Barnyard Derby
Privacy Policy
The short version
- There are no accounts and no sign-in. We never ask for your name, email address, phone number or contacts, and the app does not use your precise location, camera or microphone.
- Your coins, racers, hats and progress are saved only on your device. Deleting the app deletes them.
- The leaderboard is optional. If you join, other players see the nickname you choose, your racer's look and your race totals. You can delete it yourself at any time in Settings > Leave the board.
- Purchases go through Apple. We never see your payment details. Coins are never sold and cannot be cashed out. Betting in the game uses play coins only: no real money, no prizes.
- The game shows ads from Google AdMob between some races, plus optional ads you can choose to watch for a reward. Ads are personalized only if you allow it. Otherwise they are non-personalized.
- The app uses Tenjin to learn which of our own ads led to an install, through Apple's privacy-preserving SKAdNetwork. Tenjin receives your advertising identifier only if you tap Allow when the app asks.
- The app sends anonymous usage analytics to PostHog, such as races started and finished. They are not linked to you and never used for advertising.
- On iPhone and iPad the app asks once whether it may track you. If you say no, nothing about the game changes.
Who we are
Barnyard Derby is made by LARK Enterprises LLC, a company in the United States. For anything about this policy or your data, email hello@larkenterprisesllc.com.
What the app stores on your device
The app keeps one save file on your device. It holds your coins, your racers and their training, your hats, your Golden Carrots, your progress through the fairs and the season, your goals and daily gifts, your settings, which purchases you own, and, if you joined the leaderboard, your nickname, your player ID and secret, and the list of players you blocked. The game save is not sent anywhere. We do not back it up and cannot read it.
The analytics and ad measurement software described below also keep their own random identifiers on the device, along with any events waiting to be sent.
The leaderboard
The leaderboard is off until you choose to join it and pick a nickname. When you do, the app sends the following to a server we run on Cloudflare (Cloudflare Workers and a Cloudflare D1 database):
| What | Why | Who can see it |
|---|---|---|
| The nickname you choose (3 to 14 letters, numbers or underscores) | To show you on the board | Everyone who opens the leaderboard |
| Your racer's look: which animal and which hat | To draw your racer next to your name | Everyone who opens the leaderboard |
| Your totals: coins won this week, Cups won, total coins won, and your tier (the fair you race at, or Grand Derby champion) | To rank you | Everyone who opens the leaderboard |
| A random player ID and a random secret, created by the server and kept on your device | So only your device can update or delete your row, and so other players can report or block your row | Nobody. They are never displayed |
Coins on the board are play coins won in races. They have no money value.
The nickname is checked against a list of words that should not appear on a public board, and rejected if it matches. Please do not use your real name or anything that identifies you. The player ID is pseudonymous: it is random, it is not linked to your identity, to any account or to your advertising identifier, and leaderboard data is not used for tracking or advertising.
Reporting and blocking. Tap a row on the board to report that player's name or block that player. When three different players report a name, it is hidden and shows as "Hidden racer". A report is stored on our server with the player ID of the person who made it and the player ID it is about. A block is kept only on your phone; our server never learns who you blocked.
Like any internet service, our server briefly sees the IP address of the device that contacts it, and Cloudflare may keep short-lived connection logs for security. We do not store IP addresses in the leaderboard database and do not use them for anything.
Deleting your leaderboard data
Open Settings (the gear on the stable screen) and tap Leave the board, then Delete. That deletes your record from our server immediately: your nickname, racer look and totals are erased, not just hidden, and the name is free for someone else. Any reports you made, and any reports other players made about you, are deleted with it. Your barn and coins on your device stay. If you would rather we did it, email the nickname exactly as it appears to hello@larkenterprisesllc.com.
