Privacy Policy
Effective Date: October 5, 2026
This Privacy Policy explains how Pintless (the “App”), developed by Oakforge Studios Ltd (“we”, “us”), collects, uses, shares and protects your personal information. Pintless is a social drinking companion for tracking drinks and spending, planning nights out and pub crawls, and sharing them with friends. We only collect what the App needs to work, and we do not sell your personal information.
Age Requirement
Pintless is only for people aged 18 or over. We use OS-level age signals (Apple Declared Age Range / Google Play Age Signals) and an in-app age confirmation to gate access. By using the App you confirm you are 18 or over.
Information We Collect
Account & Profile
- Account information: You sign in with Sign in with Apple or with an email address and password. We collect your email address, display name, username and a user ID. If you use Sign in with Apple you can choose to hide your email, in which case we receive an Apple relay address.
- Profile: Display name, username, profile picture, rank and nights-out count, Pro/Supporter status and other public profile fields shown to other users.
- Social data: Friends, friend requests, community memberships, reactions, comments, @mentions, reports you submit and users you block.
- We do not collect your phone number.
Activity & Content
- Drink tracking: Drinks you log (type, strength, price), daily totals and presets.
- Parties & pub crawls: Events you create or join, participants, leaderboard stats (drinks, spend, steps), venues visited and duration.
- Posts & media: Daily posts, photos and videos you upload, captions, comments and songs you attach.
- Achievements & powerups: Achievements unlocked, and powerup inventory and use (e.g. Ghost Mode, Party Pass).
Location
- While using the App: Your precise location is used on your device to find nearby venues and pub gardens, show you on maps and tag posts with a venue when you choose to.
- Pub crawl route tracking: When you start a pub crawl, we record your route (GPS points, distance and venues visited) for that event. This route is shared only with the members of that party and is stored with the event.
- Background (“Always”) location: We only ask for this when you start a pub crawl or turn on optional venue detection. It lets route tracking continue with the screen locked and lets venue detection suggest starting an event when you arrive at a pub. You can turn venue detection off at any time in Settings, and you can change the permission in iOS Settings.
- Nearby discovery (opt-in, off by default): If you turn on “Show me to nearby people”, your location is sent to our server, which rounds it to an approximately 1 km grid before storing it in a store that is only accessible to our server. Other people who have also opted in can see you in “People nearby” with a coarse distance band only (under 1 km, 1–5 km, 5–20 km or 20–50 km) — never your coordinates. Turning the setting off deletes your stored location. Activating Ghost Mode also hides you from nearby discovery while it is active.
Contacts
We only access your contacts if you tap “Use Contacts” on the Add Friends screen, grant iOS permission and then confirm our consent dialog. The email addresses in your contacts are sent over an encrypted connection to our server, compared against the email addresses of existing Pintless accounts, and the matching accounts are returned to you. Contact email addresses are not stored or logged after matching, are never used to contact the people in your address book, and no other contact details (names, phone numbers, addresses) leave your device.
Motion & Fitness
If you allow it, the App reads your step count from the device pedometer while you take part in an event that uses the steps leaderboard. Step totals are shared with the members of that event.
Apple Music
If you connect Apple Music for Group DJ, the App uses MusicKit to play songs queued by your party and to create and update a playlist in your Apple Music library for that event. We store the songs added to the event queue; we do not receive your Apple Music listening history or library contents.
Purchases
Subscriptions (Pro) and consumable purchases are processed by Apple and managed through RevenueCat. We receive your purchase history and entitlement status, never your payment card details.
Device, Advertising & Technical Data
- Device data: Device type, OS version, app version and push notification tokens.
- Product interaction: Basic information about how you use features (for example, which screens and actions you use) to operate and improve the App.
- Advertising identifier: Only if you allow tracking through Apple’s App Tracking Transparency prompt (see “Advertising” below).
How We Use Your Information
- To provide the App: accounts, drink tracking, parties and pub crawls, leaderboards, timelines, gardens, achievements, ranks and powerups.
- To show your profile and activity to your friends and to members of parties you join.
- To power Live Activities, widgets and the share extension on your device.
- To send push notifications you have allowed, based on your per-type preferences.
- To send re-engagement emails (for example, when a friend posts) only if you have opted in; every email includes an unsubscribe link and you can turn them off in notification settings at any time.
- To process purchases and restore entitlements.
- To moderate content: processing reports, removing objectionable content and banning abusive accounts.
- To show ads to users who don’t have Pro (see “Advertising”).
- To calculate activity streaks (consecutive days with a post or party, with a three-day grace period) and show the longest ones on our public streak leaderboard (see “Public Streak Leaderboard”).
- To provide support, keep the service secure and comply with the law.
