Privacy Policy

Gauntlet Challenge

Version 1.6 — Effective from 30 October 2026

Policy version	1.6
Effective from	30 October 2026
Applies to	The Gauntlet Challenge mobile app and website (gauntletchallenge.com)
Canonical source	The website and in-app versions display this same version and effective date.

1. Who we are

Gauntlet Challenge is operated by Gauntlet Challenge Ltd (company no. 17273370), 5 Brayford Square, London E1 0SG. We are the data controller for the information described here. For anything about your data, contact privacy@gauntletchallenge.com.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data-protection regulator — registration reference ZC198845. You can check our entry on the ICO’s public register of fee payers at ico.org.uk.

2. Our approach to your data, in one paragraph

Gauntlet Challenge is built to share activity with a small, trusted group — not to broadcast, rank, or track you. Most of what you post disappears automatically after about a week. We never sell your data. We never pass anything about you to sponsors. We do not build advertising profiles of you. We do not run facial recognition on your photos. We collect the least we can to make the app work, and we tell you plainly what that is below.

3. What we collect, and why

Information you give us when you sign up and use the app:

Your first name — used to show who posted or commented within a challenge. It is how you appear to the people you share with.
A short personal tag (up to 20 characters) — a name, nickname or phrase you choose for yourself, like ‘Blue Skies’ or ‘Getting going again’. It needn’t be about fitness, and you can change it any time.
Your profile appearance — shown as a simple coloured circle with your initial, or a profile image if you choose to add one when that option is available. A profile image is shown only to the people you share with. We run no facial recognition, face detection, or other biometric processing on any image, ever.
Your month and year of birth — collected once, only to confirm you are 18 or over. It is never shown to anyone, and never used for anything else. It is stored separately from the rest of your profile.
Your email and sign-in identifier (via Google, Apple, or email) — to create and secure your account.

Your device’s time zone — so that daily Activities appear at the right time for wherever you are. We read it from your device; we don’t ask you to enter it.

Information created as you use the app:

Your activity updates, comments, reactions and any photos you add to a post — shared only with the participants of the specific challenge they belong to. These normally disappear automatically after about a week.
A boost you send to a friend — a single tap that shows your name on that friend’s Home for the rest of their day, then disappears. Nothing is counted or kept.
Your saved completions — your own private record of what you’ve done. Private by default; you can delete any of them at any time.
A challenge you create — its title, and any target number, date or completion condition you set for it, shown to the people in that challenge.
Your own progress in a Target challenge — the number you set for yourself and what you have logged towards it, shown to the people in that challenge as your own bar, in the order people joined. The app never ranks, compares or judges anyone’s progress. Marking a challenge done is your own choice; it appears in that challenge as a short post and is kept as one of your saved completions.
Your daily step count — if you choose to connect Apple Health or Health Connect, we read your daily step total from your phone to fill in step challenges. We read steps only and never write anything to your health data; we keep only the daily totals you log, and never pass this data to anyone else or use it for analytics or advertising. You can disconnect at any time in your phone’s settings.
Your best result in a ‘Your best by’ challenge — you can log attempts as often as you like; only your best is kept, and it is shown to the people in that challenge by name. Your other attempts are yours alone. Nothing is ranked, and the app never comments on anyone’s result.
Posts you choose to also share with your friends, and their replies — see section 5.
A number you add to a Team challenge update — kept as your own record, and shown to the other participants only as part of the group’s total, never as your individual running total.
Subscription and gift-purchase information — handled through Apple, Google and our billing provider, to run your membership or a membership you gift.
Limited technical and usage data — to keep the app working and understand whether features are useful (see section 6).

4. What we do NOT do

We do not sell your data — to anyone, ever.
We do not pass anything about you to sponsors. Sponsorship is tied to the type of activity or the part of the app you’re in — never to you. This is built into our systems, not just a promise we could quietly change.
We do not build an advertising profile of you.
We do not run facial recognition or any biometric processing on any image.
We do not import your data from other fitness apps or trackers. The one exception is your daily step count, which you can choose to connect (section 3) and disconnect at any time.
We do not rank, score, or compare you against anyone.

5. Who can see what you share

Everything you post belongs to a specific challenge, and only that challenge’s accepted participants can see it. There is no public feed. Your Updates screen shows you the posts from the challenges you are in; what your friends can see of you beyond a shared challenge is only what you switch on or choose to share (below). Within a challenge, content is either ‘shared’ (visible to that challenge’s participants) or ‘private’ (just you).

Team challenges: in a Team challenge, the participants see the group’s total progress and who has added to it today — never anyone’s individual running total.

Your activities with friends: when you mark a shared daily activity done, the people in that group see your tick on their Updates, and can react or comment. Only that group sees it — never friends outside it. Un-marking it withdraws it.

Target challenges: everyone in the challenge sees each member’s own number and progress, in the order people joined — never ranked, never compared, and the app never tells anyone they are behind. If the creator set an ‘all of us or none’ condition, the challenge simply closes if it is not met; nothing names anyone.

‘Your best by’ challenges: everyone in the challenge sees each member’s best result, listed by first name — never ranked or sorted by value, never a bar, and the app never names a best or a winner, including when the challenge closes. Nothing shows for anyone who hasn’t logged an attempt.

Event challenges: everyone sees the date as set, and the “did it” post from anyone who marks it done. Nothing shows for anyone who hasn’t.

Friends can see what you’ve done: your connected friends can see today’s completions by name, and which days you were active in the last 30 days — done days only; a blank day is blank, never ‘missed’; no counts, no streaks. This is on by default; we tell you when you first open the app, and you can switch it off at any time in Settings — switching off hides the 30 days immediately.

