LayGen Inc. runs Drift. Running the app, keeping accounts secure and moderating what people send all take information about you, and this Policy sets out what we hold, what we do with it, and what you can decide.
Effective 16 August 2026We never need to show your real name, your email address or your sign-in identity to anyone who meets you in the Ocean.
The country you pick routes bottles and produces the broad labels you see, at country, region or continent level. We don't publish your live location to other users.
If a Discover or regional-water feature ever needs device location, we'll ask for the device permission first, tell you what it's for, and take only the precision that feature needs.
We log what happens to a bottle as it moves, so we hold releases, deliveries, openings, replies, gift transfers and return status.
We keep safety and moderation records too, which means reports, enforcement decisions and the signals we use to spot spam and abuse. We also collect the technical and diagnostic information the app needs to run, to protect accounts, to chase down crashes and to catch misuse.
They see what you deliberately release, the broad origin you set, and the non-identifying journey or gift history that Drift builds into the experience.
We don't show them your email address, your sign-in account, a precise location or your real identity. What you type is another matter. Anything you write inside a bottle can point back to you, so leave out details that would identify you or someone else.
Vendors process data on our behalf for hosting, authentication, payments, analytics, attribution, crash reporting, moderation, security and support. They only get what their role needs, under contract terms and legal protections that keep it that way.
We'll also hand over information where the law requires it, to protect someone from serious harm, to investigate fraud or abuse, to enforce our Terms, or as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets. Applicable law governs all of it.
Sign in with Google, or pay through Apple or Google, and that company handles your information under its own privacy terms rather than ours. We only receive what the sign-in or purchase flow passes to us.
Drift doesn't show ads. Nothing you write, send or receive is used to target advertising at you.
We do advertise Drift on Google, Facebook and similar platforms. Finding out whether those campaigns bring anyone in means sharing limited information with those platforms and with the attribution provider that measures installs for us. That covers things like a device or advertising identifier and events such as installing the app or creating an account. Bottle and reply content is never part of it, and we don't upload customer lists to advertising platforms or build matched or lookalike audiences.
Some privacy laws treat measurement like this as sharing personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising. We honour the ad-tracking controls on your device, and where the law requires consent first, we ask before any of it starts.
We don't sell personal information.
If we ever start showing ads inside Drift, we'll update this Policy and put the required consent or opt-out controls in place before that begins.
We keep information for as long as we reasonably need it to run Drift, finish bottle journeys, hold your account history together, resolve reports, keep the service secure and meet legal obligations. Different information has different retention periods.
Once we don't need it, we delete it or strip out what identifies you. Some backup, fraud-prevention, moderation and legal records stay longer, where the law permits or requires that.
You can ask us to delete your Drift account and the personal information attached to it, through the deletion path in the app. We remove or de-identify it, unless we reasonably need to keep something for security, a dispute, legal compliance or another lawful purpose.
A bottle may already have been delivered, opened, reported, or folded into another user's legitimate transaction history. Those traces don't vanish from every operational and safety system the moment you press delete.
Depending on where you live, you may be able to ask for access to your information, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to certain processing, or get a portable copy. You can also complain to a data-protection authority. Contact us and we'll handle the rights that apply to you.
Bottles are built to cross borders, so your information may be processed in a country other than the one you live in. Where transfers like that require safeguards, we use them.
We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect information. No online service can promise perfect security. Don't put anything in a bottle that would cause you serious harm if the wrong person read it.
Drift is for people aged 18 and over. If we learn that an ineligible minor has created an account, we may restrict or delete the account and the information attached to it.
We'll update this Policy as Drift changes. Where the law requires it, we'll tell you about material changes in the app or through another appropriate notice before they take effect.