Privacy note

What we never ask for

• Your name, your email address or a password. There is no sign-up.
• Your camera. It looks like a video call, and it is not one.
• Your boss’s real identity. A boss is a cartoon with a first name, one initial and a nickname. Photos and full names are not accepted.

What we keep

Your first visit creates an anonymous account: a random number that means nothing outside this game. Against it we keep:

• Your employee ID, a nickname we made up for you, such as “Cubicle Gremlin #2259”, and which cartoon you picked as its photo.
• The bosses you built: a first name, an initial, a nickname and how the cartoon looks.
• Your scores, totals, trophies, daily results and streak. These are numbers. None of them contains anything you said.
• How many days you have turned up, your paydays and paid time off, and what you have collected: which of the game’s own crimes, endings, pieces of mail and flair you have, and which pranks you bought with your points. These are labels from lists we wrote. None of them is anything you said.
• For each call: when it was, how long it lasted, the score, how it ended, what kind of boss it was, and how many lines and throws you used. Numbers and labels, never the words.
• The leagues you joined.
• Any result you chose to pin to your wall, which includes the one line you picked as your best.
• A line you chose to show your league after a daily offense. It goes through the same filter as a pinned line, only your league-mates can see it, and it is deleted after 30 days.
• What you have bought: a plan, a list of packs, and the reference numbers the payment company gave us.
• A scrambled copy of your recovery link’s key, if you made one. We cannot turn it back into the link.
• If what you paid for was ever moved to a new account at your request: which two accounts, when, and a scrambled copy of the code we sent you. No address.
• How many times every browser has been signed out of your account. A number and nothing else. It is how an old sign-in is told from a current one.

What we count, about nobody in particular

To work out which bosses and lines to write more of, we keep running totals across all players: how often each of the game’s ready-made lines is picked, each bonus is landed and each thing is thrown. They are counts of our own wording, tied to no account, and nothing you typed or said is in them. We also count how often a request was turned away for coming too fast, by which part of the game and why. That count names no account and holds no network address.

What we do not keep

• Audio. Your voice is turned into text as you speak and the sound is never stored by us.
• A transcript. Each line is scored and then gone. We do not save it and we do not write it into our logs.
• The only exceptions are a best line you choose to pin, and a line you choose to show your league, as above.
• Your calendar. The reminder is a file you add to your own calendar yourself. We never see it.

What stays in your browser

• One cookie that says which anonymous account is yours. It cannot be read by scripts on the page.
• A copy of your bosses, scores and settings, so the game opens quickly. It also holds your sound and color choices, which never leave your device.
• There are no advertising cookies, no trackers and no analytics.

The companies that help run the game

Four outside companies do jobs we cannot do ourselves. None of them is told who you are.

• An AI model scores each line. Our server sends it the words of the line, the kind of boss, the boss’s mood and, for the daily offense, the day’s offense. It is not sent your name, your employee ID or your IP address. Its maker (TypeSafe) says it does not train its AI on what it is sent. It does not publish how long it keeps it.
• A speech-to-text service (Deepgram) turns your voice into words, if you use the microphone. Your browser sends the sound to it directly, so, like any website you connect to, it can see your IP address. It is told nothing else about you. We have switched off its use of your audio to improve its own products, and it says that audio handled this way is kept only for as long as it takes to process.
• A payment company (Stripe) takes payments, if you ever pay. You type your card and email on Stripe’s own page, not ours, and Stripe may be the seller on your receipt. Stripe knows who paid. Our game’s own records hold only that a particular anonymous account paid. Stripe keeps its own records of payments, your email among them, as the law requires of it, and whoever runs the game can look a payment up there, as any shop can.
• A hosting company and a database company store and serve the game for us. The database holds what is listed under “What we keep”, and nothing else. The host, like the host of any website, sees the IP address each request comes from and keeps its own record of requests (the address, the page asked for and the time) for a limited time. Nothing you type or say is in that record.

Counting, so the free game stays free

• Free voice is 3 minutes a day. To stop that being reset by clearing the browser, we also count it against a scrambled mark made from your network address and browser type. The mark changes every day, cannot be turned back into an address, and is deleted after two days.
• To stop floods of requests, the server holds a scrambled copy of the address a request came from, in memory only and never saved: for a few minutes, or for up to a day where there is a daily ceiling (new accounts, lines judged and opening the microphone). For the same reason it counts, per account, how many lines were judged, calls started and times the microphone was opened, in the last few minutes and today. They are numbers only. A minute’s count is cleared a few minutes later and a day’s count the next day, as the game runs, and all of them go at once if you delete your account.

Your recovery link

Because we do not know who you are, we cannot look you up. A recovery link, made in Settings, is how your account follows you to another device. Anyone who has the link can open the account, so keep it private. Making a new one cancels the old one. A browser that is already in stays in until you press “Sign out everywhere else” in Settings, which signs out every browser but the one you are using.

We never open an account for anyone who has lost the link, whatever they tell us. An email address can show who paid for something. It cannot show whose account it is, and an account holds private things.

What we can do, if you have paid and lost your link, is move what you paid for to the new account you are playing on. You write to us from the email address you paid with and tell us your new employee ID. We send a code to the address the payment company has for that payment, and when you send it back, we move your subscription and packs. Your old progress stays with the old account. We do not keep the address afterward. The old account is shown a notice in the game saying its purchases were moved, and when.

Deleting everything

Settings has a “Delete my account” button. It removes the account and everything listed under “What we keep”, stops any subscription, and cannot be undone. Payment records held by the payment company stay with it.

What we cannot protect you from

• Your employer’s IT can see which websites a work laptop or the office network visits. Play on your own device.
• Anyone looking at your screen. Sound is off until you turn it on.
• What you choose to share. A result you copy or post is yours to answer for. A challenge link shows whoever opens it the cartoon boss, your score and your employee ID.

Adults only

Off Mute is for people aged 18 and over. It is not aimed at children, and we do not knowingly keep anything about a child.

Changes and questions

If what the game collects ever changes, this note changes first, and the date at the top with it.

Contact

Write to support@offmutegame.com. We do not use your address for anything but answering you.