The paperwork

Privacy Policy

Version 2026-08-24. 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. One Google advertising tag now runs across the whole site, inside the game worlds as well, so we can tell which ads bring players who actually stay. It is described below, and it is the only third party that sees you here.

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. Our public pages, meaning the front site at www.theplanesim.com, the play hub, and the wiki, load Ahrefs Web Analytics so we can see which pages people find and where they arrive from. It sets no cookie and stores nothing on your device. Ahrefs receives technical visit data such as the page address, the referring page, your IP address and your browser identifier, and processes them under Ahrefs' privacy policy. It is not present inside the game, on the archive, or on the account site.
• 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

Inside the game and the archive, PlaneSim uses a single 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. There are no advertising, analytics, or third-party tracking cookies on those pages. Our public pages (the front site, the play hub, the wiki, and the account site) additionally carry the Google advertising cookies set by the tag described in section 2; you can block or clear them in your browser and the sites work fine without them. Game 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 Ahrefs processes the visitor analytics described in the same section under its policy. 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.
• 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.