Privacy Policy

Effective date: 14 October 2026

The Golf Ref uses personal information only to provide, secure and support the service, manage access and payments, and comply with law. We do not sell personal information or use it for third-party advertising.

Who is responsible for your information

The data controller is Tremain Ake~Jones, operator of The Golf Ref, based in Mojácar, Almería, Spain. Contact: tremainjones@hotmail.co.uk.

Business postal address: Avenida del Mar 4, 04638 Mojácar, Almería, Spain.

Information we process

• Voice and question information: your microphone recording, its transcription, selected language, and the golf-rules question needed to prepare and speak an answer.
• Account and access information: an account identifier, email address, sign-in status and paid-access entitlement.
• Payment information: payment status, product purchased and references needed to activate access. Stripe processes your card details; The Golf Ref does not receive your full card number.
• Technical information: IP address, device or browser information, request time, security logs and error information processed by our hosting and service providers.
• Support information: messages and information you send when asking for help, a refund or data deletion.

How voice questions work

When supported by your device, the app records your spoken question and sends the audio securely to our AI service provider, OpenAI, for transcription. The resulting text is processed to create independent golf-rules guidance. Answer text is sent to ElevenLabs for supported English voices, or OpenAI for fallback and other-language speech. Browser speech synthesis may be used if online speech is unavailable. Do not include names or other unnecessary personal details in questions. You may decline microphone permission, but the voice-question feature will then be unavailable.

Why we use this information

We process information to provide the service and purchased access, respond to support requests, prevent fraud and misuse, maintain security, improve reliability, and meet legal and accounting obligations. Depending on the activity, our legal basis is performance of our contract with you, our legitimate interests in operating and securing the service, your consent where required, or compliance with law.

Information stored on your device

The app uses local browser or app storage for settings and essential functions, including your language, selected referee voice, glasses mode, free-ruling count, daily-question progress and any previously saved shop bag. Clearing site/app data or uninstalling the app removes this local information. We do not use advertising cookies.

The two-free-ruling allowance is checked by our server using an essential, signed device cookie and a pseudonymous usage counter. Signed-in accounts use an account counter. Request-rate records use pseudonymous identifiers; network addresses are converted to a keyed hash before being recorded. Expired rate records and anonymous device counters are removed during subsequent requests after approximately 24 hours and one year respectively. Account counters remain until account deletion. These records contain no voice recordings, questions or ruling text. Clearing device cookies can reset an anonymous trial; it does not remove account purchase records.

Service providers and international processing

We share information only where necessary with providers supporting authentication, hosting, AI transcription and responses, spoken audio, payments, security and technical support. These include OpenAI (transcription, AI answers and fallback speech), ElevenLabs (English text-to-speech), Stripe (web payments), and OpenAI/ChatGPT Sites with Cloudflare infrastructure (hosting, sign-in and account storage). In the iPhone app, Apple processes in-app purchases. We validate Apple’s signed purchase confirmation and store transaction references, purchase status, refund status and a random device-session identifier to activate or restore lifetime access. We do not receive your Apple account password or payment card details. On supported Android builds, Google Play processes in-app purchases. ElevenLabs receives the text to be spoken, not your original microphone recording from our transcription flow. These providers may process information outside the European Economic Area, including in the United States. Transfer arrangements depend on the provider and account configuration. Contact us for information about the safeguards applicable to your data; this notice is not a claim that all processing takes place in Europe.

Retention

Account, entitlement and transaction records are retained while needed to provide lifetime access and satisfy legal, tax, fraud-prevention and accounting requirements. Support correspondence is kept only as long as reasonably needed. My Rulings automatically stores your latest 500 question texts and answers, with their language and date, privately under your signed-in account or a pseudonymous device identifier when signed out. They remain until you delete them, delete your account, or newer rulings replace the oldest entries. Signed-in history is available across devices using the same account; signed-out history requires the original device cookie. You can delete individual entries or clear the history in My Rulings. Earlier questions cannot be recovered. Voice recordings are not saved in the My Rulings database. New AI answer requests disable optional OpenAI response storage. This does not disable provider security logs or delete older stored responses. Provider retention, including ElevenLabs speech history and hosting logs, depends on their service terms and account controls. Ask us for the current settings; do not assume zero retention. We remove or anonymise information when it is no longer required.

Your rights

Subject to applicable law, you may request access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability or objection to certain processing, and may withdraw consent where processing relies on consent. Email tremainjones@hotmail.co.uk. We may need to verify your identity. You may also complain to the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) or your local supervisory authority.

Children

The Golf Ref is a general golf utility and is not designed for children to use independently. A parent or guardian should supervise use where required by applicable law.

Security

We use reasonable technical and organisational safeguards intended to protect information. No online service can guarantee absolute security, so please do not include unnecessary sensitive or identifying information in a golf-rules question.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy when the app, providers or legal requirements change. The effective date above will be revised when this happens.