Drift is run by LayGen Inc. These Terms cover everything you do here: the Ocean, bottles, replies, reactions, Discover, Drops and gifts. Making an account means you accept them.
Effective 16 August 2026You need to be 18 or older. Give us your real date of birth. If the law where you live doesn't let you agree to Terms like these, don't use Drift.
You sign in through an identity provider such as Google. Keeping that sign-in secure is on you, and so is whatever happens through your Drift account.
Other people in the Ocean never see who you are. Drift does. We keep account identifiers and other information we need to run, secure and moderate the service, and the Privacy Policy sets out what that covers.
You release a message as a bottle and it goes to someone you don't know, sometimes in another country. Where it lands isn't up to you, unless Drift says otherwise.
Journey times, distances, shore labels and activity cues aren't always literal. We simulate, delay, round or blur them, partly to keep people's locations private and partly because a bottle that arrives instantly stops being a bottle.
What you write stays yours. You give Drift a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, transmit, display, moderate and otherwise process it, only as far as we need to in order to run, protect and improve Drift.
Bottles travel, so a message may already be delivered and read before you delete it or before we take it down. Closing your account doesn't pull back what has already washed up. We keep limited records where we need them for safety, fraud prevention, disputes or the law.
Don't:
The Community Guidelines are part of these Terms. We filter, limit, hide, review, remove and preserve content to enforce them and to protect people.
If a bottle or an account makes you feel unsafe, report it or block it. We read reports. Depending on what we find, we may limit distribution, remove content, restrict features, suspend or terminate an account, or preserve information for safety reasons or a law-enforcement request.
None of that is a guarantee. Moderation catches a lot and misses some, and some people will break the rules before we get to them.
Drops are a balance you spend inside Drift and nowhere else. Unless we say otherwise, they have no cash value, can't be turned back into money, and aren't a bank account, a stored-value account or a cryptocurrency.
Gifts can be passed on. Once you attach one to a bottle or a reply and release it, treat the transfer as permanent. Where we practically can, the app shows you the cost or the effect before you confirm.
If you bought through the App Store or Google Play, the store's payment and refund rules apply alongside ours. We can change what's in the catalogue, what it costs, and whether it stays available, within the limits of the law and those store rules.
The Drift name, the visual design, the software, the bottle artwork, the sounds and the rest of the service materials belong to LayGen Inc. or are licensed to us. Using Drift gives you no ownership of any of it.
Features will change. Some will pause, move, be limited to certain countries or devices, or disappear. We don't promise that a bottle reaches anyone, that a reply comes back, or that the Ocean stays up.
You can stop using Drift whenever you like, and you can delete your account permanently from the account controls in the app.
We can suspend or terminate access to enforce these Terms, protect users or Drift, stop fraud and abuse, comply with the law, or deal with serious or repeated violations.
Drift is provided "as is" and "as available", to the extent the law allows. Bottles come from other users, not from us, and we don't endorse or verify the advice, claims or personal statements inside them.
Nothing here removes rights you have that can't legally be taken away in your country.
To the maximum extent the law allows, LayGen Inc. is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive losses arising from your use of the service, lost digital items, content you can't reach, what other users do, or events outside our reasonable control. Any liability that applicable consumer law says we can't exclude stays with us.
We'll update these Terms as Drift changes. When an update materially affects your rights, we'll give you reasonable notice in the app or another way that reaches you. If you keep using Drift after the new Terms take effect, you accept them, where the law allows that.