Ghosthold / cookies & privacy

A little clarity.

Cookies and local storage

Public browsing does not require a login cookie. When the owner signs in, the essential ghosthold_editor cookie keeps the editor session open for up to eight hours. It is sent only over HTTPS in production, is unavailable to page scripts, and uses SameSite Strict protection. Signing out removes it.

Your browser’s local storage remembers when you dismiss the information banner (ghosthold-storage-notice). The owner editor can also temporarily remember an unfinished upload’s file reference and title (ghosthold-pending-upload); this is removed when its library entry is saved. Neither entry is used for advertising or visitor identification. You can clear them through your browser’s site-data settings.

Visit statistics

We use Vercel Web Analytics on the public production site to understand aggregate visits, popular pages, referring sites, approximate visitor location, and browser/device categories. Vercel Analytics uses no analytics cookies. Its request-derived visitor hash resets after 24 hours.

The editor and API routes are excluded from page analytics. We remove query strings and fragments from reported page URLs and do not send form contents, email addresses, editor passwords, or custom events to analytics. Local development and preview deployments do not run analytics. The site has no advertising scripts.

See Vercel’s analytics privacy information ↗ for provider details.

Playtest invitations

The optional playtest form records your email address, signup time and the version of the invitation consent you accepted. Records are stored in the owner’s PostgreSQL database on Vipy and used for Ghosthold playtest invitations. Signing up does not create a player account, reserve a release copy or guarantee an invitation.

To limit repeated submissions, the application temporarily stores a keyed hash of your network address and an attempt count. It does not store your raw network address in its signup tables. Old rate-limit entries are removed on subsequent successful signup processing after one day. Hosting providers may separately process connection logs.

Playtest gameplay telemetry has separate in-game choices and a separate notice. Signing up on this website does not enable gameplay telemetry. If a signup cannot be stored, the form reports an error instead of confirming registration.