Last updated: 29 August 2026
This policy covers what The Riff Repeater collects, who receives it, and how to have it removed.
Who we are
The site address is https://theriffrepeater.com. The site is run by Elliott Rudner and maintained by LucidByte Labs.
Comments
Leaving a comment stores the comment text, the name and email address you enter, your IP address and your browser user agent string. The email address is not published.
A hash of your email address may be sent to Gravatar so an avatar can be shown next to your comment. Gravatar privacy policy: https://automattic.com/privacy/.
Comments are checked for spam by CleanTalk. The comment text, name, email address and IP address are sent to CleanTalk. CleanTalk also loads a bot detection script on every page of the site, not only on pages with a comment form. That script records browsing signals such as mouse and keyboard activity, screen size and timing, and sends them to CleanTalk to tell people apart from bots. Their terms: https://cleantalk.org/publicoffer.
Some forms are protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, which receives your IP address and basic browser information. Cloudflare privacy policy: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/.
Media you upload
Only editors can upload files. Images with embedded location data can be downloaded by any visitor and the location read out of them.
Contact forms and email
Email you send us is kept so we can reply.
Mail sent by the site, such as comment reply notifications, is delivered by the site’s own mail server on the same host as the site. The recipient address and the message are handled by the web host and are not passed to a separate mail delivery company.
Subscribing to new post notifications stores your email address. Each notification carries an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing deletes the address.
Cookies
Leaving a comment offers to save your name, email address and site in cookies. Those cookies last one year.
Logging in sets a temporary cookie to test cookie support, plus cookies for your login state and screen display choices. Login cookies last two days, or two weeks with Remember Me. Logging out removes them.
Advertising, analytics and sharing partners set their own cookies, covered in the sections below. Browser settings can block or delete any of them.
Consent and your choices
The site uses Google Consent Mode. Before you make a choice, storage for analytics, advertising, ad personalisation, ad user data, personalisation and functionality is set to denied for visitors in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the European Economic Area. Google’s tags load in that denied state and send only limited, cookieless signals until consent is given.
The consent banner shown to those visitors is Google’s Privacy and Messaging service, also known as Funding Choices, loaded from fundingchoicesmessages.google.com. It records your choice and stores it in your browser, and it reads your approximate location from your IP address to decide whether to appear. Google privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy.
Visitors outside those regions are not shown the banner and the tags described below load in their normal state.
To change a choice you have already made, clear this site’s cookies and site data in your browser and the banner will appear again on your next visit. You can also block or delete cookies from any of the services named in this policy through your browser settings.
Embedded content from other sites
Articles can include embedded content such as YouTube videos, X posts and Discord widgets. Embedded content behaves as if you had visited the other site. Those sites can collect data about you, set cookies, embed third party tracking and record your interaction with the embed, including when you are logged in to them.
YouTube videos are embedded through youtube-nocookie.com. Video thumbnails load from i.ytimg.com, which receives your IP address.
Posts from X, formerly Twitter, are embedded with the widget script from platform.x.com. It receives your IP address and can read cookies X has already set in your browser. X privacy policy: https://x.com/en/privacy.
The Discord server widget is loaded from discord.com. Discord privacy policy: https://discord.com/privacy.
Fonts load from Google Fonts, at fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com, which receive your IP address on each page load. Emoji images load from s.w.org, run by the WordPress project, which also receives your IP address. WordPress.org privacy policy: https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/.
Share buttons
The share buttons on posts are provided by ShareThis, loaded from platform-api.sharethis.com. ShareThis is an advertising and data company. Its script runs on every page that shows the buttons, whether or not you click one, and it can set its own cookies and collect your IP address, the page you are on, the page you came from and browser information. It uses that data for its own audience and advertising products as well as for the share counts. ShareThis privacy policy: https://sharethis.com/privacy/. Opt out: https://sharethis.com/privacy/#optout.
Analytics
The site uses Google Analytics 4. It records pages viewed, approximate location derived from IP address, device type and browser. Analytics does not run for logged in users.
Analytics is loaded through a Google Tag container served from googletagmanager.com. The container is what places the Google Analytics tag on the page and applies the consent settings described above. Loading it means googletagmanager.com receives your IP address on every page.
The site’s Analytics property is linked to a Google Ads account and to the AdSense account described below. That link lets Google match site activity against its own advertising data for reporting and, where you have consented, for audience and remarketing purposes.
Google privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy. How Google uses data from sites that use its services: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites. Browser opt out: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
The site also counts views per post. That count is a total and is not linked to individual readers.
Advertising
Ads are served by Google AdSense from pagead2.googlesyndication.com. Google and its partners use cookies to serve ads and, where permitted, to personalise them from your previous visits to this and other sites.
Google ad settings: https://adssettings.google.com/. Opt out across multiple vendors: https://optout.aboutads.info/.
Affiliate links
Some posts and promotional boxes link to shops through affiliate programmes. We take part in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, we link to the Ubisoft Store through Impact at ubisoft.pxf.io, and we use Awin for a small number of other retailers.
Following one of those links passes your click to the affiliate network, which sets a cookie so any resulting purchase can be credited to this site. We earn a commission on those purchases. Following the link also sends your IP address and the page you came from to the network and to the shop. This only happens if you click the link. Nothing is loaded from those networks while you are simply reading a page.
Amazon privacy notice: Amazon.com Privacy Notice. Impact privacy policy: https://impact.com/privacy-policy/. Awin privacy policy: https://www.awin.com/gb/privacy.
Our full affiliate disclosure explains which links earn a commission and what that does not change about our coverage.
Who we share your data with
The site does not sell your data. Data reaches third parties only through the services named in this policy: the web host, Cloudflare, CleanTalk, Google Analytics, the Google Tag container, Google Ads, Google AdSense, Google Privacy and Messaging, Google Fonts, ShareThis, Gravatar, WordPress.org, Amazon Associates, Impact, Awin, and the sites whose content is embedded.
A password reset email includes your IP address.
How long we keep your data
Comments and their metadata are kept indefinitely. Spam comments are deleted automatically after a holding period.
Registered users can see, edit or delete the personal information in their profile at any time, except the username. Administrators can also see and edit it.
Failed login attempts are logged with the IP address for a limited period.
Notification subscriptions are kept until you unsubscribe.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account or have left comments, you can request an export of the personal data held about you, and you can request its erasure. Erasure does not cover data the site has to keep for legal or security reasons.
Depending on where you live you may also have the right to correct inaccurate data, object to or restrict processing, withdraw consent, and complain to a data protection authority.
Where your data is sent
The site is hosted in the United States and served through Cloudflare’s network. Comments are checked by CleanTalk. Analytics, consent and advertising data is processed by Google. Share button data is processed by ShareThis. Affiliate click data is processed by Amazon, Impact and Awin.
How we protect your data
The site is served over HTTPS. Failed logins are rate limited. Software is kept up to date. Access to the server and database is limited to the people who maintain the site.
What we do if there is a breach
If personal data held by the site is exposed, we will close the cause and post a notice describing what happened and what data was involved. Where the law requires it, we will notify the relevant authority and the people affected.
Children
The site is not aimed at children and does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. Contact us if you believe a child has given us personal information and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
This page is updated when the services the site uses change. The date at the top is the last revision.
How to contact us
Email [email protected] with any question about this policy or the data the site holds.