Privacy Policy

Who we are

The Dog Watch is a trading name of Christchurch Web Solutions Ltd, a company registered in England & Wales under number 10977032, with its registered office at Unit 6, 6 Silver Business Park, Airfield Way, Christchurch, BH23 3TA. We are the data controller for any personal data you provide.

What we collect

• Account details — the captain name you choose, your email address (if you provide one), and the bcrypt hash of your password. We never see your password in plaintext.
• Game state — every action you take in the world (ships, voyages, cargoes, letters, contracts, chat messages, endorsements, friendships, notifications). This is the game itself; without it the Service would not work.
• Session data — a single httpOnly cookie (dogwatch_session) carrying a signed token that identifies you to the server. It lasts seven days.
• Last-seen timestamp— when you load a page we record the time so other captains can see whether you’re currently on watch.
• Server logs — standard web request logs (IP address, user agent, URL, timestamp) kept by our hosting providers for operational and security purposes.

What other captains can see

The Service is a multiplayer game. By design, the following are visible to other captains:

• Your captain name, faction, home port, and reputation tier.
• The ships you own and their public state (location, class, sail status).
• Your house membership and rank, where applicable.
• Anything you post in port chat, house chat, market offers or contracts.
• Your online status (a green dot if you’ve loaded a page in the last 5 minutes).

Your email address is never shown to other captains. Letters between captains are private — only the sender and the recipient can read them.

Cookies

We use one cookie, the session cookie described above. It is required for the Service to work; without it we cannot tell who is signed in. We do not use cookies for analytics or advertising.

Third parties

We host the Service on a private cloud server in Germany operated by Hetzner Online GmbH. We use DeepSeek (operated by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd.) for the in-game NPC dialogue. When you ask an NPC a question, the question text is sent to DeepSeek along with non-identifying game-state context; we do not send your account identifier or email.

How long we keep your data

We keep your account and game-state data while your account is active. If you ask us to delete your account, we will remove your captain record and personal data within 30 days. Some traces may remain in backups for up to a further 90 days, after which they are overwritten.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• Know what personal data we hold about you, and ask for a copy.
• Have inaccurate personal data corrected.
• Ask us to delete your account and personal data.
• Object to processing, or restrict it.
• Lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk).

To exercise any of these rights, email mark@christchurchwebsolutions.co.uk.

Security

We take reasonable technical measures to protect your data, including hashed passwords, TLS for all traffic, and per-player row-level security at the database. No system is perfect; please report any vulnerability to the contact address above.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The “last updated” date at the top of this page tells you when. Material changes will be announced on the Service’s landing page.