Purchases
You can buy Golden Carrot packs (used up as you spend them), the Season Pass, the Stable Pass, Remove Ads, rare animals and a hat bundle through the App Store. Apple handles the whole payment. To unlock what you bought and let you restore it on another device, the app uses RevenueCat, our purchase processor. RevenueCat receives your purchase history for this app and an anonymous app user ID that RevenueCat creates. It does not receive your name, email address or card details, and neither do we. Refunds are handled by Apple under its rules.
Coins are never sold and cannot be cashed out. They are earned by playing. The betting in Barnyard Derby uses play coins only: it is not real-money gambling, and there are no prizes of any kind.
Ads
Ads come from Google AdMob. A full-screen ad can appear between some races. Separately, the game offers optional rewarded ads, for example for a Golden Carrot or a coin top-up; those play only if you choose to watch them. Remove Ads and the Stable Pass switch off the ads between races, and the optional rewarded ads stay available.
To serve ads, measure them and prevent fraud, Google may collect device identifiers (including the advertising identifier, if you allowed tracking), your IP address, from which it can estimate a coarse location, and information about how you interact with the ads.
- Personalized ads are shown only if you tap Allow in Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt and, if you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you also give consent through Google's consent message.
- Otherwise, ads are non-personalized: they are chosen from context such as the app and your general location, not from a profile of you.
How Google handles this data is described in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services and in Google's privacy policy.
Measuring our own ads
We may advertise Barnyard Derby in other apps or on the App Store. To learn which ad campaign led to an install, the app uses Tenjin, a measurement service in the United States that processes the data on our behalf.
The measurement itself comes from Apple's SKAdNetwork. When an ad leads to an install, Apple sends the ad network, and a copy to Tenjin, a report that a campaign produced an install. Apple delays and groups these reports and leaves out anything that identifies you, your device or the app where you saw the ad. The game adds one number to that report, called a conversion value, that sums up how the first days after install went, such as whether races were run, whether the game was opened again on a later day and whether a purchase was made. It never contains your nickname.
When the app opens, the Tenjin software inside it also sends Tenjin:
- the identifier for vendor (IDFV), an identifier Apple gives each app maker for a device. It is the same in every LARK Enterprises LLC app on that device and different for every other company. It resets when you delete all of our apps.
- a random identifier Tenjin's software creates for this installation
- your IP address, which Tenjin uses to estimate a coarse location such as your country
- device and app details: device model, operating system and version, language and region settings, time zone, and the app's version and build
- app opens and when they happen, the conversion value above each time it changes, and, only if you came from an Apple Search Ads ad, the attribution token Apple's own framework provides for that ad
If you tapped Allow, Tenjin also receives your device's advertising identifier (IDFA). Tenjin matches it with the same identifier from the ad network that showed you our ad, to tell us which ad led to your install, and may tell that ad network that the install happened, so it can judge how well its ads for us work. That is "tracking" in Apple's sense, which is why the app asks first.
If you did not tap Allow, Tenjin does not receive your advertising identifier: the app tells Tenjin's software never to send it, and Apple keeps it hidden anyway. Tenjin's probabilistic matching, which tries to pair installs with ad clicks using details such as the IP address, is switched off for this app. Either way, we do not use Tenjin to target ads at you or to build a profile of what you do in other companies' apps or websites, Tenjin never receives your nickname or leaderboard totals, and we never sell any of this data. How Tenjin handles data is described in Tenjin's privacy policy.
The tracking prompt
The first time you open the app, Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt asks whether Barnyard Derby may track your activity across other companies' apps and websites. The game is exactly the same whichever you choose: no coins, racers or rewards depend on it.
- Allow: the app can read your device's advertising identifier (IDFA). Google AdMob may use it to show you personalized ads (in the EEA and UK, only with your consent in Google's message as well), and Tenjin uses it to tell us which ad led to your install.
- Ask App Not to Track: the app cannot read your advertising identifier. Ads are non-personalized, and install measurement relies only on Apple's SKAdNetwork and the details listed above, without the IDFA.
