Legal
Privacy Policy
HealthStars is a heart-rate training app, so most of what it holds about you is health data you chose to share. This policy explains what we collect, how we use it in training and challenges, who sees it, and how to get it deleted.
Last updated 3 November 2026The short version
- We do not sell personal information, and we do not use heart-rate or other health information for targeted advertising.
- Health and wearable data reaches us only with your permission, and you can revoke it at any time in Apple Health, Garmin or the relevant provider's settings.
- Leaderboards show your display name, club, score and rank — never your raw heart-rate data, lifestyle logs, contact details or payout details.
- Sponsoring a challenge does not give a sponsor access to participant health records.
- We do not use AI systems to process your health or Garmin data, and never use Garmin data to train AI models.
- You can access, correct, export or delete your data, and withdraw consent, at any time.
- Questions go to support@healthstars.io.
Contents
- Overview and scope
- Information we collect
- Apple Health, Garmin and other connections
- How we use information
- Public competition results and club access
- Images, stories and marketing choices
- Service providers and legal disclosure
- We do not sell your data
- AI transparency statement
- Retention and deletion
- Your rights
- Security, location and children
- Changes and contact
1 Overview and scope
HealthStars, Inc. (“HealthStars,” “we”) provides heart-rate training, connected-wearable functionality, club competitions and challenges, including the Cooldown × HealthStars Challenge. This policy describes how we handle personal information in our apps, websites and related programs. It should be read with our Terms of Service and the Official Rules for any challenge.
We do not sell personal information or use heart-rate or other health information for targeted advertising. Sponsorship of a challenge does not grant a sponsor access to underlying participant health records.
2 Information we collect
Account and eligibility
Name, email, date of birth or age confirmation, login and verification records, city/club affiliation, referrals, challenge registrations, acceptance of legal terms, and customer-support correspondence.
Health and workout information, with applicable permission
Sex, height, weight, body composition, resting and measured heart rate, HRV, VO₂ max, heart-rate time series, workout duration, distance, readiness, recovery, calculated scores, goals, lifestyle inputs, and workout environmental context. Some fields are optional.
Connected device and integrity information
Wearable make/model, software and app versions, device or session identifiers, connection status, timestamps, workout metadata, diagnostic and anomaly indicators, and information reasonably needed to investigate duplicate, manipulated or invalid results. We collect a category only when the feature that uses it is enabled.
Competition and payment information
Club affiliation, eligible attempts, validated scores, rankings, awards, referral status, prize verification and payment status. A payment provider may independently collect identification and tax details; HealthStars ordinarily retains only the references and records necessary to administer payment and comply with law.
3 Apple Health, Garmin and other connections
How we treat connected health data
- With your authorization, HealthStars may access information through Apple Health, Garmin services, Connect IQ and other supported integrations, subject to each provider's permissions and terms.
- You can revoke permissions through the applicable device, app or provider settings. Revocation may prevent training or competition scoring, but does not automatically erase information already received — request deletion separately.
- Supporting a device does not mean Garmin or Apple sponsors a challenge.
Garmin data we receive
If you link your Garmin Connect account, Garmin sends us, with your permission:
- Your Garmin user ID and the access tokens that let us fetch your data. The tokens are stored on our servers and never shared.
- A notice for each new activity: its ID and start time.
- The activity file for running activities. From it we read the sport, activity name, start time, duration, distance, calories, and second-by-second heart rate and distance. We do not read GPS location from Garmin activity files.
How we use Garmin data
We use Garmin data only to provide HealthStars features to you:
- To check whether a run recorded with Garmin's own running app is a challenge workout, and if it is, to score it the same way the HealthStars watch apps do.
- To save that run as a workout in your HealthStars history, update your training goal progress and readiness score, and submit the score as a challenge attempt.
- To keep a record of each activity Garmin notified us about and why it did or did not count, so a disputed score can be traced to the run it came from.
Workouts recorded with the HealthStars Connect IQ app reach us through your phone and are not scored a second time from Garmin.
Who receives Garmin data
Garmin data, and data derived from it, is shared only with:
- Our service providers, who process it on our behalf to run HealthStars: Amazon Web Services (hosting, database and background processing) and Sentry (error monitoring, which may include fragments of data involved in an error). They are listed in section 7. They may not use it for their own purposes.
- Challenge leaderboards, Cooldown and participating clubs, which receive only the challenge score calculated from a Garmin run and the resulting rank, as described in section 5. They never receive heart-rate samples, activity files or other raw Garmin data.
We do not sell Garmin data, and we do not share it with advertisers, data brokers, insurers, sponsors or AI providers. Our Garmin API credentials are used only by HealthStars and are never shared with any third party.
Disconnecting Garmin
You can disconnect Garmin in the HealthStars app, or by removing HealthStars from the connected apps in your Garmin Connect account. Either way we delete your Garmin tokens and stop receiving new activities. Workouts already recorded stay in your history until you delete them or your account (see section 11).
