Privacy note

Updated 2026-09-29. Written for grown-ups, with a short version for players first.

The short version

DOWNHILL never asks who you are. No names, no emails, no photos.
The game counts things like "someone finished course 2", but never who did it.
On the high score board, use your initials, not your name.
No ads, and nothing in the game follows you around the internet.
You can turn the counting off: tap ? in the game, then switch off Anonymous play stats.

Who makes the game

DOWNHILL is a free game from Thin Cover, a ski clothing company in Idaho. It runs at play.thin-cover.com. The SHOP links in the game go to our store at thin-cover.com, which has its own store privacy policy.

What the game counts

The game adds a few anonymous facts to daily totals on our own game server. Each fact is a fixed word or a small number from a fixed list. The server adds it to that day's totals and then drops the message: we keep no record of single events, and nothing ties the totals to a player or a phone.

Game opens: whether the game was opened on our store, at play.thin-cover.com or from a Home Screen icon; the phone type (iPhone, Android or other); the local hour and day of the week; and the rough source of the visit (one of our own link tags, a search engine, a social app, another website, or typed in). The phone works out that source itself. The address of the page you came from never leaves the phone.
Races: the course; solo or 2 player; how the run ended (qualified, finished, crashed or stopped); the time compared with the QUALIFY time, in 2-second steps; which 100 m stretch of the course a crash or stop happened on; rock hits; tricks tried and landed; jumps taken or skipped; roughly how much of the run was spent tucked; whether the game ran smoothly; which try this was on that course, in bands; the style grade; whether sound was on; and the game version.
Coming back: once a day, at the first race, the phone sends the week it first played, whether it is new, whether this is its first race this week, about how many days it has played (in bands such as 3 to 5) and about how long since it last played (in bands such as 2 to 7 days). This is how we learn whether players return, without tracking anyone.
Taps on a short list of buttons: play solo or 2 player, high scores, the info panel, sound on or off, the SHOP links (which one), race again or next course after a race, the attract screen and the first-run trick tip.
Championships completed, with the total in 5,000-point steps.
When the game is closed or hidden: which screen was showing, races since the last time, whether this visit included a race, and active seconds played (counted only in visits with a race).
Our server also counts, on its own, 2-player rooms (made, joined and raced), high score entries and how often the board is viewed.

What it never collects

Names, usernames, emails, phone numbers, age or birthday.
Photos, voice, contacts, or any typing other than 3 initials.
Location. The game never asks for it and never looks it up from your internet address.
Stored IP (internet) addresses. To keep the game running and stop floods of requests, the server holds a phone's address in memory for about a minute and then drops it. When a phone starts a championship or sends a high score, the server also keeps a scrambled code made from its address (never the address itself) in memory until an hour after the last one, only to limit how many of those one network can send. Neither is ever written to disk or to logs, or used for anything else.
Cookies, device IDs, player IDs or advertising IDs.
The page you came from, full web addresses, screen size, time zone or browser details.
Ads, ad trackers, outside analytics or session recording on the game page.

One outside service for now: the game's two typefaces (Barlow Condensed and Space Mono) load from Google Fonts, so your phone asks Google for the font files. We plan to serve them from our own server.

What stays on your phone

Your browser keeps a few things for this game on your phone only: best times and points, the sound setting, which first-run tips you have seen, your home mountain pick, how many 2-player races you have won, a top 10 when no game server is set up, and a small play-stats note. The note holds the week this phone first played, the last day it checked in, days played, tries and first qualify on each course, and championships finished. It is only used to work out the bands above, and it starts over after 13 months.

To clear it:

Tap ? in the game, then Clear play stats on this phone. This deletes only the play-stats note. Best times, points, high scores, your home mountain pick and your settings stay.
Switch off Anonymous play stats in the same panel. The game stops sending anything and deletes the note.
Clear this site's data in your browser settings to remove everything the game saved on this phone, including best times, high scores and your home mountain pick.

Global Privacy Control

If your browser or phone sends the Global Privacy Control signal, the game sends no play stats and keeps no play-stats note (a note saved before the signal was turned on is deleted). If the game runs inside our store, it also sends nothing unless the store's cookie choice allows analytics.

The high score board

The board shows only 3 initials, a score and an optional home mountain. Please use initials, not a name. The game refuses rude initials, and the home mountain can always be skipped. A small ski area (fewer than 4 lifts) shows its name only after 5 different racers have entered it within 7 days; until then the board shows its state or province, or its country where there are only a few small ski areas.

To keep made-up scores off the board, the server gives the game a random run code when a championship starts and checks every score against what the game can really score. The run code holds only its start time and the game version, nothing about the player or the phone, and it is never saved on the phone.

Our homepage also shows a recent top 10 next to the all-time one: the best score of each set of initials from the last 7, 14 or 30 days (a longer stretch when fewer different racers have played lately), with the same initials, score and home mountain. Our own test phones are left out of it.

How long things are kept

2-player rooms: In memory only; deleted 30 minutes after the last activity.
Addresses used to stop floods: In memory only; the address is dropped after about 60 seconds, and the scrambled code used for championship starts and high score entries at most an hour after the last one.
High score board: Until a score is knocked off the top 10. The final top 10 of each season is archived, and the board resets every November 1.
Recent scores list: 30 days, cleared out every hour. It holds the initials, score, home mountain and time of each score, only to show the recent top 10.
High scores waiting for a check: Only if we turn on checks for very high scores, for example for a prize event; normally no score waits. While the checks are on, a very high score is saved but shows nowhere until we check it, then it is kept like any score on the high score board and the recent scores list; 30 days at most if we never do. It holds the same initials, score, home mountain and time as any score.
Retry receipts: 7 days. They only stop a score that was sent twice from counting twice, and keep the championship's run code so it cannot be entered again.
Initials at a small ski area: 7 days. The server remembers up to 4 sets of initials per small area only to count 5 different racers, then keeps just the fact that its name may show.
Daily totals: 25 months, then combined into monthly totals.
Single events: Never stored.
Server logs: Startup and errors only, with no addresses and no request contents.
Server backups: A few days.
Play-stats note on your phone: Until you tap Clear play stats on this phone, switch stats off or clear site data. It starts over after 13 months.
Everything else on your phone: Best times, points, high scores, 2-player races won, the home mountain pick and settings: until you clear this site's data in your browser.
A score a grown-up asks us to remove: Removed from the top 10 and the recent scores list within 7 days.

Removing a score

A parent or other grown-up can email hello@thin-cover.com to ask for a score to be removed from the high score board. Tell us the initials, the score and roughly when it was set. We remove it from the top 10 and the recent scores list within 7 days, and we never need a child's name.

Questions

Email hello@thin-cover.com. If this note changes, the date at the top changes too.

Credits

Ski area list for home mountains: Data from OpenSkiData / OpenSkiMap.org, © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), Skimap.org, Who's On First, © Mapterhorn. See the ski area list license and credits.

Thin Cover

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