Advertising: Adsterra
Adsterra (Adsterra Ltd, adsterra.com). Purpose: display advertising that pays for the guide. Two units belong to Adsterra website 6131528 (echoweaver.org, category Social): a Native Banner, dashboards unit 31793051, shown in the page body of guide pages, and a Social Bar, dashboard unit 31793052, a floating bar anchored to the bottom of the window. Both are served from bicea.org, the delivery host Adsterra issued for this account; scripts and creatives are requested from that host and from the creative hosts it redirects to.
Storage: in our check on 18 October 2026 the delivery host set a first identifier named pip_… (32 hex characters, one day) on bicea.org, and each creative host may set its own cookies or read its own identifiers once a creative is served; those names and lifetimes belong to Adsterra and its demand partners, not to us. We set nothing on your device for advertising. Legal basis: your consent, given by Accept and withdrawable through Cookie settings. "Show adult ads" is switched off for this website in the Adsterra dashboard, so no adult creatives are requested for it.
Personalized advertising: Adsterra and its partners may use the page topic and coarse device or region data to pick a creative. To opt out of interest-based advertising across sites, use https://optout.aboutads.info/ or https://optout.networkadvertising.org/, and in the EU, UK or Switzerland https://www.youronlinechoices.com/. Adsterra's own policy is at https://adsterra.com/privacy-policy/. Withdrawing consent here stops new ad requests from this site immediately.
The floating Social Bar is bound by our own layout, not the vendor's: whatever Adsterra anchors to the window is clamped to the viewport width (max-width 100vw, border-box, overflow hidden), the document reserves room at the bottom so the bar cannot cover the footer, and the Hide ad bar switch in the footer stores that choice under ew_adbar_hidden so the bar stays away on later visits instead of only until the next refresh.
Analytics and session replay
Google Analytics 4 (Google Ireland Limited, google-analytics.com and googletagmanager.com). Purpose: count page views and see which guides are read, so the pages can be fixed. Storage, first party on echoweaver.org: _ga (about 13 months) and a per-stream _ga_… session cookie (about 13 months), both written only after Accept. Legal basis: consent; before it, the tag runs with the denied defaults above and stores nothing. Opt out of Google measurement with the Google Analytics opt-out add-on or by refusing here. Google's ads settings page covers personalized ads on Google services: https://adssettings.google.com/.
Microsoft Clarity (Microsoft Corporation, clarity.ms). Purpose: heatmaps and anonymized session recordings, so a confusing page can be seen rather than guessed at. Storage, in our check on 18 October 2026: MUID on .clarity.ms (about 13 months set by Microsoft), and Clarity may also write _clck and _clsk on this domain; retention is Microsoft's. It loads only after Accept, and Reject or Cookie settings calls clarity("consent", false) so a running recording stops. Microsoft's privacy statement covers the rest: https://privacy.microsoft.com/privacystatement.
Storage keys this site writes
ew_consent, in localStorage (not a cookie). Value: a choice of granted or denied plus an expiry. Retention: 180 days, then the banner returns. Purpose: remember your Cookie settings decision. Legal basis: your selection, or a Global Privacy Control signal, which we store as denied without asking again. The older custom value from the embeds-only banner is no longer accepted, so those visitors are asked once more now that analytics and advertising exist.
ew_adbar_hidden, in localStorage (not a cookie). Value: 1 when you hid the Adsterra Social Bar. Retention: until you press Show ad bar, which removes the key. Purpose: keep the floating bar closed on later visits. Nothing else is stored on your device by our own code; Cookie settings in the footer deletes ew_consent and reopens the banner.
Global Privacy Control (navigator.globalPrivacyControl) and Do Not Track are treated as refusals: with either one set, nothing beyond the denied GA4 defaults loads, the Accept button is disabled, and embeds still wait for a click. Cookie settings reopens the banner and replaces the stored choice.
Optional embeds, after a click
YouTube (Google). Purpose: play the Thinky Games Showcase trailer. Hosts: www.youtube.com and i.ytimg.com. Loaded only after you press the play button. YouTube may set its own cookies, such as VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE and YSC, and may use local storage on its domain. Retention is Google's. Legal basis: your click, which is consent for that embed. Opt out of personalized ads on Google at https://adssettings.google.com/ and via https://myadcenter.google.com/.
Steam store widget (Valve). Purpose: show the official store panel for app 2184080 on the where-to-play page. Host: store.steampowered.com. Loaded only after you press the load button. Valve may set cookies such as steamLoginSecure or sessionid if you are signed in, and browserid. Retention is Valve's. Legal basis: your click.
Rights, complaints, and changes
You can ask for access, correction, or deletion of a message you sent us, and you can object to processing based on legitimate interest. Email contact@echoweaver.org. We reply to that mailbox. For advertising and analytics data, the controllers are the providers named above; the industry opt-out pages and the two opt-out links in this policy reach them, and we will forward a request if you send it here. You may lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.
The operator is the Echo Weaver Guide desk, contact@echoweaver.org. Game support is a different company: support@akuparagames.com. Changes to this policy are posted on this page with a new check date. The current date is 18 October 2026, the day the ad units and the consent gate were added and re-read against the build.
