Privacy Notice
DRIFTLAB, LLC ("we", "us"), a New York domestic limited liability company located at 42 Broadway, Fl. 12-200, New York, NY 10004, is the data controller for the personal data described in this notice. tree friend is a quiet, contemplative game. There are no accounts, and playing asks you for no name and no email address. We collect very little, and only what is needed to run the game.
Your tree
For the vast majority of players, everything about your tree — its shape, its journal, its name — is stored only on your device. It is not transmitted to us. There are no accounts. The legal basis for the little processing this involves is performance of the contract — your use of the game.
Hosted save (creator programme, web only)
The creator programme is a small, opt-in cohort of creators given a claim code so they can reach the same tree from more than one device. Only someone given a claim code by us takes part. For those creators, the tree's save data and grove are transmitted to and stored by our cloud infrastructure (Cloudflare D1), keyed to the claim code — not to your name or identity. That save is the whole of what the game keeps about a tree: the name you typed for it, its journal, and — if you granted location — the approximate coordinate described under "Location" below. This is not the default for anyone else, and it is not an accounts system. If you have not been given a claim code, this section does not apply to you. The legal basis is performance of the contract, with the creator's informed participation; the hosted save is kept for as long as the creator remains in the programme.
Location
If you allow it, your approximate location (rounded to about 1 km) is sent directly from your device to the Open-Meteo weather API (open-meteo.com) to fetch the weather where you are, so your tree lives under your real sky. The precise reading your device gives us never leaves it: it is rounded before it is sent anywhere and before it is saved. That rounded coordinate is kept in your tree's save on your device, so the game can catch up on the weather you missed while you were away. It is not sent to our analytics, and for ordinary players it does not reach our servers at all — the one exception is the creator programme's hosted save above, where the whole save, including that rounded coordinate and the last weather reading, is stored under the claim code. You can decline the permission, or switch to the "imagined sky" (a simulated climate) in the info panel at any time; choosing the imagined sky also clears the saved coordinate. The game works fully without location. The legal basis is your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
Analytics and tracking
We count eight things, and only eight:
- a seed was planted
- the tree was named
- the tree was watered for the first time
- the player came back one, seven, or twenty-eight days after planting
- a postcard was shared
- a web player chose not to unlock the next generation
Each count is a tiny event — no more than "one of these happened" — sent to a server we own (a Cloudflare Worker writing to Cloudflare Analytics Engine), not a third-party SDK. Every event carries only an anonymous id generated on your device and stored in your browser's local storage, the event name, and a timestamp; there is no name, no location, no weather, no tree species, and no IP retained. Clearing the site's data forgets that id, and the counts can no longer be tied to your visits. This is the whole of what we measure — a counter toward "how many people keep tending a tree," nothing more. No ads, no crash reporters. The iOS app sends no analytics events. The legal basis is legitimate interests — the events are keyed to a device-generated id, not your identity, and we cannot reasonably identify you from them.
Purchase entitlement (web)
If you buy the one-time "Generations" unlock on the web, we keep a minimal record that a given anonymous id holds the entitlement, so the unlock is recognised across visits. That record holds the anonymous id, Paddle's transaction reference, when it was granted, whether it was later refunded, and the billing email address Paddle received from you — we retrieve it from Paddle when the purchase completes and keep it so we can find and restore your unlock if you ever lose access and write to us. We do not use it to contact you, and it is not added to any mailing list. Payment itself is handled entirely by Paddle (our merchant of record) — see our Terms of Service and Refund Policy. We don't see or store your payment details. The legal basis is performance of the contract — honouring your one-time purchase.
Postcards
Sharing a postcard uses your device's share sheet; the image goes only where you send it.
Our servers and recipients
We share personal data only with the service providers that let the game work:
- Cloudflare — hosting the game and our own two Workers (analytics, and purchase/creator-programme entitlement), and the D1 database behind the creator programme. As with any web host, requests to those services pass through Cloudflare's network, which handles ordinary connection data such as your IP address on our behalf in order to deliver and protect the service. Our own analytics records keep no IP address; Cloudflare's operational logging of the purchase/entitlement Worker is short-lived platform logging we do not mine or join to anything.
- Open-Meteo — the weather API, which receives your approximate location only if you grant location permission.
- Paddle — the merchant of record for web purchases, responsible for payment processing, tax compliance, and invoicing. Paddle is its own controller for the payment data it processes, including your card details; we never receive or store your card data.
- Professional advisers and authorities — where we are required or entitled to disclose data by law, regulation, or legal process.
Cloudflare and Paddle are able to process data in the United States. Where personal data of players in the EEA or the UK is transferred outside those areas, it is covered by the transfer safeguards those providers have in place — such as standard contractual clauses or a recognised transfer framework — under the data-processing terms we have with them.
Retention
For regular players, tree data is kept on your device and is under your control. Analytics events are retained by Cloudflare Analytics Engine for three months, after which they are deleted automatically; we keep no separate copy. A creator's hosted save is kept for as long as they remain in the creator programme; a purchase entitlement record, including the billing email in it, is kept as long as the purchase needs to be honoured. Whenever you ask us to, we will delete personal data we hold about you, subject to legal retention requirements.
Security
Transmissions to our infrastructure are encrypted in transit (HTTPS), access to the infrastructure is controlled, and the game's data is kept on your device rather than centralised. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, but we work to protect what little data we hold.
Your rights
Where you are in a jurisdiction that grants data-protection rights (including the EEA and the UK), you may have the right to access, correct, delete, or restrict the use of your personal data, to object to processing, and to receive your data in a portable form. Because the game collects so little, most of your data lives on your device and is already under your control — clearing the app or site data removes it. To exercise any of these rights, see our Contact page. If you are in the EEA or the UK, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office.
Cookies
The game does not set tracking cookies. It stores its data and an anonymous id in your browser's local storage (a small, in-browser storage area you can clear). Cloudflare, which hosts and protects the game, may set a strictly-necessary security cookie to tell real visitors from bots; it is not used to profile you. Nothing we do uses cookies for advertising or tracking.
Contact
Questions about this notice, or requests to exercise your rights, see our Contact page, or write to DRIFTLAB, LLC, 42 Broadway, Fl. 12-200, New York, NY 10004.