Privacy Policy

1. What we collect

• When you sign up: your avatar name, email address, password and date of birth, and a record that you accepted our Terms of Service and this policy (which version, and when). We store the password only as a salted hash, never in readable form. A date of birth is required. See Your date of birth below.
• In your profile (optional): real first and last name, postal address, country, display name, and whether you want offline messages sent to your email.
• When you use the grid: your inventory and the content you create, the regions you own or visit, when you log in and out, your last location, and records of grid currency and land transactions. Your viewer software also sends technical details when it connects, such as its name and version.
• When you pay: what you bought, the amount, and the reference Stripe gives us. Stripe handles your card details. We never receive or store them.
• When you contact us: the email address, avatar name and message you send through the contact form or a support ticket.
• When you join our email news list (the “Get Wolf Grid news and updates” form on our home page): your email address, your name if you give it, that you ticked the box to agree, the wording you agreed to and when, your IP address and the page you signed up on. The list is run by IntelligentWolf Ltd on its own IntelligentWolf platform at intelligentwolf.com. We send one email asking you to confirm. If you do not confirm within 7 days, your details are deleted. Once you confirm, you are added to our contacts for Wolf Territories news. Every email we send has an unsubscribe link, and you can also ask us through the contact page. If you unsubscribe, we keep your address only on a do-not-email list, so we never email you again by mistake.
• When you report something: see Reports, moderation and the National Crime Agency below.
• When you use our AI features (WolfNPC characters, AI adventures, WolfAvatars and AI building tools): the text, prompts and pictures involved, and what an AI character notes about you so it can talk to you again. You can ask a character to “forget me”.
• When you make a copyright complaint: your name, email, postal address, your complaint and the PDF evidence you attach. We email these to our legal team and do not store the PDF on the website. We may share the complaint with the owner of the content so they can respond.
• When you visit the website: your IP address, browser type and the pages you request, which our servers record in standard logs.

Other residents can see your avatar name, your profile and anything you do in public areas. That is how a shared virtual world works.

2. How we use it

Under UK data protection law, we need a lawful basis for each use:

• To provide the service (contract): to run your account, deliver your land and purchases, reset your password, and forward offline messages if you ask us to.
• To keep the grid safe (legitimate interests and legal obligation): to enforce our Terms of Service, investigate reports, prevent fraud and abuse, and apply age restrictions. This includes the child-avatar rules.
• To improve the website and show adverts (consent): through analytics and advertising cookies, only if you choose “Accept all” in our cookie banner.
• To send you Wolf Territories news (consent): only if you join our email news list and confirm. You can withdraw your consent at any time with the unsubscribe link.
• To keep records (legal obligation): payment and accounting records.

We do not sell your personal data. We do not send marketing emails unless you have asked for them, for example by joining our email news list.

Keeping robots off our forms

• What happens: on the sign-up, contact, password-reset and “send my sign-up link again” forms, your browser quietly works out a small sum before the form is sent (a “proof of work” check called ALTCHA, which we run on our own server). It needs no puzzle or picture, sets no cookies, and sends nothing to anyone else. The forms also have a hidden box that only robots fill in, and refuse a form sent faster than a person could fill it in.
• What we keep: to limit how many times a form can be sent in an hour, we keep the form’s name, the time, and a scrambled (hashed) code made from the email address or avatar name you typed and from your internet (IP) address. The code cannot be turned back into the address. We delete it after 24 hours. We also keep a scrambled code for each completed check for up to 2 hours, so the same check cannot be used twice.
• Why: our legitimate interest in stopping automated sign-ups and spam, which are often sent using other people’s email addresses.
• We also refuse sign-ups from throwaway (disposable) email services, checked against a list on our own server. The sign-up form also uses Google reCAPTCHA (see section 3).

