Privacy Policy

Effective Date: August 15, 2026 · Document version: 2026-08-15

GoSurvive ("we", "us", or "our") operates the GoSurvive mobile application and website at gosurvive.app (collectively, the "Service"). This Privacy Policy explains what we collect, why, how long we keep it, and what you can do about it. Where a section describes something people are often surprised by, we have said so plainly rather than burying it.

1. Information We Collect

1.1 Account Information

When you create an account, we collect:

  • Username (required)
  • Email address (optional for local accounts; provided automatically when you sign in with Google or Apple)
  • Password (hashed and salted with bcrypt; never stored in plain text)
  • Display name and bio (optional)
  • Avatar/profile photo (optional)
  • Your agreement to these documents — the time you accepted and which revision you accepted, recorded when your account is created

1.2 Social Sign-In

We support sign-in with Google and Apple. From the provider we receive your account ID and, where provided, your email address and profile photo URL.

We also read your age range from Google (the Google People API ageRanges field) when you grant that permission. We use it only for age assurance — see §1.10. We do not read your contacts, calendar, posts, or any other data from your social account.

1.3 Guest Accounts

You can play as a guest without providing an email address. A guest account is a real, persistent account — it stores your buildings, cash, and progress on our servers exactly like a registered one, and it agrees to the same Terms. It is not an anonymous or temporary session. Guest accounts that go unused for 7 days are automatically deactivated, and you can delete yours at any time (§7).

1.4 Location Data

GoSurvive is a location-based game. We collect your GPS coordinates (latitude and longitude) to enable core gameplay: discovering nearby buildings, claiming properties, and verifying you were physically present. We store your current position — one row per player, overwritten as you move — plus the locations of buildings you scout. We do not keep a running trail of everywhere you have been. One exception: when our anti-cheat flags an impossible jump between two points, it records that pair of coordinates and the time, so the flag can be reviewed; those records are deleted with your account.

Background collection: on both Android and iOS the app can receive location updates while it is not in the foreground, so walking progress is not lost when your screen is off. Your device shows its own indicator when this happens, and you can revoke the permission at any time in system settings.

What other players see: the buildings you own are shown on a shared map with your name on them. Buildings are fixed real-world places, so a pattern of ownership can suggest where you spend time. Consider this before claiming property at your home or workplace.

1.5 Gameplay Data

We collect data related to your in-game activity, including:

  • Buildings you own, visit, scout, and customize
  • Virtual currency balances and transactions
  • Achievement progress and game statistics
  • Tenants collected and their assignments
  • Anti-cheat signals — including whether your device reports a mock/spoofed location, implausible travel speed, and a hashed form of your IP address used to detect two accounts played by one person

1.6 User-Generated Content

Photos you upload of buildings, your avatar, chat messages, and custom building designs are stored on our servers and may be visible to other players.

How moderation actually works: uploads are published immediately and reviewed only after a player reports them — nothing is checked before it goes live. Do not upload anything you would not want seen publicly, and please report content that breaks the rules.

1.7 Analytics & Error Tracking

We collect usage analytics to improve the Service, including session duration, gameplay events, device information, and approximate geographic region.

We use the following third-party services:

  • Google Analytics (web) and Firebase Analytics (iOS and Android apps) — page views, in-app events, and campaign tracking. These may collect your IP address, device type, an app-instance identifier, and browsing behaviour. See Google's Privacy Policy.
  • Sentry — error monitoring and crash reporting. Sentry may collect your browser information and device type when an error occurs. We strip your IP address from server-side error reports before they are sent.

Session replay: when an error occurs in the app, Sentry records a replay of the preceding moments of your session — the screens you saw and what you tapped — so we can reproduce the fault. Replays are captured on errors only, never for normal sessions.

1.8 Device & Connection Information

We collect device type, operating system version, screen resolution, graphics capability, timezone, and a random device identifier stored locally on your device, for session management, compatibility, and debugging.

IP address: your IP address is processed by our own servers, not only by third parties. It is stored with client error reports for debugging, kept in a hashed form for anti-cheat and anti-collusion checks, and used transiently for rate limiting.

1.9 Health & Fitness Data

GoSurvive rewards physical activity (for example the "Mileage Write-Off"). If you grant permission, we read the following from your device:

  • Step count
  • Walking/running distance
  • Active calories burned

Data sources: on Android we read from Google Health Connect when available, which aggregates data from your phone, smartwatch, Fitbit, Garmin, and other connected wearables. If Health Connect is unavailable we fall back to the device's built-in motion sensor. On iOS we read from Apple HealthKit, which similarly aggregates data from your iPhone and Apple Watch.

Connecting a wearable is entirely optional. The app works with your phone's built-in sensor alone. When you connect Health Connect or HealthKit we request only the permissions needed for the features above.

What we store on our servers. This is more than a daily total, and we want to be exact about it:

  • Your steps and distance in 15-minute intervals, which is what lets us verify activity is genuine rather than injected. Taken together these intervals show the shape of your day.
  • The name of the app or device that recorded each interval (for example your watch brand), used to detect fabricated data.
  • Daily totals, lifetime totals, and a record of each reward you claimed.

We use this data to:

  • Calculate your in-game rewards
  • Detect fabricated or injected step data
  • Estimate whether an account is likely used by a child, as described in §1.10

We do not sell, share, or transfer health data to any third party, and we do not use it for advertising or marketing.

You can revoke access at any time. Revoking disables the write-off feature and wearable sync but does not affect any other functionality. Deleting your account deletes this data with it.

