Privacy Policy

Google Analytics 4

This site runs Google Analytics 4, measurement ID G-GLJXV6LGPC, loaded through the standard gtag.js script. It is the thing that tells me whether anybody actually read the MissingNo. article or whether I wrote 4,000 words for my cat.

What it collects: page views and the pages you moved between, an approximate location derived from your IP address (country and region level, not your doorstep), your device type, screen size, browser, operating system, referring site, and how long you stayed. It sets cookies in your browser to tell one visit apart from the next. I look at all of this as totals on a dashboard. I am not sitting here reading individual sessions, and Analytics does not hand me your name or email because it does not have them either.

Google acts as a data processor here and their handling is covered by the Google Privacy Policy. If you would rather not be counted at all, Google publishes a browser add-on that opts you out of Analytics on every site, not just mine: tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. Install it and my numbers go down by one. Honestly, that is fine, the number was never the point.

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Alongside Analytics I run Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is the privacy-first option in this stack. It uses no cookies, it does not fingerprint you, and it does not follow you to any other website. It reports aggregate numbers only, things like how many people loaded a page and roughly how fast it loaded for them.

There is nothing to opt out of here because there is nothing tied to you in the first place. It is a tally mark, and tally marks do not know who you are.

Cloudflare, the host and CDN

The whole site is served from Cloudflare's edge network. That means every request you make for a page here passes through Cloudflare's servers before it reaches anything of mine, and Cloudflare processes that request, including your IP address, in order to actually deliver the page, cache it near you, and block the usual internet nonsense (bots, floods, people poking at things they should not poke at).

Cloudflare keeps this kind of request data for security and performance reasons under their own terms, described in the Cloudflare Privacy Policy. Worth knowing: there is no home server in this picture. Nothing you send here lands on a machine in my house, by design.

Google AdSense and advertising cookies

This site carries ads through Google AdSense, publisher ID ca-pub-3251057340018716. They pay for the domain, the coffee, and the hours of ROM disassembly, and they are the reason this whole library is free to read with no paywall in front of it.

Here are the statements Google requires every AdSense publisher to make, stated plainly:

• Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites.
• Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and other sites on the internet.
• You may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings.

Third-party vendors other than Google may also serve ads here, and you can review and control a much wider list of them at myadchoices.com. Your Google-specific ad controls live at myaccount.google.com/ads, where you can see which interests Google thinks you have and turn personalization off entirely.

To be clear about what I get out of this: I see aggregate earnings and impression counts. I do not receive your browsing history, your interests, or anything that identifies you. The ad choices are yours and the controls above are the real ones.

Your browser's local storage

The tools and games in the Lab use localStorage, which is a small box of data your browser keeps on your own device. It is how the battle simulator remembers your team, how a tool remembers the last settings you picked, and how a game remembers you already beat that level.

None of it is sent anywhere. Not to me, not to Google, not to anybody. It sits on your machine, it is readable only by this site, and clearing your browser data wipes it instantly (which will also wipe your progress, so, you know, be intentional about that).

YouTube embeds

Some pages embed videos from my YouTube channel. Those embeds use the youtube-nocookie.com domain, which is YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode: it does not set tracking cookies for personalized advertising unless you actually press play. Once you hit play, you are interacting with YouTube, and Google's privacy policy governs from there.

Things this site does not do

• No accounts, no passwords, no logins.
• No newsletter and no email capture.
• No purchases, no payments, no card data. Nothing here is for sale.
• No selling, renting, or trading of personal information to anyone, ever.
• No sharing of data beyond the processors named above (Google, Cloudflare) doing the jobs described above.
• No contact form. If you want to reach me you email me directly, which means you decide what I know.

If you are in the EU or the UK (GDPR)

Under the GDPR and the UK GDPR you have rights over your personal data, and the two legal bases I rely on are these. Legitimate interest covers the basics of running a website: serving you the page you asked for, keeping it secure, and understanding at an aggregate level which articles people find useful. Consent covers advertising and analytics cookies, which is why visitors in those regions are asked before those cookies are set, and why a "no thanks" is respected rather than nagged at.

Your rights include the right of access (ask what is held about you), the right to erasure (ask for it to be deleted), the right to object to processing, the right to rectification, and the right to restrict processing. In practice I hold almost nothing that could identify you, so most requests resolve to "there is nothing here with your name on it," but you are entitled to ask and I will answer honestly and within a month. Email cattriviagames@gmail.com. For data held by Google or Cloudflare rather than by me, their own policies linked above describe how to make a request directly to them, which is faster than routing it through me.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority if you think something here is being handled badly. I would appreciate an email first so I can fix it, but that right is yours regardless.

If you are in California (CCPA and CPRA)

I do not sell your personal information. I have never sold it, there is no arrangement under which I would, and there is no "Do Not Sell" toggle here because there is nothing to toggle off.

California residents have the right to know what categories of personal information are collected, the right to request deletion, the right to correct inaccurate information, and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising any of those rights. The categories collected here are the ones described above: internet activity such as page views, and inferred approximate location from an IP address, all of it through the third-party services named. To make a request, email cattriviagames@gmail.com.

Children

This site is not directed at children under 13, and I do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. There is no signup here, no profile to fill in, and no field anywhere that asks a visitor for personal details, which removes most of the ways a site would collect that information in the first place.

If you are a parent or guardian and you believe a child has somehow provided personal information through this site, email me at cattriviagames@gmail.com and I will delete whatever there is to delete. I write about a game from 1996 that a lot of us met as kids, so I take this one seriously.

Changes to this policy

If the tools on this site change, this page changes with them, and the new version gets posted right here with an updated effective date at the top. I am not going to email you about it (no list, remember), so the date line is the honest signal. Material changes will be described plainly rather than buried in a paragraph of legalese.

Questions

Privacy questions, data requests, or "hey, this section is out of date" corrections all go to the same place: cattriviagames@gmail.com. A real person reads it. More on how to reach me is on the contact page, and the rules for using the writing and tools here are on the terms of use page.