Helm Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 15, 2026

Helm is a study aid for the OUPV (six-pack) captain's exam. It is an independent service operated from France and reachable at helmcrew.app ("Helm", "we"). An account is optional in the iOS app, which works signed out and offline. An account is what lets your progress and subscription follow you between iOS and the web.

What we collect

Account. Your email address, a name, and a salted hash of your password. We never store the password itself. If you use Sign in with Apple or Google, we receive an account identifier and email address from that provider. Apple may give us a private relay address.

Study progress. The questions you answer and whether you were right, bookmarks, practice exam scores, your exam date, the days you studied, and whether each event came from iOS or the web. This is how your devices stay in sync.

Subscriptions and billing records. Your plan and its status, when it renews or ends, and a transaction record of each billing event: the type of event (such as a renewal, failed payment, cancellation or refund), the amount, currency and tax, the billing period, the date, and the store's references for the customer, subscription, invoice and transaction. We do not receive or store your card details or any other payment credentials. Stripe handles web payments and Apple handles App Store purchases.

Game progress. Harbor Run, the free game at /game, works without an account and needs no personal details. If you play without signing in, your progress stays in your browser and nothing is sent to us. If you are signed in, the game saves your stars, signal flags, unlocked boats and hats, achievements, logbook entries and game settings to your account, so they follow you between browsers. Progress already saved in that browser is merged into your account. A small cookie marks that the browser is signed in, so the game knows to save; it holds no identity. We collect no extra personal data for the game, it has no analytics, advertising or chat, and anyone can play without giving us anything. An adult who creates an account is responsible for it.

Activity and approximate location. When you are signed in, we record when you were last active, whether that was on iOS or the web, and your approximate country, to operate the service. Recent activity, including the part of Helm you were using, is held briefly in server memory. Only the last active time, country and device type are saved, at most once an hour. Your country comes from your connection and may be wrong. We do not store your IP address for this, and we do not record your city or precise location. Nothing is recorded if you are not signed in, including on the website or in Harbor Run. We keep these until you delete your account.

Security data. Your IP address and browser or device description are stored with your sign-in session, and your IP address is used briefly to limit repeated requests. We keep technical logs that are designed to leave out your email address, password and tokens.

We do not sell your data, and Helm has no advertising or third-party analytics.

Who processes it

We share data only with the companies that run Helm for us:

  • Stripe, for web subscriptions. Web purchases use Stripe Managed Payments, so Stripe acts as the seller of record: it receives your email address and payment details, calculates and collects tax, and hosts checkout and plan management.
  • Apple, for App Store subscriptions and Sign in with Apple.
  • Google, if you choose Sign in with Google.
  • Resend, to send verification and password reset email. Resend receives your email address.
  • Koyeb, which hosts the website, API and database, in the United States.
  • Cloudflare, which provides our domain name service.

Each handles data under its own terms and privacy policy. We may also disclose data if the law requires it.

Some of these providers process data in the United States. Where data protection law requires it, these transfers rely on safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

We process your data to provide the service you asked for (your account, progress and subscription), for our legitimate interest in keeping Helm secure and working (such as rate limiting and your last active time and country), and to meet legal obligations (such as keeping billing records).

Keeping and deleting your data

We keep your account and progress until you delete them.

You can delete your account in the app or on the website. This permanently removes your account, sign-in methods, sessions, study progress, game progress and activity record from our systems.

Deleting your account ends any web subscription immediately, with no further charges. It does not end an App Store subscription, which you must cancel with Apple.

Three things remain after deletion:

  • Our billing records. We keep the transaction records described above for accounting, tax and legal obligations, and to answer refund and dispute claims, for up to 10 years, as accounting law requires. When you delete your account they are detached from you: the link to your account is removed, and they never held your name, email address or payment details. They keep the amounts, dates and the store's references, and those references could still be matched to the records Stripe or Apple keep about you.
  • Payment records at Stripe and Apple. Stripe and Apple keep their own records of your payments, which we cannot delete, as tax and financial rules require.
  • Refunded subscriptions. If a subscription was refunded or reversed, we keep the store's reference and the fact it was revoked, with nothing linking it to you, so it cannot be used again.

An App Store subscription stays valid with Apple after you delete your account. It can be restored on the App Store with your Apple Account. Deleting your account ends a web subscription, so there is nothing to restore on the web; you can create a new account and subscribe again.

Deleted data may persist in database backups for up to 7 days.

Your choices

You can download your account data, including your billing records and activity record, as a file at any time. You can correct your name or email by writing to privacy@helmcrew.app. Depending on where you live, you may have further rights, such as objecting to processing or complaining to a regulator. If you live in the EU or UK, you can ask to access, correct, delete or move your data, object to some processing, and complain to your data protection authority (in France, the CNIL). If you live in California, you have similar rights to know and delete your data; we do not sell or share personal information for advertising.

Children

Helm is not directed to children under 13, and accounts are for people 13 or older (or older where local law requires). The game at /game can be played without an account and sends nothing to our servers.

Changes

If we change this policy in a meaningful way, we will update the date above and tell you in the app or by email.

Contact

Questions or requests: privacy@helmcrew.app