  • Android Health Connect: Settings > Health Connect > App permissions > GoSurvive
  • Android motion sensor: Settings > Apps > GoSurvive > Permissions
  • iOS: Settings > Health > Data Access & Devices > GoSurvive

1.10 Age Assurance

GoSurvive has a public map, photo sharing, and chat, so we need a reasonable idea of whether an account belongs to a child. We keep this section explicit because it involves an automated inference about you.

We use the following signals, strongest first:

  • Date of birth, if you provide one
  • The age range reported by Google when you sign in with Google and grant that permission (for example, a Family Link account flagged as under 18)
  • An inference from your activity pattern. A daily job looks at when your steps occur; an account whose walking is heavily concentrated in weekday school hours is flagged as possibly belonging to a minor.

What happens as a result. A confirmed signal (a declared date of birth, or a provider telling us the account is a minor) places the account in a protected "young" mode with reduced profile visibility and restricted social features. The activity-pattern inference on its own never changes your account automatically — it only flags the account for a human to review.

If you believe your account has been categorised incorrectly, contact us at [email protected] and a person will review it.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

  • Provide, operate, and maintain the Service
  • Authenticate your identity and manage your account
  • Enable location-based gameplay features
  • Process in-game transactions (virtual currency only)
  • Moderate user-generated content and respond to reports
  • Detect and prevent cheating, abuse, and fraudulent activity
  • Calculate in-game rewards based on physical activity (with your permission)
  • Assess whether an account is likely used by a child, and protect it if so
  • Analyze usage trends and diagnose faults to improve the Service
  • Communicate with you about your account (e.g., password resets)
  • Comply with legal obligations

3. Information Sharing and Disclosure

We do not sell your personal data. We may share information in the following limited circumstances:

  • Public gameplay data: your username, avatar, owned buildings, and game statistics are visible to other players as part of gameplay.
  • Discord chat mirror: messages you post in the in-game global chat (with your display name and avatar) are mirrored live to our public Discord server, where they are visible to anyone who joins it.
  • Service providers: the processors listed in §4 receive only the minimum data necessary to perform their function.
  • Legal requirements: we may disclose your information if required by law, court order, or government request.
  • Safety: we may share information to protect the rights, safety, or property of GoSurvive, our users, or the public.

4. Third-Party Services

The Service relies on the following third parties. This list is intended to be complete; if you spot something missing, please tell us.

  • Google — sign-in, and the age-range signal described in §1.10.
  • Apple — Sign in with Apple.
  • Google Analytics / Firebase — usage analytics and app event reporting.
  • Sentry — error monitoring, crash reporting, and on-error session replay.
  • Brevo — delivers our transactional email (welcome, verification, password reset). Receives your email address and display name.
  • OpenRouter — routes requests to AI language models that generate in-game trip and contract text. Receives the game context for the item being generated, such as building names and city.
  • Discord — hosts our community server and receives the global-chat messages described in §3.
  • OpenStreetMap / Protomaps — map tile and building data (no personal data sent).
  • Nextzen — terrain and vector map tiles (no personal data sent).
  • Google Health Connect (Android): reads step, distance, and calorie data on your device. Subject to Health Connect guidelines.
  • Apple HealthKit (iOS): reads step, distance, and calorie data on your device. Subject to Apple HealthKit guidelines.

5. Data Retention

How long we keep things:

  • Account and gameplay data — for as long as your account exists.
  • Health and step data — including the 15-minute intervals described in §1.9, kept for as long as your account exists. We are working to roll intervals older than 90 days into coarser summaries; until that ships, assume they are retained.
  • Location — only your current position is stored, and it is overwritten as you move.
  • Chat messages — retained while your account is active so we can act on reports, and deleted with your account.
  • Guest accounts — deactivated after 7 days of inactivity.

After you ask us to delete your account — it is hidden from the game immediately and permanently erased after a 7-day grace period, during which signing back in cancels the deletion. Permanent deletion removes your personal data, gameplay records, and uploaded content. A small number of records survive in a form that no longer identifies you: anonymised contribution records on shared public infrastructure, and trade records kept under a display name to deter market manipulation.

6. Data Security

We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your data, including:

  • Password hashing with bcrypt
  • Token-based authentication with short-lived access tokens and revocable sessions
  • Rate limiting to prevent abuse
  • Content Security Policy headers
  • Input validation and sanitization on every endpoint

While we strive to protect your information, no method of transmission or storage is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security.

7. Your Rights and Choices

You can:

  • Update your profile information at any time in the app
  • Get a copy of your data — email us and we will send you a structured export of the data tied to your account
  • Delete your account from your profile settings, with the 7-day grace period described in §5
  • Revoke location access in your device settings at any time. Core gameplay depends on it, so most of the game will stop working — but nothing is collected once it is off.
  • Revoke health data access in your device settings at any time, without affecting the rest of the app
  • Ask us to review an automated decision about your account, such as the age assessment in §1.10

To exercise any of these, use your in-app profile settings or contact us at [email protected]. Depending on where you live you may have further rights under laws such as the GDPR or CCPA; we honour these requests regardless of where you live.

8. Children and Young Players

You must be at least 13 to use the Service. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, and we delete such accounts when we discover them.

Players we identify as under 16 are placed in a protected "young" mode: their profile photo is replaced with initials, their public visibility is reduced, and social features are restricted. See §1.10 for how that assessment is made and how to contest it.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has given us personal information, contact [email protected] and we will remove it.

9. International Data Transfers

Our servers are located in Germany. The processors listed in §4 operate in the European Union and the United States, so your information may be transferred to and processed in countries other than your country of residence.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Each revision carries a version identifier, shown at the top of this page, and we record which revision you agreed to when you created your account. For material changes we will ask you to review and accept the updated documents in the app rather than relying on your continued use.

11. Contact Us

If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, contact us at:

Map data & attribution

GoSurvive's map is built from OpenStreetMap data. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL).