Farflung · the fine print

Privacy policy

Last updated and effective 6 November 2026

1. Who we are

Farflung LLC (“we”, “us”) runs Farflung, the daily geography game at farflung.cc and in its app for iPhone and Android, and is the controller of the personal data this policy describes. Contact: [email protected].

2. What we collect

2.1 What you give us

• Your play. When you finish a daily expedition, the game sends it to our server: its prompts, your pins, the difficulty, the timing, the score and any passport stamp. The server also holds some single rounds, including from unfinished and practice expeditions.
• Google sign-in, if you use it. Google tells our server your Google account’s ID, name, email address and picture. We keep the ID and discard the rest.
• Apple sign-in, if you use it, in the app on iPhone. Apple tells our server an ID for your Apple Account that Apple gives Farflung alone and, when it can, a token that lets us end that sign-in. We keep both, the token encrypted.
• Player ID, if you sign in: a random number we give your account, which you can quote when you write to us.
• Difficulty, if you sign in: whether names, borders and the full clock are on.
• Email, if you write to us: your email address and what you write.
• Disputes, if you send one from the game, signed in: the card and the country you dispute, why, in your words, and a link if you add one. They are kept with your account, and our reply with them.
• Terms acceptance. If you sign in, or press Accept when asked, which terms your account accepted and when.
• Farflung+, if you subscribe: Stripe’s numbers for you as a customer, your checkout and your subscription; the plan, its price and currency; when it’s paid until, whether it renews, whether a payment is overdue, a switch you’ve scheduled and when it ends; what you agreed to: which version of the subscription terms and of the words you were shown, the plan, and when; and which emails about it we’ve sent you, and when. Link, which takes the payments (section 4.7), collects your email address, billing address and card on its checkout. To send you those emails, we read that email address from Stripe each time.

2.2 What we collect automatically

• Logs. When your browser or the app reaches our site: the time, your IP address shortened, what was asked for, and technical details of the connection and the response.
• Play reports, from the website. Prompts, your answers and results, timing, difficulty, interactions with result screens, sharing activity and an expedition identifier.
• Error reports, from the website. When something in the game goes wrong: the error and where in the game’s code it happened, the page’s address without its query and its earlier addresses on that visit, your browser’s name, version and operating system, and the game’s version.
• Your IP address, held briefly in our server’s memory to stop abuse.
• Analytics, on the website where it runs (section 4).

2.3 In your browser or the app

The game keeps these in your browser’s storage, or in the app’s:

• your settings, logbook and passport;
• your best time on each map in Learn Countries, the days you first finished it and first finished it perfectly, and which of its souvenirs you have unwrapped, or your choice not to keep them;
• on the website, your analytics choices and their history, and, while analytics runs, when the first expedition it observes starts and whether it finishes;
• a day’s expedition while you play it;
• on the website, play reports waiting to be sent;
• in the app, the keys that take the place of the cookies in section 8;
• if you sign in, which account the logbook and passport there belong to, and that account’s details: whether you signed in with Google or Apple, the email address Google gave if you signed in with Google, its player ID and when it started;
• on the website, if you sign in, whether your account has Farflung+ and until when.

Clearing the site’s data, or deleting the app, doesn’t delete what our server holds. Your phone’s backup with Apple or Google can keep a copy of what the app keeps, and put it back on a phone, until that backup is deleted.

3. How we use it

• Running the game: To score your expeditions, keep your results, streak and passport, and give them back to your browser or the app if it loses them.
• Best times: To show your best time on each map in Learn Countries, when you beat it, which maps you have finished and finished perfectly, and the souvenirs they bring.
• Signing in: To link your browsers and apps to one account, show which account you’re signed in to, and keep your difficulty the same on each of them, if you sign in.
• Daily results: To count each player once in the day’s overall results, which name no one.
• Security and reliability: To keep the site running, find faults, and stop abuse and cheating.
• Analytics: To understand visits and gameplay, such as how many people play and how well the game runs, and to share totals from that with others.
• Support and disputes: To answer your messages and requests, and to settle disputes.
• Terms acceptance: To record your agreement to our terms.
• Farflung+: To sell you Farflung+, give you what it includes wherever you sign in, keep a record of what you agreed to and of the subscription, email you a confirmation of it and reminders before it renews, and answer you about it.
• Legal obligations: To meet our legal obligations.

4. Third-party services

We use these providers to run Farflung. Their privacy policies also apply to their own processing.

4.1 Cloudflare

Cloudflare delivers and protects the site, and the app’s connections to it, and receives your IP address. It stores backups, routes some email and provides Web Analytics to measure the website’s visits, referring sites and page performance.

4.2 Google Analytics

On the website, we use Google Analytics to understand visits and gameplay. Google receives pages visited, referring sites, device information, approximate location and game interactions. How Google uses your information; Google’s privacy policy. See section 8 for cookies and analytics choices.

4.3 Sign-in and email

Signing in with Google, or with Apple, is optional; each handles it under its own privacy policy. In the app on iPhone, Google’s sign-in software can also collect an identifier for your device and how sign-in is used, for Google’s analytics. When you delete an account you signed in to with Apple, we send Apple its token, if Apple gave us one, so that Apple ends that sign-in. Our mailbox is hosted by Google. Through sign-in and Google Analytics, Google may collect information about your activity on Farflung and on other websites over time.

4.4 Hosting and monitoring

DigitalOcean hosts our server and database and keeps backups. Grafana Cloud holds our monitoring and logs. Sentry receives the game’s error reports, and your IP address with each, which it doesn’t store. A content blocker that blocks Sentry stops them.

4.5 The map

OpenFreeMap provides the map and receives your IP address, browser or device information, referring site and the map areas you view. Its privacy policy applies.

4.6 The App Store and Google Play

If you install the app, Apple’s App Store or Google Play delivers it, under its own terms and privacy policy. They tell us how many people install it and, where you allow it in your phone’s settings, send us its crash reports.

4.7 Farflung+: Link, Stripe and Postmark

Farflung+ is sold through Link. Sold through Link, LLC, an affiliate of Stripe, is its merchant of record and takes its payments, with Stripe. When you subscribe, we send Stripe your account’s number in our records and the plan you chose. On its checkout, Link collects your email address, billing address and card, and it sends your receipts. Stripe tells us of the subscription’s payments, renewals, changes, refunds and end. When you delete your account, we delete your customer record at Stripe, which ends your subscription. Link and Stripe hold what they collect under their own privacy policies: Link’s and Stripe’s. Postmark sends our emails about your subscription: we give it your email address and the email.

5. Data security

We protect game records with:

• HTTPS connections;
• encryption at rest in our database;
• encrypted backups;
• restricted database access.

However, no system is 100% secure. While we take reasonable measures to protect your data, we cannot guarantee absolute security.

6. Your rights and choices

6.1 Access and control

• From Account in the game’s menu, in the app or at farflung.cc, you can download a copy of your data. If you sign in, you can delete your account there, and sign out your other devices. If you don’t, you can delete this browser’s or this app’s data there.
• From Disputes in the game’s menu, you can read the disputes you sent and our replies, and delete any of them.
• You don’t need the app to delete your account. Sign in at farflung.cc with the same Google account and delete it from Account, or, for any account, write to us.
• To sign out, days that have not reached our server must first be sent or you must choose to discard them. If your sign-in expires, those days stay in this browser or app and wait for the same account.
• To see, correct or delete your data, write to [email protected]. We respond within 30 days, or sooner where required by law.

6.2 What deleting removes

• Live database: Your account, its Google or Apple ID and its game records are removed at once.
• Apple’s token, if your account has one: we send it to Apple, which ends that sign-in, and then delete it. One Apple doesn’t take is deleted after 30 days.
• Player ID: Kept, linked to nothing, so that each player ID names one account.
• Backups: Deleted records leave our backups as they expire (section 9).
• Your browser or app: Signing out or deleting the account removes its history from that browser or app.
• Your other devices: Deleting the account, or signing them out, ends their sign-in. It doesn’t delete what’s already on them: signing out there, clearing the site’s data or deleting the app does.
• Deletion record: We retain an identifier to prevent deleted accounts returning after a backup restore.
• Farflung+: We delete your customer record at Stripe, which ends Farflung+ at once and cancels its renewal. Our record of you as a customer and of each subscription, with what you agreed to, stays, linked to no account, for the time in section 9.