To change your answer or limit tracking later: open the iPhone or iPad Settings app, go to Privacy & Security > Tracking, and turn Barnyard Derby off. Turning off Allow Apps to Request to Track on that same screen stops every app from asking and keeps your advertising identifier hidden from all of them. Current versions of iOS no longer have a separate button to reset the advertising identifier; turning tracking off is how you stop apps from reading it. Apple's own ad settings are under Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising.
Usage analytics
To understand how the game is played, for example which fairs are too hard and whether people come back the next day, the app sends anonymous usage events to PostHog, an analytics service based in the United States that processes the data on our behalf.
What is sent:
- a random identifier the app creates when it is first opened. It is not your name, your nickname, your advertising identifier or any account, and we never connect it to who you are. Deleting the app deletes it from the device. Events also carry a session identifier, which is random too and starts again each time the app is opened.
- game events: the game being opened, a race starting, a race finishing and the place your racer finished in, a purchase being completed, an ad being shown, and a daily gift being claimed.
- device and app details: the device model, the operating system and its version, and the app version.
Like any internet service, PostHog receives your device's IP address when the app sends events. PostHog stores the IP address with each event and uses it to estimate an approximate location, such as country and city. It is not your precise location, and the app never asks for location access.
We use this data only to understand and improve the game. It is not linked to your identity, is not used for advertising, is not shared with advertisers or data brokers, and is not combined with data from other apps or websites to track you. Our PostHog plan keeps these events for one year. How PostHog handles data is described in PostHog's privacy policy.
Children
Barnyard Derby is a general-audience game. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 in the United States, or under the equivalent age where you live. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal information, email us and we will delete what we can find. The only thing a player ever types that leaves the device is a leaderboard nickname, which we ask you not to make identifying. If you believe a child has entered personal information into a nickname, delete it in the app with Settings > Leave the board, or email us and we will delete it promptly.
What the app does not use
There are no accounts and no sign-in. The app does not ask for your email address, does not read your contacts, and does not request access to your precise location, camera, microphone, photo library, calendar, health data or Bluetooth. On iPhone and iPad it asks one question, Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt, described above. It uses the internet only for the leaderboard, purchases, ads, ad measurement and usage analytics described on this page.
Who we work with
- Apple handles payments and SKAdNetwork: Apple Privacy Policy
- RevenueCat processes purchases: RevenueCat Privacy Policy
- Google AdMob serves ads: How Google uses information from apps that use its services
- Tenjin measures our own ad campaigns: Tenjin Privacy Policy
- PostHog provides usage analytics: PostHog Privacy Policy
- Cloudflare hosts the leaderboard server and this website: Cloudflare Privacy Policy
We do not sell personal information and never have.
Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us what we hold about you, ask us to delete it, or object to how it is used, by emailing hello@larkenterprisesllc.com. In practice we hold a leaderboard row if you joined, which you can delete yourself in the app at any time, plus anonymous analytics, RevenueCat's purchase record and Tenjin's ad measurement, all kept under random identifiers rather than your name. Because those identifiers are not shown in the app, we usually cannot look them up by name; if you can tell us roughly when and where you played, we will try. If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, our lawful basis for the leaderboard is your consent, given when you join; for personalized ads and the advertising identifier it is your consent, given when you tap Allow and in Google's consent message; for non-personalized ads and purchases it is our legitimate interest in funding a free game; for usage analytics it is our legitimate interest in understanding and improving the game; and for ad measurement without the advertising identifier it is our legitimate interest in knowing which of our own ads work, with the safeguards above. You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.
Security
The connections between the app and our server are encrypted. Leaderboard writes and deletes require a secret that only your device holds. Since the leaderboard never receives anything that identifies a person, the impact of a breach there is limited to nicknames and play-coin totals, but we treat it seriously anyway.
Changes
If we change what the app collects, this page changes first and the effective date at the top moves.
Contact
Barnyard Derby is published by LARK Enterprises LLC, a company in the United States. Email hello@larkenterprisesllc.com.