Advertising
Free users may see ads served by Google AdMob. AdMob is an independent third party, not just a service provider acting on our behalf: it collects data from your device (such as device information, coarse location derived from your IP address, and ad interactions) and processes it under Google’s own privacy policy.
- If you allow tracking in the App Tracking Transparency prompt, AdMob may use your device’s advertising identifier to show personalised ads and measure them across apps and websites owned by other companies.
- If you don’t allow tracking, the advertising identifier is not available to AdMob and ads are not personalised using it.
- Where required (for example in the UK and EEA), we ask for your consent before personalised ads are shown; you can change this in Profile → Ad Privacy Settings. Pro members do not see ads.
On our website, some pages (such as the streak leaderboard) show ads served by Google AdSense. Google and its partners use cookies to serve and measure these ads, which may be based on your visits to this and other websites. Where required (for example in the UK and EEA), a consent message asks for your choice before personalised ads or advertising cookies are used. You can manage personalised advertising at Google Ad Settings.
Public Streak Leaderboard
Our website shows a public leaderboard of the longest current activity streaks. It shows your first name and last initial (for example “Jane S.”), your profile picture if you have one, your streak length, whether you were active today or are in your grace period, and whether you have Pro. It never shows your full name, username, location or the dates you were active, and it is not shown in the App. If you have no profile picture, a generated avatar with your initials is used. To be removed from the leaderboard, or to hide your profile picture while staying listed, email pintless@oakforgestudios.co.uk from the address on your account and we will exclude you.
Who We Share Information With
We do not sell your personal information. We share it only as follows:
- Other Pintless users: Your public profile, posts and activity are visible to friends; party data (drinks, photos, pub crawl route, steps) is visible to that party’s members; nearby discovery works as described above.
- The public: If you have one of the longest current streaks, your first name, last initial, profile picture and streak length appear on our public streak leaderboard (see above).
- Service providers that host and operate the App for us under contract.
- Third parties that provide features you use (listed below), including Google AdMob for advertising.
- Legal requirements: When required by law or to protect the safety of our users.
- Business transfers: If Oakforge Studios Ltd is involved in a merger or acquisition, subject to this policy.
Every third party we share personal data with is required to provide the same or equal protection of that data as described in this Privacy Policy and as required by applicable law, and may only use it for the purpose it was shared for.
Third-Party Services
On-Device Data
On iOS, Live Activities, widgets and the share extension read data stored in an App Group container on your device (for example current party stats and queued photos). This data stays on your device except where it is uploaded to your own account.
Data Security
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest by our hosting providers. Access to production data is restricted. No system is completely secure, but we will notify affected users and regulators of any breach as required by law.
Data Retention
We keep your information while your account exists. Nearby discovery locations are deleted when you turn the setting off. Content reports are kept as long as needed to enforce our Terms of Use. When you delete your account, your data is deleted as described below.
Account Deletion
You can permanently delete your Pintless account at any time in the App: Profile → Delete Account. Deletion is immediate and cannot be undone. It removes your profile, username, drink logs and posts, photos and videos, comments and reactions, friends and friend requests, party participation (including location history recorded during parties), society memberships and posts, pub garden reviews, photos and reports, achievements and powerups, notifications, nearby discovery location, and your sign-in account. Parties and societies you shared with others remain for the other members, with your contributions removed; if you created one, ownership passes to another member. If you signed in with Apple, we also revoke Pintless’s access to your Apple ID. We delete your customer record with our subscription provider (RevenueCat).
Deleting your account does not cancel an active Pintless Pro subscription. Cancel it in your App Store (or Google Play) subscription settings, which you can open from the deletion screen. Backups and logs held by our infrastructure providers expire under their standard retention schedules.
Your Rights and Choices
- Permissions: Location, contacts, photos, camera, motion, notifications, Apple Music and tracking are all optional and can be changed in iOS Settings at any time.
- In-app controls: Nearby discovery, venue detection, public profile, notification types, email and ad-consent choices can be changed in the App.
- Access, correction, deletion and portability: Edit your profile in the App, delete your account in the App, or email us for a copy of your data.
- UK/EEA (GDPR) and California (CCPA/CPRA): You may also have the right to object to or restrict processing and to complain to your data protection authority. We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising except through AdMob when you allow tracking, which you can withdraw at any time.
Content Moderation & Blocking
You can report posts, photos, comments, profiles and parties, and block other users. Reports record the content, reason, reporter and time, and are reviewed within 24 hours. Blocking hides content in both directions. See our Terms of Use & Community Guidelines.
Children
Pintless contains alcohol-related content and is not for anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect data from minors and will delete any we discover.
International Transfers
Your information may be processed outside your country, including in the United States, using appropriate safeguards such as standard contractual clauses.
Changes
We will post any changes on this page and update the effective date. Significant changes will be notified in the App.
Contact Us
Oakforge Studios Ltd — pintless@oakforgestudios.co.uk