Deleting a browser’s or the app’s data without an account removes what our server holds for it at once, and its own copy. We keep an identifier of it for 60 days, so that it is deleted again if a backup is restored.

6.3 Users in Europe

Where the GDPR applies, in the EU and the UK, you have the right:

• to see the data we hold about you, and have a copy of it (access);
• to have it corrected where it is wrong (rectification);
• to have it deleted (erasure);
• to have us keep it but stop using it, while a question about it is settled (restriction);
• to have what you gave us in a form a computer can read (portability);
• to withdraw your consent to the website’s analytics at any time, from Analytics in the game’s menu, without affecting what was counted before.

Your right to object. Where we rely on our legitimate interests (section 12), you can object to our using your data, at any time.

You can also complain, to us at [email protected], or to a data protection authority: the one where you live or work, or where you think the law was broken, such as the Information Commission in the UK.

6.4 Users in the United States

Depending on your state’s privacy law, you may have the right to confirm whether we process your data and to see it, to have it corrected or deleted, to have a copy of it in a form you can take elsewhere, to get a list of who receives it, and to opt out of targeted advertising, the sale of your data and profiling used for decisions with legal or similarly significant effects on you. To use them, write to [email protected].

If we turn down your request, you can appeal by replying to our answer.

7. Children

Farflung is for a general audience and isn’t directed to children under 13. If you are under the age at which you can agree to such things for yourself where you live, ask a parent or guardian before you answer the game’s question about analytics, sign in or email us. If you think a child has sent us personal data, tell us and we will delete it.

8. Cookies and analytics choices

• The player cookie links your browser to its game records for your logbook, streak, passport and the day’s overall results. If your browser refuses it, you can still play without those server features.
• The sign-in cookie keeps you signed in, if you sign in with Google. Signing out removes it, and signing out your other devices ends theirs.
• Other services’ cookies. Cloudflare may set one to tell people from bots, Google’s sign-in may set Google’s own when you use it, and Google Analytics sets cookies on farflung.cc, where it runs, that tell your browser from others.

In the app, the app’s own storage keeps a player key and, if you sign in, the sign-in in place of these two cookies, and sends them to our server with each request.

Best times. Learn Countries keeps your best time on each map in your browser or the app, with the day you first finished it and the day you first finished it perfectly, to show them on its list of maps and when you play that map again, and to give you its souvenirs; it also keeps which of those you have unwrapped, so that each new one is shown to you once. Forget my times, on its list of maps, deletes them and stops it keeping them, until you choose Keep my times.

Where we ask first. In the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, Gibraltar, Switzerland, California and Quebec, and wherever we can’t tell from your connection whether you are in one of them, Cloudflare Web Analytics and Google Analytics (sections 4.1 and 4.2) run only if you say yes. Analytics in the game’s menu turns them on or off at any time.

Everywhere else both run without asking. To stop Google Analytics, install Google’s opt-out add-on for your browser. To stop either, set your browser or a content blocker to block Google’s and Cloudflare’s analytics scripts.

