Privacy policy

Who we are

buildchristmas.com is an independent guide to the Steam game Build Christmas. Contact: [email protected].

What loads, and when

On a first visit the site loads these third parties without waiting for a click. The cookie banner is there to tell you and to let you withdraw; it is not a gate.

• Google Analytics 4 (gtag.js from googletagmanager.com, reporting to google-analytics.com). Purpose: count page views and understand which guide pages are useful. Cookies: _ga and _ga_<container>, kept for up to 2 years. Event retention follows the property's Google Analytics settings; this page does not assert an unverified property retention period. The script loads by default and Reject disables subsequent requests.
• Microsoft Clarity (clarity.ms, project zcwh14mykn). Purpose: heatmaps and pseudonymous session recordings that show where the guide is hard to use. Cookies: _clck (about 1 year), _clsk (about 1 day) and, where Microsoft already knows the browser, MUID (about 13 months). Ordinary recordings are retained for 30 days; labeled or favorited sessions and heatmap data are retained for 9 months under Microsoft’s published schedule. Clarity applies its masking rules to recording content. Microsoft also documents the provider-controlled third-party cookies CLID, ANONCHK, MR and SM. Clarity loads by default and Reject disables subsequent requests.
• Adsterra (publisher 3403020, site 6196646; Native Banner unit 32247848 and Social Bar unit 32247849, served from bicea.org and its creative CDNs). Purpose: show the ads that keep the guide free. Adsterra and its demand partners set their own cookies and similar identifiers for frequency capping, measurement and fraud prevention; those cookies are named and controlled by the network, not by this site. Adult ads are switched off for this site. Ads load by default and Reject disables subsequent requests.
• YouTube (youtube-nocookie.com). The trailer player is not requested until you press Watch or Play, because the page shows a still image first. YouTube may then set its own cookies and read your IP address to play the video you asked for.

Pages, fonts and images are served from this site. Links to Steam and to YouTube watch pages are ordinary links; they do not load anything until you follow them. There is no Google AdSense, no other ad network, no other analytics tag and no other session-replay tool on the site.

Your choice: on by default, Reject turns it off

The banner appears on your first visit and explains that Google Analytics 4, Microsoft Clarity and Adsterra are already loading. Accept keeps them on. Reject turns them off for this browser and stores that decision for 180 days; after 180 days the record expires and the site returns to the default-on state. You can reopen the banner at any time with Cookie settings in the footer and change the choice.

If your browser sends Global Privacy Control (GPC) or Do Not Track (DNT), the site records a rejection and does not load the analytics, recording or advertising scripts. There is no pre-ticked consent box and no consent wall: you can read every page without accepting anything.

Rejecting does not break the guide, the wiki or the trailer. It only stops the three scripts above from being loaded on later visits, and asking them to stop on the current page.

Cookies and local storage on this device

• bc_consent (local storage, this site): records your choice, accept or reject, with a ts timestamp. Retention: 180 days. Purpose: remember your banner choice. Legal basis: consent for the stored preference; it is strictly necessary to honour your choice.
• bc_adbar_closed (local storage, this site): records that you closed the floating Adsterra Social Bar, with a ts timestamp. Retention: 180 days. Purpose: keep the floating bar closed across reloads instead of showing it again on the next page. Legal basis: consent for the stored preference.
• _ga, _ga_<container> (Google Analytics 4): distinguish browsers and sessions, up to 2 years.
• _clck, _clsk, MUID (Microsoft Clarity): keep a Clarity user id and session id, roughly 1 year, 1 day and 13 months respectively.
• Adsterra and its partners set cookies and similar identifiers on their own domains for ad delivery, frequency capping and fraud prevention. Their names and lifetimes are set by the network and can change; they are not written by this site's own code.

You can delete or block these cookies and storage entries in your browser at any time. Blocking the site's local storage means the banner cannot remember a rejection and will ask again on the next visit.

Advertising, personalisation and opt-outs

Adsterra may serve contextual or personalised advertising and may share cookie identifiers with its demand partners. You can opt out of personalised advertising from the industry pages below; opting out does not remove ads, it makes them less relevant.

• Google Ads Settings — personalised ads from Google.
• Digital Advertising Alliance opt-out — US industry opt-out.
• Your Online Choices — European industry opt-out.
• Adsterra privacy policy — how Adsterra handles ad data.
• Microsoft privacy statement — Clarity and Microsoft identifiers.

We do not sell personal data and we do not run our own profiles of individual readers.

How long data is kept

Your banner and floating-bar choices stay in this browser for 180 days. Google Analytics 4 event retention follows the property settings; no property-specific retention period is asserted here. Clarity ordinary recordings are retained for 30 days; labeled or favorited sessions and heatmaps are retained for 9 months. Adsterra keeps ad-delivery data under its own policy. Emails you send us are kept only as long as needed to answer you.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you can ask for access, correction, deletion or a copy of information you sent us by email, and you can object to or restrict that correspondence. Email [email protected]. You can also complain to your local data-protection authority.

Changes

When this policy changes, the date on this page changes with it. If a new third party is added, it is named here before it is loaded.