4 How we use information
We use information to:
- Provide accounts, training and readiness features.
- Calculate, validate and publish authorized competition results.
- Verify eligibility and club affiliation.
- Administer and pay prizes.
- Provide technical support.
- Detect fraud and technical failures, and protect safety and service integrity.
- Improve the product using appropriately limited or aggregated analytics.
- Meet legal, tax and recordkeeping duties.
HealthStars scores and projections are fitness-related estimates, not medical diagnoses or guarantees of health outcomes. We do not use health data for behavioral advertising or sell it to sponsors, insurers or data brokers.
5 Public competition results and club access
If you enter a public challenge, expect your chosen display name, affiliated club/city, competition score, rank, advancement, and prize/winner status to appear in the app, on HealthStars.ai and in competition recaps. Public standings may be copied or retained by third parties even after an account is deleted. We do not publish raw heart-rate series, private lifestyle logs, medical information, contact details or payout account information as part of a leaderboard.
Cooldown and participating club administrators may receive the limited registration, club participation, validated score and standing information reasonably necessary to operate and promote the competition, subject to applicable arrangements and law. They do not receive unrestricted access to private participant health records. Sponsors ordinarily receive aggregated engagement and redemption reporting, not individual health records. Sponsor coupons are redeemed through a separate, voluntary mechanism.
6 Images, stories and marketing choices
Event photography or video may be captured at organized events with appropriate notice and permissions. Separate, appropriately documented consent or release will be sought where required for identifiable promotional use, testimonials, interviews or sensitive health narratives. Participation in a competition does not by itself authorize unrestricted commercial use of a person's likeness.
Marketing emails and sponsor offers are optional where required; essential service and prize communications may still be sent.
8 We do not sell your data
We do not sell personal information, including health, wearable or Garmin data, and we do not share it for advertising. Apart from the service providers in section 7, the only third parties that receive information derived from your activity are Cooldown, participating clubs and anyone who views a public leaderboard. They receive your display name, club, validated challenge score and rank, which they use to run, display and promote the competition (section 5). Sponsors receive only aggregated reporting.
9 AI transparency statement
HealthStars does not use artificial intelligence systems — such as large language models, generative AI or third-party AI services — to process your health, wearable or Garmin data. We do not send that data to any AI provider.
Scores and readiness are calculated with fixed formulas, and with a simple statistical calculation fitted only to your own entries that weighs how factors like sleep and stress relate to your workouts. That calculation is never shared between users or with anyone else.
Garmin data, and anything derived from it, is never used to train, evaluate or improve AI models.
If we ever want to use AI systems to process Garmin or other health data, we will update this statement first and ask for your explicit consent in the app before any of your data is processed. You will be able to withdraw that consent at any time from the app settings or by emailing support@healthstars.io.
10 Retention and deletion
We retain information while an account is active and as needed for the purposes described. Account deletion initiates deletion or de-identification of ordinary account and workout records, subject to reasonable backup cycles and exceptions for taxes, paid/unpaid prizes, fraud investigations, disputes, security, legal holds and applicable law.
We do not promise instantaneous deletion from every backup or from third-party copies of public standings.
11 Your rights: access, correct, delete, export and withdraw consent
Wherever you live, you can:
- Access or export your data. Email support@healthstars.io and we will send you a copy of the personal information we hold about you, including data received from Garmin, in a machine-readable format (JSON or CSV).
- Correct your data. Edit your profile and health details in the app, or email us to correct anything you cannot edit yourself.
- Delete your data. Delete your account in the app’s settings to delete your account and workout records, including those from Garmin. You can also email us to delete specific records without closing your account.
- Withdraw consent. Disconnect Garmin in the app or in Garmin Connect, revoke Apple Health access in the Health app, turn off notifications in your device settings, or unsubscribe from marketing emails. Withdrawal stops further collection immediately; to also delete what we already hold, delete your account or email us.
We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request, and may preserve records where the law requires, as described in section 10. Depending on where you live, you may also be able to limit certain uses or complain to a data protection authority.
Withdrawing wearable access during a challenge may make a result unverifiable or ineligible. You may opt out of optional marketing without losing competition eligibility.
12 Security, location and children
We use reasonable administrative, technical and organizational safeguards, but cannot guarantee absolute security. Data may be processed in the United States; any international transfers will use applicable safeguards.
Cash-prize challenges are restricted to adults age 18 or older, or a higher minimum where required. We do not knowingly permit underage cash-prize entrants.
13 Changes and contact
We will date material updates and give notice where required. Material new uses of sensitive information will be handled under applicable consent requirements; continued use alone is not a substitute where affirmative consent is legally required.
Email support@healthstars.ioHealthStars, Inc. · healthstars.io