Topic

In-game Chat and Privacy Policy Questions

Got around to reading the Privacy Policy today. It is pretty conventional and all well and good.

http://beta.glitch.com/privacy/

It stresses that nearly all of the information collected is "non-identifiable", which is very good.

It doesn't specifically mention Chat or IM though, which leads me to a couple of questions...

Does Tiny Speck keep logs of IM conversations? if so, are those logs personally identifiable? For how long are they visible, by whom and under what circumstances?

Does Tiny Speck keep personally identifiable records of who a player has and has not spoken with via IM? The presence of the "Chatterbox" achievement [http://beta.glitch.com/achievements/chatterbox/] would appear to indicate that this is the case.

More generally, does Tiny Speck have any *internal* policies on access to personally identifiable information? For example, I assume that Tiny Speck keeps records of which IP we log on from, session length, passwords, in game locations visited, private group memberships, private group forum contents and so on. Are Tiny Speck staff allowed to access this information at will, or only under specific circumstances?

Tiny speck has a right to keep any and all of the information listed above. It is their service and their server and their decision with what they want to do with the information that accrues on it, excepting certain legal obligations. That said, i believe it is in both their interest and the interest of their customers to have an open understanding of how things operate, so as not to establish unfounded assumptions about how private our on-site activity actually is.

Posted 15 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • .... *le sigh, post deleted*
    Posted 15 months ago by Innie✿, Obviously Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Actually, I've been wondering the same things, just for information's sake. Great questions, striatic!
    Posted 15 months ago by RM Subscriber! | Permalink
  • thank you RM.

    i sorta hate making forum posts of this nature because it may be pretty complicated for TS to publicly lay out policies, even if only generally. i do want a response, but it is the sort of thing that doesn't lend itself to quick responses, and discussion of the situation without hearing the response is just speculation.
    Posted 15 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Chat & IM
    We keep logs of almost everything everyone ever does or has happen to them in the game, including chat & IM (from buffs ticking to auction sales; from any verb on any items to changing locations). The last 1,000 items in a given player's log are accessible to staff members with sufficient permission in our admin system (typically accessed to help with support questions or debugging).

    There may or may not be chat/IM history in those logs (depending how much time a player spends chatting and how much other stuff they are doing). We do not currently log staff access to player logs, but are planning to add that to ensure compliance with our "only access logs when necessary to do your job" policy — accessing logs inappropriately or to spy on a player or generally be creepy is grounds for termination.

    The historical logs are archived and used for data mining (to answer questions like "how often does a player change locations by the time they get to level 10?" or "what's the median amount of XP gained during a play session?" or "what single action produces the most currents overall?" as well as detecting exploits and bugs). Some members of the engineering team have access to the historical logs (but it is already a massive dataset and not stored in a way that makes it easy to browse). We may in the future build a way to retrieve individual players' complete histories for use in investigating abuse cases.

    Soon we'll be adding a "report abuse" link in the game client which will, depending on the context, save a copy of IM and/or chat conversations which are currently available to the player doing the reporting, to be included in the report. (At the same time, we'll be adding the ability for you to copy the contents of a chat/IM pane to your clipboard.) These conversations will be stored separately from the logs I mentioned above and available to those members of the abuse & support teams who have sufficient permission.

    Everything Else
    "… I assume that Tiny Speck keeps records of which IP we log on from, session length, passwords, in game locations visited, private group memberships, private group forum contents and so on. Are Tiny Speck staff allowed to access this information at will, or only under specific circumstances?"

    We keep records of all those things except for passwords (we only store a one-way hash of passwords). Some of those things are available to any staff member with sufficient permissions in the admin tool (session times, IP address, group memberships, locations visited) and others (private group forum contents) are only available to some of the engineers.
    Posted 15 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • thank you for the detailed reply. that was awesome.

    regarding Chat and IM logs, this is how i understand what you wrote - please correct me if i am incorrect:

    everything you say and do on glitch is recorded in perpetuity on the glitch servers, but there will be internal policies and tools monitoring and preventing staff access to these conversations inappropriately.

    correct?

    do the historical logs just record how often and to whom we converse without the text of the actual conversations? or is the text of the conversations also preserved in perpetuity?

    i'm a still a little unclear on what happens to IM conversations after they are pushed off the 1000 most recent actions list. other than that, i think you've answered all of my questions more than adequately.

    if Tiny Speck is archiving IM conversations in their entirety for data mining purposes, i am personally okay with that. i do think that this information should be conveyed in the Privacy Policy, along with a general description of the safeguards taken to ensure that recorded communications are not accessed inappropriately.
    Posted 15 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 striatic on your latest (again, same thoughts I had...) and thanks, stoot, for detailed response! 
    Posted 15 months ago by RM Subscriber! | Permalink
  • striatic, yes this is correct: "everything you say and do on glitch is recorded in perpetuity on the glitch servers, but there will be internal policies and tools monitoring and preventing staff access to these conversations inappropriately."The historical logs contain the actual contents, not just who was talking to who. I'm not sure if we'll store them forever or not (it is a LOT of data). If we do keep them, we might scrub them but I think many people would like to have access to their own history and it's useful for analysis. So, we'll see.And, point noted re the privacy policy.
    Posted 15 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It would be nice to get my old conversations with people. Maybe six months of data (tops). Give people the option of downloading their history before you delete it, then delete it. That IS a lot of data though, and it's only going to get worse when you go public.
    Posted 15 months ago by Fokian Fool Subscriber! | Permalink
  • translate it all into text speak, that'll save space!
    Posted 15 months ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Text speak?
    Posted 15 months ago by Fokian Fool Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Don't you mean: txt spk?
    Posted 15 months ago by Laurali Subscriber! | Permalink