Privacy

Last updated 1 November 2026. This covers the Kickstart Your Heart game on this website.

In short

There are no ads. The game sends nothing about you or your play unless you choose to: by joining the online leaderboard, or by accepting visitor statistics (Google Analytics) on this website. Both are described below, and you can undo either at any time.

What the game keeps on your device

Your progress (the patches you have earned, your scores, where your rider is on the map and your settings) is saved in your browser's storage. It stays on your device. Clearing the site's data deletes it.

The weather on the road

Before each riding leg the game asks our server for the weather on that stretch of the route, and our server asks Open-Meteo. Only the place on the route is sent (to about 10 km), never your own location; Open-Meteo sees the request coming from our server, not from you. The last weather seen is kept on your device, so the game works offline.

Your rider photo

If you choose to make a rider from a photo, the game opens your phone's gallery or camera. The person in the photo is cut out and pixelated on your device, using a model that ships with the game, and the result is saved on your device with your progress. The photo is never uploaded, not even to the leaderboard.

The online leaderboard (optional)

Joining the leaderboard, from RANKS on the title screen, is up to you. If you join, we keep:

• the nickname you choose, which is shown publicly next to your results;
• a random code the game makes for you, which we store only in scrambled (hashed) form;
• for each ride you finish: the rally, the town you set off from, the rider, how far you got, your score, how it ended, whether you lasted until last orders at the rally (a golden patch) and when.

From the rides we work out your patches, best score and kilometres, which appear on the public leaderboard in the game and on this website. We don't ask for your real name, email, photo or location, and we don't use any of this for advertising or share it with anyone. A moderator can take a nickname off the boards if it is offensive.

Sharing from the leaderboard happens only when you tap SHARE and pick an app. The picture is made on your device and goes straight to the app you choose (WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook...), under that app's own privacy terms; nothing about it comes to us.

Your code lets you move your place and patches to a new phone. Anyone who has it can use your place, so keep it to yourself.

To delete it all, open RANKS, tap your nickname and choose LEAVE THE LEADERBOARD. Everything above is deleted straight away and your code stops working. If you no longer have the phone, write to us with your nickname and code and we will delete it.

The leaderboard data is stored with Cloudflare, which runs the website.

Visitor statistics (optional)

The first time you visit this website it asks whether we can count your visit with Google Analytics. If you say no, or don't answer, Google Analytics is not loaded and sets no cookies.

If you accept, Google Analytics sets cookies in your browser and tells us, in totals, which pages are visited, roughly from which country and city, on what kind of device and browser, and where visitors came from. We use this only to see how the site and the game are used. We don't use it for advertising, and we don't send Google your nickname, your scores or anything else from the game. The game counts visits too, but only if you accepted here.

Google processes this data, possibly outside the UK and EU, under Google's privacy policy; Google Analytics 4 does not store IP addresses.

Change my choice To remove cookies already set, clear this site's cookies in your browser.

Hosting

This website is served by Cloudflare. Like any web host, Cloudflare handles your IP address and browser details in order to deliver the pages and protect the site from abuse; see Cloudflare's privacy policy. We do not use these logs to identify or track players.

Donations

If you chip in, the payment is handled by Ko-fi and the payment provider you choose there (such as PayPal or Stripe), under their own privacy policies; the website only links to Ko-fi and loads nothing from it. We only see what that service shows us, such as the name you give and the amount.

Children

The game is fine to play without joining the leaderboard or accepting visitor statistics, and then nothing is sent. If a child joins, the only things kept are a nickname and game results, as above; parents can delete them in the same way.

Changes

If the game ever starts sending anything more, this page will say so before that change goes live, and the date above will change.

Contact

Questions about privacy: use the contact on the home page.