Privacy & cookies

Your choices

Optional visitor counts stay off until you accept them. Google advertising is currently disabled site-wide. Choose Reject all to browse without them. Closing the cookie notice does not count as acceptance. Change your choice at any time through Cookie settings in the footer. We also respect Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track signals.

When Google's advertising consent message is available, its Manage options and Do not consent choices let you control Google's purposes and partners. Use Ad privacy options in the footer to reopen that message. Rejecting optional cookies on this site also stops its advertising requests.

Accounts and essential storage

The online indicator counts signed-in accounts active within the last 90 seconds, once per account. Guests do not contribute to this count. It uses account activity rather than visitor-count cookies.

Account information, your profile, posts, messages and support tickets are used to provide community features. Sign-in is handled through Firebase Authentication and the sign-in provider you choose. For LF username sign-in, we privately link your account to its Firebase-verified email address. Your password is passed securely to Firebase for verification and is never stored by this site. The email link is removed with your account. Essential cookies and browser storage keep sign-in working and remember preferences such as language and appearance.

Your cookie choice is remembered for 180 days. Account information remains associated with your account while you use these services. Account settings include a Delete account option. Private support tickets are available to you and the community team.

Saved archive files

When you save a database record, we store its identifier and whether you marked it as read with your account. These choices sync across devices, remain private to your account, and are removed when you delete your account. Discovery submissions are public forum posts and follow the community retention rules.

Optional visitor counts

With your permission, we estimate unique visitors from a keyed hash of the network IP address and a broad device category (operating system and phone, tablet or desktop). Browser names and browser cookies are not part of this identifier. Raw IP addresses are not saved in the visitor database. Cloudflare provides the approximate country. We store the hashed identifier, first-seen country, timestamps and page counts. This is an estimate: similar devices on a shared network may merge, and changing networks may count again. Historical browser-based totals remain separate. Detailed daily records are retained for 93 days. Lifetime visitor records and total counts are retained without an automatic expiry. Google Analytics collection is currently disabled.

Rejecting optional cookies stops new optional visitor tracking and remembers your opt-out for up to one year.

Community launch waitlist

If you select Notify me on the homepage, we store your email, consent and signup time in our private publisher inbox for one community launch notification. Your email is not displayed publicly or used to create an account. Waitlist entries are retained in a private archive until you request deletion or the owner deletes them. Entries older than 90 days move to Archive when the inbox is opened. To withdraw your signup or request earlier deletion, use the privacy contact form with the email you signed up with. We use short-term hashed email and daily IP-derived keys to prevent spam.

Contact messages

The public contact form stores your name, email, topic, page URL, message and submission time in a private publisher inbox. We use these details to review and respond to your request. Messages are excluded from indexing and visible only to the authenticated site owner. Messages are retained until you request deletion or the owner deletes them. Messages older than 90 days move to Archive when the inbox is opened; hosting backups may persist under the provider’s retention terms. Hashed email and daily IP-derived keys enforce short-term anti-spam limits; expired keys are cleaned on subsequent submissions. Request earlier deletion through the same form and quote your receipt.

Google advertising

Current status: advertising is disabled. No AdSense library or ad requests are loaded, including on login, account, contact, empty and error pages. Enabling ads requires a separate deployment with a verified Google-certified consent platform. The ordinary cookie banner is only for this site’s optional visitor counts and is not an advertising CMP.

When advertising is available, Google AdSense and its advertising partners may receive information such as your IP address, browser information and the page being viewed. Advertising cookies and device identifiers may be used to deliver ads, measure their performance and prevent fraud.

Google and other advertising vendors can use cookies to show ads based on earlier visits to this and other websites. No ads are currently requested. Before any future activation, this notice and consent controls must reflect the selected advertising configuration. Non-personalized ads may still use storage for measurement and fraud prevention.

Google's consent message identifies the participating partners and their purposes. You can also manage personalized advertising through Google My Ad Center. Read how Google uses information from partner websites and Google's Privacy Policy for its data practices and retention.

External services and questions

Hosting and sign-in services process the information needed to deliver and secure the site. Links to Rockstar Games and other websites lead to services with their own privacy policies. External websites handle their own services.

For questions about your account or privacy, contact the publisher through our public form. The contact form does not require signing in. You can manage your profile and account deletion in account settings.