Beater Pursuit — privacy
Effective 30 September 2026. Back to the parking lot · Terms
Beater Pursuit is a free browser racing game run by Howard Huang, one person in Texas, USA, as a hobby. There are no ads and nothing is sold. Google Analytics measures how the game is played (see below). This page lists everything the game keeps and who can see it.
Questions or a deletion request: howard@whatshuang.com. That address reaches the one person who runs the game.
The short version
- No cookies of our own. Your settings stay in your browser.
- Google Analytics counts what gets played. It never gets your racer name, email or profile id, and Settings › About turns it off.
- Your first clean lap creates a public racer profile, with or without an account. The lap, the car, its setup and a replay (a "ghost") of how you drove it go on the public board under that name, and your garage is backed up to that profile.
- Feedback posts, screenshots included, are public.
- Voice and camera in rooms go live to the other players and are never recorded by us. The camera is for players 18 and over.
What is kept, and who sees it
| What | Why | Who can see it | How long |
|---|---|---|---|
| Racer profile: a public id, a racer name (up to 10 characters), rating, races, wins, how many laps you have on the boards, and when you were last active | So your laps have a name on the board | Everyone | Until you ask for it to be deleted |
| Laps: time, car, parts and tuning, mode, date, and the ghost replay | The leaderboards | Everyone | A board keeps only its ten fastest laps, and at most three from any one racer; slower laps are deleted as faster ones arrive. The replay of a lap that drops off is no longer shown, but can stay stored until your profile is deleted. |
| Cloud save: your garage | So your garage can follow you to another device | Only you (with your transfer code or account) | Until the profile is deleted. It starts as soon as you have a racer profile, account or not. |
| Account (optional): an email address and a salted password hash. The address is not checked. | Signing in on another device | Only the operator | Until you ask for it to be deleted |
| A secret sign-in token for each device, and a transfer code | Keeping each device signed in | Only you | Until the profile is deleted. The transfer code changes every time you log in. |
| Friends, challenges and blocks | Friends and challenges | The two people involved. A block is seen only by the person who made it; we never tell anyone they have been blocked. | Until removed |
| Feedback: title, text, up to 4 images, and the screen, track, car and race state it was sent from | Bug reports and ideas | Everyone | Stays up. A post the operator hides is kept, not deleted. Images are re-encoded, which strips photo location data. |
| Room chat: the last 60 lines | So someone joining sees the conversation | Anyone in the room while it is open | Wiped when the last person leaves, including when everyone leaves mid-race |
| Room seats: racer name, car, parts and paint | Running the race | Everyone in the room | Stored with the room code |
| Play statistics: which screens you open, the mode, track and car, how long, how many laps, whether you were online, the build, errors the game hit, and your public profile id | Knowing what gets played and what breaks | The operator. Daily totals built from them (no ids) are on a public address. | 400 days |
| Who's online (the plaza): your racer name, what you are doing, the code of a room you are hosting, and how long you have been on | So friends can find a race | Everyone online at the time | Not stored. Private messages and invites are passed on and not stored. |
| Open Road: your racer name, car, paint, position, heading and speed | So nearby drivers see you | Drivers within about 450 m | Not stored |
Play statistics are tied to your public profile id, so they are not anonymous. There is no switch to turn them off yet.
Accounts and email
Signing up adds an email and a password to the profile you already have. The password is stored as a salted PBKDF2 hash, never as text. There is no password reset yet: your transfer code is the way back in. It changes every time you log in, so check it after signing in on a new device. If you lose both your password and your code, the profile cannot be recovered. Signing in on a new device adds that device; your other devices stay signed in, and there is no way yet to sign one out short of deleting the profile.
If a friend challenges you, the game emails you through Brevo (an email service in the EU) with their name, the time, the track, the car and a link to take the challenge — at most five such emails a day in total, however many friends challenge you. Challenges only come from people on your friends list: remove or block a friend and their challenges, and the emails, stop.
