Message in a Bottle privacy policy
The short version
Message in a Bottle stores the messages you dictate, so they can drift to other players, and an irreversible scrambled identifier so the skill can tell writers apart without knowing who anyone is. We never ask for or store your name, email address, or location. Other players hear only your message and — if you chose one — your vague tag. We do not sell your data, the skill has no ads, and it currently offers no purchases.
What the skill stores
Message in a Bottle is a shared shore: bottles written by one player are read by others. To run it, the skill stores:
- The messages you dictate — the text of the bottles you toss and the replies you send, word for word as Alexa transcribed them. A bottle stays in the pool so other players can find it; a reply is kept until it is delivered to its writer.
- Your optional tag — if you choose to tag a bottle, the vague place you named yourself (a coast, a province, a country). You choose it; the skill never works out where you are.
- A hashed identifier — your Alexa identifier, scrambled with a one-way hash before it is stored. It cannot be turned back into your account or identity. The skill uses it only so your bottles, replies, and daily counts stay yours, and so moderation can act on a writer’s messages without ever knowing who the writer is.
- Your daily counters — how many bottles you have opened, replies you have sent, and bottles you have tossed today, so the daily limits (20 opens, 5 replies, 3 tosses) can be kept.
- Moderation records — whether a message passed or was refused by the automatic filter and why, reports made by other players about a bottle, the keeper’s decisions (approve, decline, delete), and any strikes a writer carries. These exist to keep the shore safe, and they are tied to the hashed identifier, never to a name.
- Session state — where you left off mid-conversation, such as a bottle you have open or a message being read back to you.
This data is stored in Amazon’s cloud services as part of how Alexa skills operate.
What the skill does not collect
- We do not ask for or store your real name, email address, phone number, payment details, or location. The skill requests no device address or location permission of any kind.
- The skill does not record or store your voice. (See “Your voice and Amazon Alexa” below.)
- We do not use analytics or advertising trackers in the skill.
- Please keep it that way: do not put personal information — yours or anyone else’s — inside a message. The automatic filter refuses messages containing things like phone numbers, emails, addresses, and links before they are stored, and the keeper declines them.
Your voice and Amazon Alexa
When you play, Alexa hears your commands and turns them into text the skill can act on. Voice recordings and their handling are managed by Amazon under Amazon’s own Alexa privacy settings and policies, which you control in the Alexa app — including reviewing and deleting your voice recordings. Earshot Worlds does not receive or store your voice recordings.
Sharing — your words, and nothing else
This skill is different from our games, and we want to be plain about it: sharing your message is the service. When you toss a bottle, its text — and your tag, if you added one — will be read aloud to other players who find it. That is all they ever receive. No player, and not even the keeper, is ever told who wrote a bottle; there is no name or identity attached to share.
The keeper — a human moderator — reads waiting bottles and replies in order to approve or decline them, and reads reported bottles to rule on them. That moderation reading is the only human reading your messages receive.
Beyond the bottle pool itself, we do not sell your data, and we do not share your messages or any personal information with third parties for marketing or any other purpose.
Retention and deletion
- Messages the automatic filter refuses are not delivered to anyone; anything declined by the keeper is deleted and never floats.
- An approved bottle stays in the pool while the skill operates, until it retires, is reported and deleted, or you ask us to remove your messages.
- The keeper can delete a single bottle or reply, or all of a writer’s content at once — for example, everything from a writer whose bottles are repeatedly reported. Content from writers who are barred from the shore is removed.
- Moderation records (reports, strikes, decisions) are kept only as long as they are needed to keep the shore safe and to act on repeat problems.
- By email: to have all of your messages and stored data deleted, write to privacy@earshotworlds.com and ask us to delete your Message in a Bottle data. We will confirm when it is done.
Disabling the skill in the Alexa app stops the skill from accessing your stored data.
Ads and purchases
Message in a Bottle contains no advertising. It currently offers no in-skill purchases. If that ever changes, this policy will be updated before purchases are offered.
Children
Message in a Bottle is a space for anonymous messages between strangers and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted at this address with a new effective date, and material changes will be reflected in the skill’s store listing.
Contact
Questions about this policy or your data: privacy@earshotworlds.com. General contact: earshotworlds.com/contact.