Privacy

What you say in the bar, who can read it, and how you can tell. In short: whispers between people, and a bolted room's talk, are sealed in your browser and opened only in theirs. Everything else is said out loud, in a bar.

Out loud

A line said out loud is public, as in any bar. Everyone in the room sees it. The Discord channel sees it too, if the room has a window there, and Harry hears it when he's on. So does automoderation, if the house has it on (the house's own eyes). The server passes it on and doesn't keep it, apart from the last half-minute of balloons for someone just walking in.

Whispers

Whisper to a person and it's sealed. Your browser encrypts it before it leaves, and only their browser can open it. The server in between carries it as bytes it can't read, and keeps nothing. The label by your input box shows 🔒.

Some whispers can't be sealed, and they're marked 🔓:

• To Harry, or a puppet he's speaking for. Harry is a program the house runs, and he has to read a whisper to answer it. It goes to the model provider that answers for him, and into the room's audit log, which barkeeps can read.
• To or from a browser too old to seal. A current Chrome, Safari or Firefox can. An older one says so when you come in, and its whispers go through the server in the clear.

A whisper is never posted to Discord, never rated, and never kept by the server. Your own browser keeps the ones you were part of in its transcript, so a reload doesn't lose the evening. That copy stays on your machine.

A bolted room

/bolt (or the padlock on your room's door) makes a room private. While it's bolted:

• nobody new comes in, except a barkeep, who is announced;
• the Discord window is shuttered, and nothing said inside reaches the channel;
• the room list shows the room and how many are in it, but not who;
• and everything said is sealed between the people inside, the same way a whisper is. The house can't read it, Harry waits outside, and automoderation doesn't rate it. Sealed lines are in italics, in the balloons and the transcript.

The room's key is made in one of your browsers when the bolt goes across, and handed to each person's browser, locked to that browser. A barkeep who walks in gets it and reads from that moment on, but not what was said before. When anyone leaves, the room gets a new key, so they can't read what's said after they've gone. Drawing the bolt back, or the last person leaving, throws the key away. Nothing is stored.

You can still whisper inside a bolted room. It's sealed to the one person, as anywhere else, so the rest of the room doesn't see it. You can whisper to Harry too, if you really want him; that one goes to the house in the clear, marked 🔓, like any whisper to him.

What a bolted room gives up: Harry can't hear it, so no drinks, no 8-ball, no games. The house's blocked-word list can't be applied either, since the house can't read the words. Your own word list still works, because it runs in your browser.

What the house still knows

Sealing hides the words, not the fact of talking. The server knows who whispered to whom and when, and who is in a bolted room. It also knows everything it always knew: your name, your look, where you stand.

Safety numbers

Your browser gets each person's key from the server. If the server had been tampered with, it could slip in a key of its own and read along. You can rule that out yourself:

• Choose Safety numbers on someone's menu. It shows theirs and yours, each eight groups of four digits.
• Read them to each other somewhere other than the bar, such as a Discord message or a phone call. If they match, nobody is in between. Press They match and your browser remembers; their whisper label shows 🔒✓ from then on.
• If someone's key ever changes after you've whispered with them, your browser says so in the transcript, in plain words. Usually it's a new browser or device; if they haven't changed anything, take it seriously.

Each browser has its own keys and its own number, so your phone and your laptop differ. A private window keeps its keys only until it closes.

What sealing can't do

Your browser runs the code the bar's server gives it. An operator who changed that code could make it send your words somewhere before sealing them, and no lock drawn by that same code could tell you. Sealing protects you from the server's disk, logs, backups and anyone reading them later. It doesn't protect you from a bar that is running altered software. A way to check a bar against the published code is planned. Until then, you are trusting the people who run the bar.