The paperwork

Privacy Policy

Version 2026-10-01. This page says what PlaneSim collects, why, how long it is kept, and what your choices are. The short version: we collect what running a fair multiplayer game requires, and we sell nothing. Two third parties see you here, both of them measurement and neither of them advertising sold against you: a Google advertising tag that tells us which ads bring players who stay, and, since 20 September 2026, Nordva analytics, which shows us which pages actually get used. Nordva is the one you can switch off, and the cookie notice is where you do it. Both are described below, along with the two things Nordva also carries inside the game since 1 October 2026: feedback you choose to send us, and short notices we send you.

1. Who is responsible

PlaneSim at theplanesim.com is operated by theplanesim, reachable at support@theplanesim.com. That operator is the data controller for everything described here.

2. What we collect, and why

• Account data. Your email address (if you register with one), a password stored only as a strong one-way hash, and, if you sign in with Discord or Google, the account identifier and email those services share with us. Used to operate your account and let you sign in. We never receive your password for those services.
• Sign-in records. For each sign-in session we record the time, your IP address, and your browser's user-agent string. Used for security and fair play: detecting account sharing, multiple accounts, and attempts to evade bans, and investigating abuse reports. These records are deleted 90 days after the session expires.
• Server logs and usage statistics. Our web server keeps short-lived technical logs of requests (address, page, time, browser identifier, referring page) for security and operations; they are overwritten on rotation within weeks. From these logs we compute anonymous, aggregate usage statistics: how many visits a page had, which sites people arrived from, and how busy each game world is. The statistics contain no names, no addresses, and no way to single anyone out, and we build them ourselves; they set no cookie.
• Visitor analytics. Since 20 September 2026 every page we serve loads Nordva Launch analytics, so we can see which pages get used and which do not. That is the front site, the play hub, the wiki, the account site at id.theplanesim.com, and the game worlds. It records the page address without anything after the question mark, the site you arrived from, any campaign values in the link you followed, your browser and the width of its window, and how long a page was actually read. Nordva derives an approximate city from your network address and does not store the address itself. Inside a world the page address names the world and your airline's URL number, never your airline's name, your email address, or anything you do there. When you create an account or sign in, our server registers that account with Nordva by account identifier and email address, whatever you answered on the cookie notice: Nordva Launch and PlaneSim are run by the same company, and it is how we know who our players are and can reply to them. What the cookie notice decides is the browsing: answer Yes and the visits your browser made, including the page that first brought you, are linked to that account, so we can tell which pages bring players who stay. Answer No and no visit is linked or stored with a cookie, and the tag discards anything it would have sent about you. Unlike the advertising tag below, that part is yours to refuse: the cookie notice asks, No is honoured everywhere, and section 3 lists exactly what it stores and for how long. Nordva processes the data under Nordva's privacy policy.
• Feedback and notices. Since 1 October 2026 the game has a Feedback button and an Updates panel, and both run through Nordva Launch. When you send feedback, Nordva receives the words you wrote, the kind you picked (bug, idea, praise or question), the address of the page you were on, and your account identifier, so we know which player is writing. Your email address goes along only if you tick the box asking for a reply. Nordva sorts the message by topic and forwards it to us. The Updates panel shows short notices we send, such as a fix or a change to the game. To show you your own notices, the game asks Nordva for them under your account identifier, with a signature our server makes so that nobody else can read them, and Nordva records which ones you have read or opened. None of this depends on the cookie notice: feedback is only ever sent when you press Send, and the Updates panel needs to know who you are to work at all. Nordva processes both under Nordva's privacy policy.
• Advertising measurement. Every page we serve loads Google's advertising tag (gtag.js), so we can tell whether an ad we bought led to a visit and, since 19 August 2026, whether that visit became someone who plays. That means the front site at www.theplanesim.com, the play hub, the wiki, the account site at id.theplanesim.com, and the game worlds themselves. The tag sets its cookies on theplanesim.com so that one visit is recognisable as it moves between those sites. Google receives technical visit data and processes it under Google's advertising policies. What it sends is the page address, the page title and technical visit data. Inside a world that address names the world and your airline's URL number, never your airline's name, your email address, or anything you do there. Single-use links, such as the one in a password-reset email, have their token stripped before the tag sees the address. The tag is not present on the archive at data.theplanesim.com, nor on the two staff consoles.
• Game data. Your airline and everything it does in a world: names, routes, finances, and activity times. This is the game itself. When a world is concluded, its final statistics and history, including airline names and results, may be published permanently on our archive pages.
• Payment data. The game is free during beta. If paid game time is introduced, payments will be processed by Stripe. We would receive and keep a record of what was bought and for which account, but never your card number.
• Support and invites. If you write to us we keep the correspondence. Beta invite records show which invite created which account.

