Kestrel: Naval Air Ops privacy policy

The short version

Your career progress, call sign, settings and chosen equipment are saved on your iPhone. The app does not send them to us.
There is no account, no advertising, no analytics and no tracking in this version.
Tilt controls read your iPhone's motion sensors on the device only, and only when you switch them on.
Apple processes purchases. The app receives verified purchase records from Apple to unlock content, and never sees your card.
The patientthread.com website and our support email involve some ordinary data handling, described in sections 8 and 9.

1. Who we are

Publisher

Patient Thread Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 17167409. Registered office: Aston Park Farm, Stringers Lane, Aston, Stevenage, Hertfordshire SG2 7EF. Registered with the Information Commissioner's Office, reference ZC223090.

Privacy contact: chris@patientthread.com

Patient Thread Ltd publishes Kestrel: Naval Air Ops and operates patientthread.com. Where this policy says "we", it means Patient Thread Ltd. Apple Inc. and Apple Distribution International Ltd operate the App Store and process in-app purchases under their own terms and privacy policy, which this policy does not replace.

2. What the app stores on your device

Kestrel is a solo game with no account. It keeps the following in the app's own settings storage on your iPhone so that you can carry on where you left off:

your naval career record: which training lessons and sorties you have passed and your scores, qualifications, decorations and the squadron log;
your call sign, which you choose freely and can change at any time;
your control preferences, such as stick or tilt, sensitivity, sound volume and guidance settings;
which cosmetic items you have equipped (paint, helmet, nose marking, badge, keepsake and nameplate).

None of this is personal information about you unless you choose a call sign that identifies you. Because it lives in the app's settings storage, it is normally included in your iPhone's iCloud or computer backup according to your own backup settings, and it is not synchronised to any cloud service of ours.

3. Motion sensors, sound and permissions

Motion. If you choose tilt controls, the app reads your iPhone's orientation to set pitch and roll. That measurement is used on the device, in the moment, and is not stored or transmitted. iOS asks your permission the first time you enable tilt, and you can use the on-screen stick instead at any time.
Sound. Engine, radio and recorded character dialogue play through the media volume. The game contains recorded voices; it does not record yours.
Microphone and local network. This release does not use the microphone or your local network. The app's permission text for those two features belongs to a development-only two-player test mode that is not compiled into the version on the App Store, so iOS will not ask for them.
Camera, location, contacts, photos. Not requested.

4. What the app does not do

No analytics or crash-reporting SDKs from us or anyone else. We do not measure how you play.
No advertising and no tracking. The app's privacy manifest declares that it does not track you.
No account, no sign-in, no cloud save.
No online play in this version. Kestrel is a solo game. The mission films and voices are bundled in the app and play offline.
No connection to a Patient Thread server. The only network use is Apple's App Store and StoreKit services when you buy or restore content.

5. In-app purchases

Kestrel's optional content is sold as one-time, non-consumable in-app purchases: two campaign packs, ten cosmetic items and two cosmetic collections. There are no subscriptions, no in-game currency, no random rewards and no paid performance or weapon advantages. Call signs and the standard equipment are always free.

Apple processes the payment. Prices, the payment sheet, your payment method, receipts, refunds and Family Sharing settings are Apple's. We do not receive your card details.
Ownership is verified on your device. The app uses Apple's StoreKit framework to check which products the signed-in Apple Account owns, to complete purchases, to restore them, and to respond if Apple refunds or revokes a purchase. Refunded content is locked again; career records you earned with it are kept.
Nothing is sent to us. The app does not transmit transaction identifiers, receipts or purchase history to a publisher server, and ownership is never written into your career save.
Internet access is needed to buy or restore. Verified content remains available offline afterwards.

Purchases belong to the Apple Account that made them and are separate from your career progress. Use Restore purchases at the bottom of Spanner's Locker with that Apple Account.

6. Removing your progress

Progress and purchases are different

Deleting the app removes its local career save unless your device backup restores it. Restoring purchases brings back owned content, not progress.

To remove all local progress, delete Kestrel from your iPhone. There is nothing held on our systems to delete, because the app never sent your progress to us.
Deleting the app does not cancel, refund or erase an Apple purchase. Apple holds that record against your Apple Account and controls refunds and purchase support.

7. Children

Kestrel does not ask for personal information and has no profiles, chat, messaging or user-generated content. It depicts fictional military aviation with simulated weapons, which is reflected in its App Store age rating. Apple's Family Sharing controls, including Ask to Buy, apply to purchases. Parents with any concern can contact us at the address in section 1.

8. The Kestrel pages on patientthread.com

The web pages at patientthread.com/kestrel, /kestrel/support and /kestrel/privacy are ordinary web pages and involve a small amount of ordinary data processing, which is different from the app's practices:

What	Details
Hosting	patientthread.com is hosted by Netlify, Inc. As with any website, Netlify's servers receive your IP address, browser type and the pages you request in order to deliver them, and may record standard access logs under Netlify's own privacy policy. We do not use these logs to analyse visitors.
Cookies	The Kestrel pages and the rest of the patientthread.com marketing site do not set cookies.
Analytics and advertising	None.
Fonts	The pages load the Inter typeface from Google Fonts, so your browser requests the font files from Google's servers under Google's privacy policy.
Links to Apple	Links to the App Store and Apple Support take you to Apple's sites, governed by Apple's policies.

Our wider website privacy notice at patientthread.com/privacy covers the Patient Thread clinical software and other services. It does not apply to the Kestrel app.

9. Contacting us by email

If you email us for support, to report a bug, or with a privacy question, we receive your email address, what you write and any attachments. We use this only to answer you and to fix problems you report, on the basis of our legitimate interest in supporting the game. Our email is hosted by Microsoft (Exchange Online) and support correspondence is handled by Patient Thread Ltd staff in the United Kingdom. We keep it for as long as it is needed to resolve the matter and to keep a record of what was agreed, and we do not add you to any marketing list. Please never send us your Apple Account password, verification codes or payment-card details.

10. Your rights and how to complain

Because the app does not collect personal data, there is normally nothing for us to access, correct or erase on the app side; your progress is under your own control on your iPhone. For personal data we do hold, such as support emails, you have the usual rights under UK data protection law: to ask what we hold, to have it corrected or erased, to object to or restrict its use, and to receive a copy. Email chris@patientthread.com and we will respond within one month. There is no charge.

Information Commissioner's Office

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please contact us first. You also have the right to complain to the UK regulator.

ico.org.uk · 0303 123 1113 · Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF

11. Changes to this policy

This policy describes version 0.12.0 of the app. If a future version adds online play, voice chat, a cloud save, analytics or any other data processing, we will update this page with a new version number and effective date before that version is released, and the Privacy and help screen in the app will say the same. Previous versions are available on request.