Sea Pals is a small app: an island that is you, your friends next door, and new people from across the world by bottle. This page says what we keep about you, why, who sees it, who helps us keep it, and how to get it back or have it deleted. We try to keep only what the app needs.
Who we are
Sea Pals is run by Baseline Forge Inc., a company in Ontario, Canada (“we”). We decide how your data is used and are its controller. Our privacy officer is responsible for this policy and for how we follow it, and you can reach them at hello@seapals.app; a person reads it.
What we collect
- Your sign-in: Apple, Google or your email address, handled by Clerk. We keep an ID for it and a scrambled fingerprint of it so that bans and age limits still hold if someone signs up again.
- Your birth date. It decides which sea you are in. Other people see your age, never your birth date.
- Your gender (woman, man or non-binary) and who you would like to meet (women, men or everyone).
- Your name, your otter, what you love, your language, your city and its time zone. If you let the app use your location once, it only picks a nearby city and rounds it; we don’t keep an exact place.
- A profile picture, if you add one.
- What you write and send: letters, bottles, chat messages, notes, book pages, and the photos and voice notes you choose to share.
- Voice notes you record and send: the recording, its length and the shape of its sound wave, which the chat shows. The app uses your microphone only while you record, and a recording leaves your device only when you send it.
- Your friends, blocks, mutes and reports.
- Ideas and feedback you send us: your words, a screenshot if you add one, and the app version, build, operating system, phone model and language that go with them.
- A random ID for each phone or browser you sign in on (never a hardware ID), with its push tokens or browser push subscription, used to send you notifications and update your widgets. When you sign in with the phone app, we also keep a scrambled (hashed) fingerprint of that phone’s ID, so that an account we banned can’t come back on the same phone.
- Technical details: your app’s platform, version and build, sent when the app checks in, and, if you sign in with Apple, the token Apple gives us so we can end that sign-in when you delete your account.
- Whether you are online, when you were last seen, when you are typing and whether you have read a message. Only friends see these, and only while you both have them switched on.
- Your IP address. Our hosting and sign-in providers see it whenever the app or this site talks to them and keep it briefly in their logs. We don’t keep it with your account. To stop the site’s tools being misused, we keep a scrambled (salted and hashed) form of a visitor’s address for up to 7 days.
- Where you sign in from, worked out from your IP address: the country and the kind of network (for example home, mobile, a privacy relay, a VPN, a data centre or Tor) and, for a VPN, a data centre or Tor, the network’s name. We don’t keep the address or a city from it. Also your phone’s time zone and region setting and, on Android, your SIM card’s country (never your number).
- When you sign up with the phone app: your App Store country on iPhone, or whether the app came from Google Play on Android. We use them only when a new account is made and don’t keep them; if a sign-up is turned away, we note only why.
- Scam signals: when a message in a chat with someone you met by letter matches our scam rules, which rules matched, a short extract of the message around the match, and a score. Signals about an account’s device, network, location and activity can add to the score, with a short note.
- A few events about how the app is used (which screens open, whether a send worked), and crash reports. They hold no letters or messages. We also keep counts of how our safety checks work, with no person attached.
- If you use the site’s tools without an account (such as a friendship quiz, or a page a friend asked you to fill in for their book): the name and answers you type.
Why we use it
To make your island, bring letters and friends to you, show the right weather and time, keep everyone safe, and fix what breaks.
The birth date you give decides which sea you are in. If a report makes us doubt that you are an adult, you stay out of the adult sea while a person checks. Your gender and who you would like to meet decide which new people can reach you and whom you can reach; the choice works both ways. We read the ideas and feedback you send to improve the app. We check what strangers send each other against a rules filter inside our own servers, and for a time after two people meet by letter our servers also check their chat for money requests and other signs of a scam. Chats with friends you added by code or link, and group chats, are not checked this way. We use where you sign in from, your device and your activity to protect Sea Pals from fake and scam accounts and to check that Sea Pals is open where you sign up. We also use data to enforce our terms, to keep the records we need to defend Sea Pals and the people on it against legal claims, and to obey the law. We never sell your data, and we never sell reach, visibility or bottles. There are no ads.
Legal bases
- To run the app for you (your island, letters, friends and chats): to carry out our contract with you.
- For safety, including the rules filter, the scam checks, the checks on new accounts and the device, network and location signals, and to count how the app is used: our legitimate interests, and those of everyone on Sea Pals, in stopping fraud and abuse, which we weigh against your rights. You can object by writing to us.
- To keep records we need to establish, exercise or defend legal claims: our legitimate interests.
- For optional things such as your location and notifications: your consent. You can turn them off at any time.
- When the law requires it, for example to answer a valid legal request or to report child abuse material: legal obligation.
Automatic checks and decisions
Some safety steps happen automatically, so harm can be stopped before a person has time to look. A person can review each of them:
- The rules filter can stop a message from someone new that contains contact details, a link or payment details. You see a note and can change the message. The stopped message is kept so a person can check the decision.
- Our scam checks score messages in chats between people who met by letter. Signals about an account’s device, network, location and activity can add to the score. A high score sends the case to our team. In clear cases on new accounts, the account can be suspended before a person looks; a person then reviews it.
- A report that someone seems to be in the wrong sea for their age can pause that person’s sea while a person checks.