Sharing with friends: in any challenge, activity or training you can choose to also show your own posts there to your connected friends. It is off unless you turn it on, room by room, and we never prompt you to. A friend outside the room sees your words and photo and the room’s name — never anyone else’s name, number or comment. Their replies are private between you and them, and their reactions are shown to you only. Switch it off and those posts and replies leave your friends’ view at once; everything disappears with the post after about a week. You can report or block from any private reply.

The home-screen widget: if you add our widget to your device, it shows your own challenges — including a Team challenge’s group total and the first names of those who have added to it today — to you, on your device only. Bear in mind that anyone holding your phone can see it.

The ‘active today’ dot: your friends can see a single dot showing you have been active today — nothing about what you did, how much, where or when. It is on by default; we tell you about it when you first open the app, and you can switch it off at any time in Settings with immediate effect, including for today. Nothing is shown on days you are not active, and nothing is kept from one day to the next. The dot, and a boost from a friend, reset at the end of each day — they do not follow the week-long life of posts.

Sharing outside the app: you can choose to export your OWN content (for example, to Instagram or WhatsApp). That is always your deliberate choice, one item at a time. When you do, the exported copy leaves the app and we no longer control it. You can never export someone else’s content. Please make sure you have other people’s agreement before sharing anything that shows them.

6. Analytics — how we measure the app

We use privacy-respecting analytics (PostHog, hosted in the EU) in two separate streams that we never join together:

A usage stream that tells us whether features work — tied to a random ID, not to your name, age, or any personal detail. It answers ‘did this account come back’, never ‘did this particular person come back’.
An aggregate view (planned for later, not at launch) that would only ever show grouped totals, never anything that identifies an individual.

Because the two are never joined, we cannot — and do not — build a profile of you from analytics.

Our website. Our website uses the same privacy-respecting analytics (PostHog, hosted in the EU) to count visits and see which pages people find useful. On the website this is anonymous and cookie-free — it stores nothing on your device, does not identify you, and is never linked to any account. We use it only to improve the site.

7. How long we keep things

Activity updates, comments, and private replies from friends: about a week (seven days), then deleted automatically. Anything posted before this version took effect keeps the 24-hour period it was posted under.
Reported content: if something is reported, we keep it for a limited period to review it fairly and handle any dispute, then delete it. In rare cases where the law requires it (for example, a legal claim or a request from the police), we keep specific content longer until the matter is resolved, then delete it.
Your profile image, first name and description, saved completions, challenge targets, dates, progress numbers and best results you set or log, Team challenge numbers, step totals you log, and account: until you change them or delete your account.
Your month and year of birth: kept as a record that we checked your age.
If your membership ends and you don’t continue: we keep your account — your name, your connections, and your saved completions — for 6 months, so that if you come back, the people and the record you built are still there. (Your day-to-day activity posts will already have disappeared on their usual weekly cycle.) If you haven’t returned within 6 months, we delete the account and its data automatically. You can also delete it yourself at any time, sooner.

If you take part in a challenge with others: you and the people in that challenge can choose to connect. We work this out from the challenge you’re both in — we do not create or keep a separate record of who you met. What you posted in the challenge still disappears on its usual weekly cycle.

What we keep after you delete your account: deleting your account removes everything above. Three things stay, because the law or a claim could need them, and none of them is used for anything else:

Financial records of what was bought (memberships and gifts) — kept for six years, as tax and accounting law requires.
Gift records without your name — so a gift you bought or were given can still be honoured and reconciled with the app stores after your account is gone. They cannot be traced back to you.
The record that you accepted our Terms and acknowledged this policy — which version and when — kept for six years, the period in which a legal claim could be brought.

8. Where your data is held

Your data is stored in the United Kingdom (London) with our database provider. Some of our service providers (listed in section 9) may process limited data outside the UK; where they do, we rely on approved safeguards such as the UK’s International Data Transfer Agreement. Our database provider is part of a US-headquartered group; this does not change where your data is stored (the UK), and we hold it under a data-processing agreement and keep the amount of data we hold to a minimum.

9. Who we share data with (our service providers)

We use a small set of trusted providers to run the app: Supabase (database, EU), PostHog (analytics, EU), RevenueCat and Apple/Google (payments), Nuntly (email, EU), Sentry (error monitoring), and Zammad (support). Each handles your data only on our instructions under a data-processing agreement. We never give them permission to use your data for their own purposes.

10. Your rights

You can ask to see your data, correct it, delete it, get a copy to take elsewhere, or object to certain uses. Your data and information rights may vary depending on the country where you live; these are the core rights we honour for everyone. You can delete your account at any time from Settings, which removes your data — except the three things listed in section 7 that we are required to keep. Where the law allows us to tell you what we have kept and why, we will. To exercise any right, contact privacy@gauntletchallenge.com. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk), though we’d appreciate the chance to put things right first.

11. Age

Gauntlet Challenge is for people aged 18 and over. When you sign up we ask for your month and year of birth, only to confirm you are 18 or over — it is never shown to anyone and never used for anything else. If what you enter shows you are under 18, you cannot create an account, we do not keep what you entered, and you cannot simply re-enter a different date to get around this.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time — for example, if we add a feature or change how something works. When we do, we will change the version number and effective date at the top. If a change is significant, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect, so you have a chance to read it. Smaller wording or clarification changes may be made with an updated date. The current version always applies; you can view it any time in the app and on our website.

13. How to contact us

For anything about your data or this policy, email privacy@gauntletchallenge.com. We aim to respond within the timeframes the law sets (usually within one month).