We show no ads on PlaneSim, we do not sell or share personal data for marketing, and we do not profile you beyond the fair-play checks described above. We do advertise PlaneSim elsewhere, and measure it only as described above.

3. Cookies

PlaneSim uses one essential cookie: the session cookie that keeps you signed in, set by our account service when you sign in and removed when you sign out. Every page except the archive at data.theplanesim.com also carries the Google advertising cookies set by the tag described in section 2. You can block or clear any of them in your browser and the sites work fine without them.

The analytics cookies described in section 2 are the ones you choose. They are first-party, set on theplanesim.com itself so that one visit reads as one visit across the front site, the play hub, the wiki, the account site and the worlds, and there are four of them:

• nv_vid, a random visitor identifier and the day we first saw it, so returning visits are not counted as new ones. 365 days, never extended.
• nv_sid, a random session identifier and a page count, so a series of pages reads as one visit. 30 minutes, renewed while you are reading.
• nv_ft, the site you first arrived from and any campaign values in that link, so we can tell what brought you. 365 days, written once.
• nv_consent, your own answer to the cookie notice, so we do not ask again on every one of our sites. 180 days.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, none of those four is written until you answer Yes. Elsewhere they are set when you arrive, and answering No deletes them. A Global Privacy Control signal from your browser counts as a No everywhere, without being asked. Your answer is kept in nv_consent for 180 days, after which the notice asks once more.

Our pages also use your browser's local storage for interface preferences (for example, a dismissed notice); that data stays in your browser.

4. Where data lives and who processes it

The game runs on servers rented from netcup in the European Union; concluded-world archives are stored redundantly on two servers in the same region. DNS for the domain is provided by Cloudflare. If you sign in with Discord or Google, those services process your sign-in under their own policies. Google also processes the advertising measurement described in section 2 under its own policies, and Nordva processes the visitor analytics, the feedback and the notices described in the same section under its policy. Nordva Launch and PlaneSim are run by the same company, so that this data is not handed to an outside provider at all. If payments launch, Stripe processes them under its policy. We share personal data with no one else, unless the law requires it.

5. How long we keep things

• Sign-in records with IP addresses: 90 days after the session expires.
• Web server request logs: overwritten on rotation, typically within a few weeks. Aggregate usage statistics: kept indefinitely; they contain no personal data.
• Account data: for as long as your account exists.
• In-game correspondence between airlines: stored inside the world it was sent in, readable by moderators when a participant reports a letter, and deleted when that world closes. It is never published and never enters a world's public archive.
• Feedback you send: for as long as we need it to act on it and keep a record of what players asked for. Notices in the Updates panel: Nordva removes them after 90 days.
• Game data: for the life of the world, and in concluded-world archives permanently, as part of the game's published history.
• Payment and billing records, if payments launch: as long as bookkeeping and tax law require.

6. Your choices and rights

You can see and change your account details on your account page, and you can delete your account there too: deletion removes your account data, credentials, sessions, and sign-in records. Game history already part of a world, and archives of concluded worlds, are records of a shared game and remain. Depending on where you live you may also have legal rights to access, correct, export, or erase personal data, and to complain to a data-protection authority; write to support@theplanesim.com to exercise them.

7. Changes

If this policy changes in a meaningful way we will announce it on the site and change the version date above. Your acceptance of a given version is recorded with your account.