- Reports from several different people can bring a warning, or limit who can find someone until a person looks.
- We can refuse a new account because of where the sign-up comes from, how the app was installed, or a device linked to an account we banned.
You can appeal from the notice in the app, or write to hello@seapals.app, to give your side, contest the decision and have a person decide again.
Who sees what
- Friends see what you put on your island and profile.
- New people you meet by letter, for as long as that meeting is live, can open your island. They see your name, age, gender mark, country and a large city if you live in one, a rounded distance (“nearby” under 100 km), your otter, the languages you write in, your interests and your profile picture, unless they turned off pictures from new people.
- They never see your birth date, your exact location, whether you are online or your username.
- Nobody sees who you would like to meet.
- Ideas and feedback are read only by our team.
- Our reviewers see what is reported to them and the scam signals above, to decide a case.
By the birth dates they give, teens and adults never see each other as new people.
Sending data abroad
The app’s data is stored in the United Kingdom, our team works from Canada, and some of the services we use are in the United States or worldwide, so your data may be handled outside the country where you live, including outside the EU, the UK, Korea and Japan. The EU recognises the United Kingdom, and the EU and the UK recognise Canada, as protecting personal data adequately. For other transfers we rely on safeguards the law accepts, such as standard contractual clauses or the Data Privacy Framework, or the equivalent where you live. Data handled in another country is subject to its laws, and its courts, police and other authorities may be able to reach it. Write to us if you want to know more.
Ages and teens
The minimum age is 13 in most countries, 16 in Australia and 14 in South Korea. The country of your city decides which minimum applies.
If you are 13 to 17, you are in the teen sea and meet only other teens. We keep the same things about you as for an adult, for the same reasons, but your settings start very private: new people never see your birth date, exact place, online status or username, and photos need your yes, which starts off. There are no ads, we never profile teens for ads, and we never sell their data. A parent or guardian can write to hello@seapals.app to ask to see, correct or delete a teen’s island.
If we learn that someone is younger than the minimum age, we close the account and delete its data, keeping only what we need to stop it signing up again. Parents can tell us at hello@seapals.app. When you turn 18, you move to the adult sea.
How long we keep it
- While your island exists, we keep what the app needs to show it.
- Letters at sea are deleted 90 days after their trip comes home, unless a friendship began from one.
- Scam signals are deleted after 90 days, or sooner once a person has decided the case. Ideas and feedback are deleted 30 days after we have dealt with them.
- Messages the rules filter stopped are deleted once a person has looked at them, or after 30 days, unless a case about the sender is still open or the law requires us to keep them.
- For the place signals, we keep only the country, kind of network and SIM country of your latest sign-in; they are replaced when they change and deleted when your account is closed.
- Reports are deleted once a case is decided, unless we must keep them for the law, an investigation or a legal claim; even then, for no longer than 2 years unless the law requires it. A report of sexual content involving someone under 18 is kept for that reason.
- A short record of each decision about an account (what was decided, when, and whether it was automatic, never the words or notes) is kept for 365 days, or 5 years for a ban, even after the account is deleted, so we can explain or defend it.
- The scrambled form of a web visitor’s IP address is deleted after 7 days.
- When you delete your island, it disappears from everyone at once. After 7 days the account is closed, and its data, letters, ideas and feedback included, is erased within 90 days. Memories a friend chose to keep stay in their book, without your words, name and place unless you said yes to sharing them.
- For safety, sign-in fingerprints (hashed) stay after that, for as long as a block, ban or age limit needs them and, for a ban, at least 5 years. They are why blocks, bans and age limits still hold if someone signs up again.
- Phone fingerprints are deleted with the rest of your account, except for a phone that an account we banned signed in on: that fingerprint stays for as long as the ban does.
Keeping it safe
We take reasonable steps to protect your data. It travels over encrypted connections, only the people who need it to run Sea Pals or keep it safe can reach it, and the app removes location data from photos before sending them. No service can promise perfect security. If a breach puts you at risk, we will tell you and the authorities, as the law requires.
Your choices
You can look at, correct and download what we hold (Settings, then Download my data; it includes your ideas and feedback notes and says whether a screenshot was attached). You can turn privacy switches off, change your city, change your gender now and then (there is a wait between changes), and withdraw your consent by deleting your account. Depending on where you live, you may also ask us to restrict how we use your data, object to it, or give it to you in a form you can take elsewhere. If you are under 18, your parent or guardian can ask for the same. If you can’t do something in the app, write to us; we answer within 30 days and may first check that it is you.
You can complain to your data authority: in Canada the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, in the EU or the UK your local one.
If you live in California or another US state with a privacy law, you can ask to know, correct and delete what we hold, and to opt out of its sale, its sharing for cross-context advertising, and targeted advertising. We do none of those, and we won’t treat you differently for using your rights.
Deleting your island
In the app: Settings, then Delete my account. On the web: the delete page on this site, which works without the app. Your account hides straight away and you have 7 days to change your mind by signing in again. After that it is closed and its data is erased, as described above.
Changes
We may update this policy. The date at the top shows the latest version. If we change it in a way that matters, we will say so in the app before it takes effect.
Contact
Baseline Forge Inc. runs Sea Pals. Write to our privacy officer at hello@seapals.app; a person reads it.