Data Retention Schedule

Last updated: April 2026

This schedule lists every category of personal data held by Tethered, how long it is kept and what happens to it afterwards. Retention periods are enforced automatically by the game engine unless otherwise noted.

Data category	Retention period	Deletion method	Notes
In-game notifications	90 days	Automatic — purged each game tick	Notifications older than 90 days are deleted regardless of read status.
Direct messages	1 year	Automatic — purged each game tick	Both sent and received messages are deleted after 365 days.
System chat (forum posts)	Lifetime of the game	Manual — admin or account deletion	Posts are anonymised (author shown as "Deleted User") if the author deletes their account.
Battle reports	Lifetime of the game	Manual — admin only	Battle records are kept to preserve game history. Attacker and defender IDs remain but the associated username may be anonymised.
Account profile (username, planet name)	Until account deletion	On request — via account settings	On deletion the username is replaced with "Deleted User [id]" and planet ownership is removed. The account row itself is retained in anonymised form.
Password hash	Until account deletion	On request — via account settings	Cleared (set to empty string) when the account is deleted.
TOTP secret	Until MFA is disabled or account is deleted	On request — via account settings	Cleared on account deletion. Replaced when MFA is re-enrolled.
Authentication tokens (JWT)	24 hours (or 90 days with "Remember me")	Automatic — token expiry enforced by the server	Tokens are not stored server-side; expiry is embedded in the token itself.
Scan logs	Lifetime of the game	Manual — admin only	Records the most recent scan of each planet by each scanner.
Reverse proxy access logs (IP addresses)	30 days	Automatic — configured at infrastructure level	IP addresses are not linked to in-game accounts in the application database.

Requesting early deletion or export

You can delete your account or download a copy of your data at any time from the Account settings page. For data categories that are not covered by self-service tools (e.g. battle reports, scan logs), contact a game administrator via the in-game direct message system.