that would make those laws mandatory for us.
The Turn is not intended for anyone under 13, it is not designed for or aimed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.
We do not ask your age. If you tell us you are under 13, or a parent or guardian tells us, we will delete the account and everything attached to it.
If you are in the UK or the EEA and under 16, get a parent's permission before giving us an email address.
To report an account belonging to a child, email playtheturn.co@gmail.com.
The database is protected by row-level security. The public key that sits in the page can only do what those rules allow — it cannot read another player's account, alter a score, or reach a course that has not been released yet. Your sign-in tokens are stored on your device only.
No system is perfectly secure. There are no payment details and nothing sensitive in this game, and we would ask you not to treat your username as private information.
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top and say so on the site. Continuing to play after that means you accept the updated policy.
playtheturn.co@gmail.com