Playcard gamesThere are no cookies
Not one of ours, anywhere on the site. There are no ads, no analytics, no tag manager and no tracking pixels. Open your browser's developer tools on a page of rules, on the catalogue or at a table and the cookie list is empty. There is one page where another company's code runs at all — the sign-in page — and what that keeps sits under Google's domains rather than under ours. The section below says exactly what it is.
What the site cannot work without
These stay whichever answer you give, because without them the site cannot do the thing you came for. All of them live in your browser's own storage, none of them is sent to us, and clearing your browsing data removes them.
playcard.theme- Light or dark, or following your device. Read before the first pixel is drawn, which is what stops a page loading in the wrong palette and then flipping.
playcard.language- The language you picked, so that the next page you open is in it.
playcard.room- The code of the table you are sitting at, so that the way back to a game in progress is still there after you wander off to check a rule.
playcard.score- The score sheet you are filling in — the names you typed, the points and the colours. It is yours, it stays in this browser, and none of it reaches us.
playcard.cookieConsent- Which of the two answers you gave. Without it you would be asked again on every visit, which is the one outcome nobody wants.
What is only there to make it quicker
Two caches, and the only entries the buttons below reach. Accepted, a list can draw on what your last visit saw while the fresh copy arrives. Refused, they are deleted and never written again, and the lists simply wait for the network instead — a moment longer, and nothing else about the site changes.
playcard.favorites:<id>- A copy of the games you have starred, one entry per account signed in on this browser. The real list is on your account; this is only so that the stars are already filled in when a page opens.
playcard.favoriteCounts- How many people have favourited each game, as one snapshot of the whole catalogue. Public numbers, the same for every reader, kept so that a list of a hundred games does not wait on a read before it can show them.
playcard.favoriteCounts.known- The handful of those counts this browser has seen more recently than the snapshot was built — which is what stops a game you just starred from showing yesterday's number.
If you sign in
Two more appear, both created by Google's Firebase code rather than by ours, and both in your browser's IndexedDB rather than in a cookie. Signing in itself happens on Google's, Facebook's or Apple's own pages, under their own privacy policies.
firebaseLocalStorageDb- Your session: the token that keeps you signed in across reloads, and the anonymous identity a guest at a table is given instead of one. It is also the reason the site knows who you are before you have typed anything.
firebase-heartbeat-database- Firebase's own record of which days its code ran here, which it sends to Google alongside its requests. It is part of the SDK rather than something we ask for, and it holds a date and a version number — no identifier, and nothing about you.
Who else is on the page
On an ordinary page, nobody. Every script, stylesheet, font and image is served from this domain, so reading a rule or playing a hand contacts no other host at all. Signing in is the exception, and the only one: that page loads Google's own code from apis.google.com and opens a hidden frame on playcards-790e7.firebaseapp.com, which is what lets the sign-in window open without your browser blocking it first. That frame is Google's — whatever it stores sits under Google's domains and Google's privacy policy, and this site cannot read it. It is loaded on the sign-in page and when you delete your account from the profile page, and nowhere else. Firebase's own servers are reached when you sign in, join a table, or open a page that reads the catalogue's favourite counts — never in order to draw the page itself.
Your answer
The same choice the strip along the bottom offered, and you can change it here whenever you like. It governs the two caches above and nothing else: everything under the first two headings stays either way, and refusing deletes what is already there.
Checking it yourself
You do not have to take our word for any of this. Everything on this page is visible under Storage — or Application — in your browser's developer tools, and clearing this site's data in your browser settings removes all of it, including your answer above. Delete your account from the profile page and the copy of your favourites goes with it.
Changes
If what the site keeps changes, this list changes with it, and so does the date at the top.
Contact
Anything here that does not match what you find in your own browser, or any question about it: playcardgames-support@googlegroups.com.