Personal identifiable information is only stored while you are logged in to multiplayer sessions. Generally speaking, pretty much everything is logged during those multiplayer sessions (for details, see below), and even though this data is kept in a database separate from the account database, there are ways to link this data with your account data and thus with your physical world identity.

There are two main reasons for this extensive logging.

1. Gameplay: Traces of Illumination has a memory, which will last through the following games (Pill Cruncher and Raising a Middleworld to its Golden Age). In other words, there are some features planned in which you can actively access previous play-sessions, chats, pretty much everything you have experienced while playing this game in multiplayer mode. And there are also some features planned, in which your avatar might spontanuously "remember" situations you have experienced while playing any of those games (for now, Traces of Illumination). The data is also used for various ranking and high score lists. Finally, by logging who you play and communicate with, the game can support managing your in-game contacts (if you've ever forgot adding someone to your friends-list in another game, or forgot why you have added someone to your friends list, you know why this feature was implemented ;-) ).
2. Quality-Assurance / Legal: There are several aspects to this. First of all, certain bugs appear only under certain cirumstances. By having all game sessions logged, it may in many cases be much easier to reproduce a situation in which a particular bug occured, which makes it much easier to fix the bug, which improves the quality of the game. This includes programming bugs, but also bugs concerning level design. Certain bugs also can be used to create cheats that could harm the game experience of other players. By logging the game sessions, any cheats that are distributed to the network can be uncovered and the bugs used for such cheats can be fixed. And finally, when players complain about other players, the logfiles can and will be used to find out what really was going on and to take appropriate action due to players harassing other players.

For us, as service-provider this means that we are responsible for protecting your data from being stolen and misused. We do the best we can, but as any internet security expert will tell you: There are no guarantees in internet security.

For you, as a player, this means that it is your responsibility to use the system in an appropriate manner. You should not use the communication systems of these games to communicate private or intimate information, just as you should not communicate private or intimate information through unencrypted internet mail messages, any other unencrypted internet communications media or postal postcards sent without an envelope. It also means that you should read and understand the Terms of Service [PENDING], and abide by the rules stated there.

If you wish to have your data deleted, this is possible but it means that you will lose all your accomplishments within the game. While the data is kept even if you cancel your subscription but keep your account (which makes it possible to come back whenever you wish), once the data is deleted, there is no way to recover the data. In order to keep data integrity intact, you play sessions will not be deleted but instead will linked to an anonymous user. After deletion it is no longer possible to find out that you were the one playing that session, but the actual actions will be kept so that the other players involved in such a session don't lose the session as a whole.

PENDING: List in detail the exact data that is being logged.