Beachcomb Heroes — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 29 September 2026

This is not legal advice. It's written to be honest and accurate about what Beachcomb Heroes does with data, including a child's data. If you're a parent, it's written with you as a reader.

0. The one-line version

Beachcomb Heroes collects very little that's personal, and nothing it doesn't need to run the game and keep it safe. There's no chat to log, because there's no chat. There are no uploads, because there aren't any.

1. Who we are

Beachcomb Heroes is a GroundLab product, ABN 88 609 151 945, based in Queensland, Australia. It uses GroundLab's sign-in system but is a separate product (Terms §12). Contact: the feedback form.

2. What we collect — and what we deliberately don't

We collect:

• Your email and a password (for your own account). The password is stored only as a hash.
• Date of birth, to choose the right experience for a player's age. We store the date, not a label, so it stays right as birthdays pass.
• A display name for each profile.
• Who created a family profile, and when, so every profile traces back to a responsible adult.
• A grown-up PIN, stored only as a hash (never the PIN itself), with a count of wrong tries and a short lockout, so a child can't reach adult-only settings.
• The game itself: each beach, its Lings, what's been found and built. This is the player's world; it lives as long as the profile does.
• Connections: that two players are connected by invite. Not what they said — there's nothing to say, because there's no chat.
• Calls: who called whom and when, and who joined and left. Kept for 48 hours after the call ends, then deleted. Never the audio or video.
• Feedback you send us: what you wrote, an email if you chose to give one, and a scrambled (hashed) version of your internet address so the form can't be flooded.
• A record that a profile was exported or deleted, with no content, so a deletion can be checked later.
• Safety logs: if something about who is acting for a profile doesn't add up, we log it so we can look into it.

We deliberately do NOT collect:

• Anything you type or say to another player. There is no chat.
• Photos, images, or files. There is no upload feature. A Ling is built entirely from objects the game makes.
• A face, a voice recording, or any biometric data. We looked at face-based age checks and decided against them, because they would mean collecting a child's face.
• Payment details. There is nothing to buy today.

About calls, in plain terms: the audio and video go directly between the players' devices, encrypted, and never through our servers. Nobody at Beachcomb Heroes can see or hear a call. To set a call up, the two devices exchange short encrypted messages through our database provider (§4), and a Google connection service sees each device's general network address to help them find each other. Neither receives any audio, video or account details.

3. How we use it

To run accounts and profiles, make connections and calls work, keep children's profiles behind an adult, read feedback, fix problems, and meet legal obligations. We may use age information to decide which features to build next. We never sell any of it, to anyone. We don't use it to train any AI model.

4. Who we share it with

• Supabase — our database, sign-in and email provider, and the channel that carries encrypted call setup messages. Hosted in Sydney.
• Vercel — hosts the website, in Sydney. Sees ordinary web request details (address, time).
• Google — its public connection service helps two devices find each other for a call (§2).
• Anthropic, xAI and Google (Gemini) — AI tools used for bug fixing and testing while we build and improve the game. These providers are overseas, mainly in the United States.
• No one else, except where the law requires it.

5. Children

Beachcomb Heroes is made to be played by children as well as adults. You might reasonably ask why we don't ask for verified parental permission before a child plays, as some children's products do. The honest answer: we collect almost nothing (§2's "do NOT collect" list is the real substance of that answer), so there's very little for a parent to meaningfully consent to. Instead, the moments that carry real consequence each have their own check (Terms §6).

We collect the same minimum for every player, whatever their age. If a breach ever affects a child's data, we tell their parent or guardian, not just the account (§8).

The Children's Online Privacy Code, coming from the Australian privacy regulator, will set its own rules. We'll update this policy to meet it rather than fall behind.

6. How long we keep things

• Account, profile and game data: while the account or profile exists. Deleting it removes it.
• Connections: while they exist; gone when either player disconnects or is deleted.
• Call records: 48 hours after the call ends.
• Feedback: as long as we need it to deal with what you raised.
• The record that a profile was exported or deleted: kept, with no content in it.

7. Your rights, and a parent's rights

You (or, for a family profile, the adult who looks after it) can see, correct or delete profile data. The adult can remove a family profile themselves from the grown-ups' screen, after being offered a copy of its data.

If a child made their own account without you, see Terms §8. That one is reviewed by a person, because there's no automatic way to confirm a parent–child relationship for an account that was never linked to an adult. We're telling you that plainly rather than pretending a smoother path exists.

8. Security

Data is stored in Sydney (the AI tools in §4 are the exception). Passwords and PINs are hashed, never stored in plain text. All traffic between your device and our servers is encrypted. The database is never reachable directly from a browser; every access goes through rules that limit what each request can read or write. Only the operator can reach production data, along with the AI tools in §4 working under the operator's direction.

Cookies: we use only the cookies needed to keep you signed in and to remember which profile is playing. No advertising or tracking cookies.

Data breaches: if a breach likely to cause serious harm happens, we'll tell the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the people affected (or a child's parent or guardian).

9. Changes to this policy

When we update this policy, we post the new version here with the date changed at the top. If we ever add something that changes what we collect — AI, uploads, chat, purchases — we rewrite and republish this policy before that feature ships, not after.

10. Complaints

Contact us first through the feedback form. You can also complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.