Your date of birth

• Why: to check you are 15 or over, to keep under-18s out of Adult regions, and to switch on the under-18 safety settings.
• Lawful basis: legal obligation (our duties under the Online Safety Act 2023 to protect children), and our legitimate interest in keeping the grid safe and enforcing our minimum age.
• What we store: only the date. You give it once, at sign-up, on the date of birth page, or in the Date of Birth window that WolfStorm opens when you log in without one (WolfViewer gets the same window in its next release; other viewers show a link to the page). The viewer sends the date straight to our website over an encrypted connection, with your login session so we know it is you; nothing else is sent or kept. To correct it, raise a support ticket.
• Who sees it: you, in your profile, and a small number of our staff who run accounts. It is never shown to other residents. Our region servers are told only which accounts are under 18 and the day each one turns 18, not the date of birth.
• How long: while your account exists. If you are refused at sign-up for being 14 or under, we keep nothing about you except a scrambled (hashed) code for your browser and internet address, for 24 hours, so the form cannot simply be tried again with a different date. A sign-up that is never confirmed is deleted after about a week. If an account is closed because it belongs to someone aged 14 or under, we keep the date and a record of the closure so the account is not reopened.

Safety settings for under-18 accounts

When an account’s date of birth shows it is under 18, our servers use that to limit who can contact it privately (messages, items, teleport offers and private calls only from friends), to stop it buying from or paying objects that belong to strangers, to stop strangers sending it WT$, to keep it out of Adult and Adult Content regions, and to limit it to General and Moderate places when it logs in. Gifts and payments from strangers’ objects, and group invitations from strangers, are also blocked. To do all this, they check whether the person contacting it, or the owner of the object, is a friend. When something is refused, our servers may note the two accounts involved and the time, at most once every 10 minutes, to help us investigate problems. The lawful basis is legal obligation (the Online Safety Act 2023) and legitimate interests. The full list of protections is on our Online Safety page.

Reports, moderation and the National Crime Agency

• What a report holds: when you use Report Abuse in-world, we receive your avatar name, the category and description you chose, the region, the position and time, details of the avatar or object you reported (its name, owner and creator) and, if you include one, your screenshot. A report made by ticket holds what you write in it.
• Who sees it: only our staff. Screenshots are kept away from the public website, only staff can open them, and every time one is opened it is logged. We do not tell the person you reported who reported them.
• Moderation records: when we take action on an account or on content (for example a warning, removal, suspension or ban), we record what we did, why, who did it, and any police or National Crime Agency reference.
• Lawful basis: legal obligation (our duties under the Online Safety Act 2023 to deal with illegal content and to run reporting and complaints procedures) and our legitimate interest in keeping the grid safe and enforcing our terms.
• The National Crime Agency: UK law (the Online Safety Act 2023, section 66) requires us to report child sexual exploitation and abuse content that we find on the grid to the National Crime Agency. A report includes the content and details of the accounts involved. The lawful basis is legal obligation. We also pass information to the police when the law requires it or someone is in danger.
• How long: see section 5.

Age checks for Adult Content regions

• What happens: to enter Adult Content regions, you can choose to take an age check on Verify my age. It is done by Stripe Identity, which checks a photo ID against a live selfie. It is free for you: we pay Stripe for each check. You can start at most 3 checks in 30 days.
• What Stripe sees: your ID and your selfie. Stripe acts for us as a processor and, for some purposes such as fraud prevention, as a controller under Stripe’s privacy policy. Once the result is decided, we ask Stripe to delete (redact) the check’s details.
• What we keep: only that your account passed as 18 or over, how it was checked, the date and time, and Stripe’s reference for the check (in case of a dispute), plus a short record of each check you start and its result. We never keep your ID, your selfie, your name or the details on your ID. We read the date of birth on the check only to see whether you are 18 or over, and do not keep it.
• If the check shows you are under 18, you are not verified and our staff are told, so they can review the date of birth on your account.
• Who sees it: our region servers are told which accounts have passed, so they can let them in. Whether you have passed is never shown to other residents. Our staff can remove a passed check, for example if an account is shared or sold, and they must record why.
• Lawful basis: consent (taking the check is your choice) and our legal obligation under the Online Safety Act 2023 to keep children away from pornographic content.
• How long: your passed check is kept while your account exists, unless our staff remove it. We keep a short record of each age check you start and its result for 3 years. The check itself is deleted 30 days after you start it, once Stripe has deleted its copy.