9. How long we keep it

• Game records: while the game runs, unless you delete your account or ask us to delete them.
• Request logs: up to 30 days. Other server logs are overwritten as new ones arrive.
• Error reports: up to 90 days, at Sentry.
• Backups: deleted records can remain until the backups expire, normally within about 30 days.
• Email: up to two years after the last message in the conversation. Of a request about your data, we keep a note, with our answer, as long as we may need to show that we answered it.
• Disputes sent from the game: 90 days after our reply, and no more than 180 days after you sent one; sooner if you delete the dispute or your account.
• Records of deleted accounts, and their player IDs: while the game runs.
• Records of a browser’s or the app’s deleted data: 60 days.
• Terms acceptance and difficulty: while your account exists.
• Farflung+: your customer record at Stripe, while your account exists. Our record of you as a customer and of each subscription, with what you agreed to, Stripe’s notices about it and which emails we sent you: until three years after you agreed, or one year after the subscription ends if that is later, also after you delete your account, linked then to no account. Each email we send you about Farflung+: 45 days, at Postmark. If one can’t be delivered, or you mark one as spam, Postmark keeps your address and why, so that it isn’t emailed again, for as long as we send through Postmark.
• Apple’s token: while your account exists, and after you delete it, until Apple takes it back, for no more than 30 days.
• Crash reports from the stores: as long as each store keeps them in its console, and a copy we take to fix a crash until it is fixed.
• Analytics: Google keeps what its cookies identify for 14 months, and its cookies last up to two years from your last visit. Cloudflare’s figures are kept for six months.
• The player cookie: 400 days from the last time you play.
• The sign-in cookie: 400 days from the last time you play signed in.
• In the app, the player key: until you delete the app’s data or the app. The app’s sign-in: until you sign out or delete your account or the app, and it stops working 400 days after you last play signed in. A backup of your phone keeps its copies until that backup is deleted.
• In your browser or the app: until you clear the site’s data, your browser removes it, or you delete the app, with these exceptions:
  • A day’s expedition: removed once it is finished, our server has it and the day is over.
  • Play reports: removed once sent or replaced.
  • Logbook and passport: replaced with your account’s history when you sign in, alongside days still waiting to be sent that the account has no record of.
  • Account details, and whether the account has Farflung+: removed when you sign out or delete your account.
  • Best times in Learn Countries, the days you finished each map and the souvenirs you have unwrapped: removed when you choose Forget my times.
  • Earlier analytics choices: removed 14 months after the choice that replaced them.
  • First observed expedition measurement: expires after 14 months and is removed when you withdraw analytics consent.

10. Where your data goes

We run Farflung from the United States, where our server, database, monitoring and error reports are, where Link and Stripe take Farflung+’s payments, and where Postmark sends its emails. Cloudflare and Google also handle data in other countries where they have data centres, and OpenFreeMap is run from Hungary. Where data leaves the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, our providers’ processing terms provide safeguards such as standard contractual clauses, or the EU–US, UK and Swiss–US data privacy frameworks where the recipient is certified. Write to us for a copy of those terms or where to find them.

11. Changes to this policy

We may change this policy. We will post the new version here with its effective date, and tell you in another way where the law requires it.

12. Legal bases (GDPR)

Where the GDPR applies, in the EU and the UK, these give us the right to use your data:

• Contract. Your expeditions and scores, your streak and passport, the cookies or the app’s keys that keep them yours, and your account if you sign in, and Farflung+ if you subscribe: to give you the game, the account and the subscription you asked for, under the terms and Farflung+’s own. Where the terms don’t form a contract under your country’s law, our legitimate interest in running the game.
• Legitimate interests.
  • Counting one finished expedition a day for each player, and each player once in the day’s overall results; the map; the stores’ crash reports; the logs, the play reports, the error reports, the limits that stop abuse, the backups and the records that keep deleted data deleted: our interest in keeping the game running, fair and safe, and in improving it.
  • Your best times in Learn Countries, the days you finished each map and the souvenirs you have unwrapped: our interest in showing you how fast you have been, which maps you have finished and finished perfectly, and the souvenirs they bring.
  • Your email: our interest in answering you.
  • Your disputes: our interest in ruling on them and answering you.
  • Your terms acceptance: our interest in recording our agreement.
  • The record of what you agreed to when you subscribed, and of the subscription: our interest in being able to show what you agreed to and paid for.
  • Analytics, outside the places where we ask first: our interest in understanding visits and gameplay, such as how many people play and how well the game runs for them.
• Consent. Analytics, where we ask first.
• Legal obligation. Answering you when you use your rights.

No law requires you to give us any data. The website’s game plays without the player cookie, without signing in and without analytics; section 8 says what you go without. To subscribe to Farflung+, you sign in with Google and give Link what its checkout asks for; without them you can’t subscribe.