Privacy Policy

Effective August 14, 2026. Newthos LLC operates SPURTS. This policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, and what you can make us do about it.

By using SPURTS you agree to the practices described here. SPURTS is intended only for users located in the United States.

1. What we collect

Information you give us:

• Sign-in details — the email address you register with (verified by one-time code; SPURTS accounts have no passwords), an optional mobile phone number, and, if you use Google sign-in, the name and email address Google shares with us.
• Your date of birth, required at signup to confirm you are 18 or older, and a record of that confirmation. This is self-reported — we do not use a third-party age-verification service.
• Optional profile information — display name, username, avatar, bio, city, state, birth month and day, and social handles. Anything you put here is public.
• Answers, opinions, and takes you submit, and posts you create.
• Payment information for the optional subscription, handled by our third-party payment provider. We do not store full card numbers; we store a customer reference and your subscription status.
• Communications you send us.

Information your use of SPURTS generates:

• Your play history and results, Sparks, SPURTS IQ, and Opinions Score.
• Leaderboard standing and season stats.
• If you play as a guest before registering, a temporary guest account holds your play history and becomes your account when you register.
• Push notification token (mobile app) — if you enable notifications, our notification provider issues a device token and subscription ID that we link to your account.
• Log data — IP address, browser and device information, pages visited, and timestamps. We record your IP address and user agent when you give consent, when you sign in, and against logged account activity. IP addresses are also used to enforce bans and to check the country you are signing up from.
• Session and authentication cookies.
• Advertising and analytics identifiers — see Section 5.

2. Why we use it

• Create and manage your account and authenticate your sessions.
• Record, grade, and display your play, results, and ratings.
• Confirm eligibility, including that you are 18 or older.
• Process the optional subscription and manage its status.
• Serve advertising and measure its performance, subject to your choices in Section 5.
• Display your public profile and stats to other players.
• Send transactional messages such as verification codes and receipts.
• Detect fraud and abuse and enforce our Terms and Fair & Competitive Play Policy.
• Improve the Service, fix bugs, and analyse usage.
• Comply with legal and tax obligations.

3. What other players can see

Visible to other users by default:

• Your username, display name, and avatar.
• Your leaderboard rank, Sparks, SPURTS IQ, Opinions Score, and standings.
• Your play record (correct, incorrect, accuracy) and per-game-mode stats.
• Your public bio, city, state, and social handles, if you provided them.
• Takes, comments, and posts you submit to public surfaces.

Your phone number, email address, date of birth, payment details, and internal account identifiers are never visible to other users.

4. Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal information for money. We share it only with service providers, and only as far as they need it:

• Database, authentication and hosting — your account data, answers, results, and in-game records are stored with U.S.-based infrastructure providers under data processing agreements.
• Notifications and email — a push-notification provider delivers the notifications you enable; an email provider sends verification codes, receipts, and other transactional messages.
• Payments — a third-party payment provider processes the optional subscription. It handles card details directly under its own privacy policy and PCI-DSS standards; we receive status confirmation but do not store full account numbers.
• Advertising and analytics — advertising partners, including Google, may process advertising identifiers and interaction data to serve and measure ads, subject to your choices in Section 5.

Mobile numbers and SMS opt-in data: never shared for marketing. Mobile phone numbers and text-messaging originator opt-in data and consent are not shared with, sold to, or transferred to any third party or affiliate for marketing or promotional purposes. Text-messaging opt-in data is shared only with the SMS delivery provider that transmits messages on our behalf, solely to deliver the messages you asked for. The advertising partners described above never receive your phone number. See our SMS / Text Messaging Consent page.

We may also disclose information if required by law, court order, or government request, or where we believe disclosure is necessary to protect our rights or someone’s safety.

5. Advertising, cookies, and your choices

We use cookies and similar technologies to keep you signed in, remember preferences, and serve and measure advertising. Session cookies required to authenticate your account are not optional if you choose to have an account.

On the web. Advertising is served with the help of advertising partners including Google. We use a certified consent-management platform to present the privacy and consent choices required by applicable U.S. state privacy laws before personalised advertising is enabled, and to record those choices.

In the Play Spurts mobile app.Ads are served through Google’s mobile advertising SDK. On iOS we ask your permission through Apple’s App Tracking Transparency prompt before the device’s advertising identifier is used for personalised ads. If you decline, or we have no consent signal, ads are still shown but are non-personalised. You can change this in your device settings at any time.

Your U.S. privacy choices.Depending on your state, you may have the right to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information and of targeted advertising. You can exercise these choices through the in-app privacy settings and the consent tool. We honour the Global Privacy Control (GPC) browser signal as a valid opt-out of sale or sharing where required by law. Subscribing also removes advertising from your experience. We do not use your data for advertising in a way that would identify you to other users.

6. How long we keep it

We retain account data while your account is active. Play history, results, and leaderboard records are retained as part of the game’s historical record. Payment and tax records are retained as long as required for accounting, tax, and legal-compliance purposes. If you delete your account we remove your personal identifiers — phone, email, name, bio, social handles — within a reasonable period, but anonymised or aggregated records, and records we must keep by law, may be retained.

7. Your rights

Profile: you can update your display name, avatar, bio, and optional profile fields at any time in your profile settings.

Deletion: you may delete your account through your account settings, or by contacting us, subject to the retention limits above.

U.S. state privacy rights: depending on your state of residence — for example California, Colorado, Virginia, Connecticut, and others — you may have the right to know or access the personal information we hold about you, to correct or delete it, to obtain a copy, and to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information and of targeted advertising, without discrimination for exercising those rights. Use the in-app privacy controls, the consent tool, or the contact address below.

8. Children’s privacy

The Service is not intended for anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from minors. If we learn that we have, we will delete it promptly. If you believe a minor has registered, contact us immediately.

9. Security

We implement reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your information from unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. No internet transmission or storage system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the effective date above. Your continued use of the Service after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the updated policy. If we make material changes affecting data you have already provided, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you.

11. Communications & SMS Consent Policy

This section is the Communications & SMS Consent Policy of SPURTS, a product of Newthos LLC. It is the one canonical communications-consent policy for the Service; the standalone SMS / Text Messaging Consent page describes the text-message program (SPURTS Alerts) in detail and is part of this policy. The date, time, and source — URL, IP address, and device or browser — of each consent you give are recorded for compliance purposes.

Two separate categories, consented separately:

• Service & transactional messages (necessary to operate your account): sign-in verification codes, security and login alerts, receipts for the optional subscription, and important changes to our policies or the Service. These are sent by email and in-app notification — and by SMS only to a mobile number you voluntarily add to your account.
• Marketing & promotional messages: news about new features, game reminders, and occasional promotional messages about SPURTS. Marketing by SMS is sent only with your separate, express opt-in — an unchecked, optional checkbox that is never pre-selected and never a condition of creating an account or playing.

SMS program disclosures (SPURTS Alerts): message frequency varies; message and data rates may apply; reply HELP for help or STOP to cancel at any time.

Your control: you can opt out of marketing and promotional communications at any time using the unsubscribe link in an email, by replying STOP to an SMS, through your account settings, or by contacting us. Service and transactional messages are necessary to operate your account and cannot be opted out of while your account remains active; you can stop transactional SMS at any time by removing your mobile number, since email sign-in always works. Withdrawing consent to essential processing may require closing your account.

Newthos LLC does not sell your contact information, and mobile phone numbers and text-messaging originator opt-in data and consent are never shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. See Sections 4 and 5 for the limited providers who process data on our behalf.

12. Contact

Questions about this policy or your personal data? Contact Newthos LLC at support@playspurts.com.