Adult items. We keep a list of which items are marked as adult items, and who marked them, when and why, so our servers can let only age-checked adults use them.

3. Who we share it with

We share only what each service needs to work:

• Stripe processes card payments for land, Wolf Credits and the Adult Content charge, and runs the age check for Adult Content regions (Stripe Identity, see above).
• Google provides reCAPTCHA on the signup form (spam protection), Google Analytics (visitor statistics), Google AdSense (advertising), Google Translate (the page translation widget) and Google Fonts.
• Google Gemini answers questions you ask our in-world AI assistant, and powers some AI characters. The text involved is sent to Google to generate the reply.
• Anthropic (Claude) powers AI characters, AI adventures and other AI features. The text and prompts involved are sent to Anthropic to generate the reply.
• Meshy makes 3D models for WolfAvatars and AI adventures from the description or picture you give.
• The National Crime Agency, for reports of child sexual exploitation and abuse, as UK law requires (see above).
• Content delivery networks (Cloudflare cdnjs, jsDelivr, jQuery, Tailwind) serve some of the scripts and styles the website uses. When your browser downloads them, these providers see your IP address.
• Police and authorities, when the law requires it, or when we believe someone, especially a child, is at risk.

Some of these providers are based outside the UK. Where data leaves the UK, it is protected by the safeguards UK law requires, such as adequacy regulations or standard contractual clauses.

4. Cookies

• Session cookie (essential): keeps you logged in to the control panel. It is deleted when you close your browser or log out.
• Google Analytics cookies: count visits and show which pages are used.
• Google AdSense cookies: serve and measure adverts, and may personalise them.
• reCAPTCHA and Google Translate may set their own cookies when you use them.

Google Analytics and AdSense do not load until you choose “Accept all” in our cookie banner. We remember your choice for 180 days in a cookie called wt_consent. You can change it at any time with Cookie settings at the bottom of every page. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings. The site works without analytics and advertising cookies, but you need the session cookie to log in. You can also opt out of personalised Google adverts in Google’s ad settings.

5. How long we keep it

• We keep account and profile data while your account exists. When you ask us to close your account, we delete your personal details. We keep only what we need for the records below, or to enforce a ban.
• We keep payment and accounting records for six years, as UK tax law requires.
• We keep server logs only as long as we need them for security and troubleshooting.
• Form protection codes: the scrambled rate-limit codes for 24 hours, and the used-check codes for up to 2 hours (see Keeping robots off our forms).
• Abuse reports and their screenshots: we currently keep reports about child safety or possibly illegal content for 5 years after the ticket is closed, and other reports for 1 year after it is closed. An unfinished screenshot upload is deleted after 1 hour.
• Moderation records: we currently keep them for 5 years. The latest record on an account that is still disabled is kept for as long as it stays disabled, so the ban can be enforced.
• We keep records of serious safety breaches, including breaches of the child-avatar rules, for as long as needed to keep banned users off the grid and to help the authorities.

6. Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
• have inaccurate data corrected (you can update most of it yourself in your profile);
• have your data deleted, subject to the records we must keep;
• object to or restrict how we use it, and withdraw consent at any time;
• receive your data in a portable format.

To use any of these rights, contact us through the contact page. We will reply within one month. If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

7. Young users

The grid is not for anyone aged 14 or under, and we do not knowingly collect data from them. If someone gives a date of birth showing they are 14 or under when signing up, we refuse the sign-up and do not keep their details. If you believe someone aged 14 or under has an account, tell us and we will remove it.

Residents aged 15 to 17 are welcome. We use their date of birth only to protect them, as described in Safety settings for under-18 accounts, and we never use it for advertising. Using a child avatar is a different matter: residents may use child avatars, as set out in our Terms of Service.

8. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. The effective date at the top of this page shows when it last changed. If we make significant changes, we will tell you on the website.