Someone who already knows your email address can send you a friend request with it; the request does not tell them whether the address has an account. (Signing up with an address that is already taken does say so.)
Online rooms, voice and camera
Rooms are joined with a code from someone who already has it. In a room, the other players see your racer name, car and paint, and read your chat. Voice and camera are off until you switch them on. When on, they go live through our server to the other players in the room and are not stored. The other players can see and hear you, and we cannot stop someone recording their own screen. The camera is for players 18 and over.
When you create a room, its server region is picked from the rough area your IP address puts you in (continent-level). The region is fixed for the life of the room and appears in its invite link, so an invite tells the people you send it to roughly where the host is.
On your device
No cookies of our own. Google Analytics sets its own (_ga…) unless you, your browser or your region says no (see below). The game keeps its save, settings and local laps in your browser's local storage, along with your profile's id, sign-in token and transfer code (and email, if you have an account), a random driver name used before you pick one, and a random id that counts feedback votes once per browser. Open Road caches map tiles. Clearing this site's data wipes all of it. Your transfer code, or an account, brings your name and garage back; with neither written down, nothing can be recovered.
Services your browser talks to directly
- Google Analytics (Google LLC, US), loaded through Google Tag Manager: the pages you open and how long you stay, your device, browser and rough location (worked out by Google from your IP address), and the game's own events: races started and finished (mode, track, car, laps, time), sign-ups and log-ins. Never your racer name, email or profile id. It is off in automated browsers, when your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, and after you turn it off in Settings › About. In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland it sets no cookies. Google keeps the detailed records for 2 months, and what is tied to your browser's Analytics id for 14 months after your last visit. Report totals are kept.
- Cloudflare, which hosts the game and its servers (in the US and elsewhere). It processes your IP address to deliver the game and keeps its own request logs under its own policy.
- Radio stations, when the in-game radio plays: infomaniak.ch (the default), listen-nr1dnb.com, aioli-radio.org, nightride.fm, plaza.one, eurodance90.fr and ors-shoutcast.at. They see your IP address. The game asks for their streams without cookies.
- OpenStreetMap, in Open Road: Nominatim receives what you type in the search box, and map data comes from Overpass at overpass-api.de, or maps.mail.ru (run by VK, in Russia) when the first is busy.
Ground heights in Open Road come from OpenTopoData through our own server, so your IP address is not sent to it. Challenge emails go through Brevo, as above.
Your IP address is also used for a minute at a time to stop abuse — too many sign-ups, rooms or posts from one place. It is not written to our database.
Backups
Before changing the game's servers, the operator saves a copy of the board database to his own computer. It holds profiles, email addresses, transfer codes, cloud saves and feedback, but not passwords or sign-in tokens. Deleting your data removes it from the live game; backups taken before the deletion still contain it.
Deleting your data, and your other rights
Email howard@whatshuang.com from the address on the account, or give your racer name and transfer code. Deletion removes the profile, its laps and ghosts, rating, friends, challenges, cloud save, devices, statistics and votes. Your feedback posts stay up with the name changed to "anon" — unless another racer uses the same name, in which case say which posts are yours. You can also ask for a copy of what is kept, or for a correction. You can rename yourself in the game at any time.
Why we hold it: to run the game you asked to play (the boards, the profile, the account, rooms), and a legitimate interest in keeping it working and free of abuse (statistics, Google Analytics included, abuse limits, backups). Voice and camera run only when you switch them on.
Children
Beater Pursuit is not made for children and is not advertised to them. You must be 13 or older to play. Players aged 13 to 17 may race, use text chat and use voice with a parent's or guardian's permission. The camera in rooms is for players 18 and over, because a live picture of your face goes to everyone in the room. We do not knowingly keep anything from a child under 13: if we learn that a profile belongs to one, we delete it without waiting to be asked. Parents and guardians can write to howard@whatshuang.com with the racer name to have it deleted, and can ask what was held first.
Changes
If this page changes, the date at the top changes, and the in-game "New game update" note says so.