Cookie Policy

This page lists everything OFFICIALPLAYPORTAL stores in your browser, explains what each item is for, states how long it lasts, and shows how to change your mind later. We publish the full inventory rather than a vague summary, because a portal that reviews games for a living should be able to say exactly what it puts on your device.

If what you find in your browser's developer tools does not match this page, that is a bug in the page and we want to hear about it. The list below is short by design: the fewer things a site stores, the less there is to explain, audit or get wrong.

What cookies and browser storage are

A cookie is a small text file a website asks your browser to keep and then send back with every subsequent request to the same domain. Because it travels with each request, a cookie is the mechanism most tracking relies on. Local storage and session storage look similar from the outside but behave differently in one important respect: they stay in the browser and are never transmitted automatically, so a script has to read them deliberately and send them on purpose.

By lifetime

A session item disappears when you close the browser. A persistent item survives until it expires or you clear it. Local storage is persistent by nature and has no expiry date, which is why it must be cleared rather than left to lapse.

By party

A first-party item is set by the site you are visiting. A third-party item is set by another domain whose code the page loads — an ad network, an embedded player, a font service, an analytics vendor. This portal has no third-party cookies, because every asset it loads is served from its own domain.

The law that applies

In the United Kingdom, storage in your browser is governed by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, read alongside the UK GDPR. Regulation 6 requires clear information and your consent before anything is stored, with one exception: storage that is strictly necessary to provide a service you have explicitly requested. Everything on the list below is either inside that exemption or waits for you to press Accept.

Why we use browser storage at all

Three reasons, and no others. First, to honour a choice you have already made, so the cookie banner does not ask the same question on every page. Second, to let our host route requests and refuse obvious automated abuse. Third, if and only if you agree to it, to count page views in aggregate so we can tell which reviews readers actually finish. None of those purposes requires knowing who you are, and none of them is used to build a profile.

The full inventory

Strictly necessary

• opp-cookie — a local storage key, first-party, holding the single word "accept" or "reject". Written when you answer the banner. Purpose: stop the banner reappearing on every page. Lifetime: until you clear site data. Never transmitted to us, because local storage is not sent with requests. This sits inside the strictly necessary exemption because its only function is to remember an instruction you gave.
• Hosting session cookie — first-party, set by our hosting platform to route your request correctly and to defend against automated abuse. Contains an opaque identifier and no profile information. Lifetime: the browser session. Also strictly necessary: without it the platform cannot reliably serve the page you asked for.

Optional, consent-based

• Analytics measurement — loaded only if you press Accept. Counts page views and referrers in aggregate, so we can see that a review was read to the end rather than abandoned at the first paragraph. It does not record your IP address in full, does not follow you to other sites, and is not used for advertising. Lifetime: up to thirteen months. Press Reject and this is never loaded at all — not loaded and suppressed, but not requested in the first place.

What we do not use

The absences matter as much as the list:

• No advertising cookies, retargeting pixels or conversion tags. There is no advertising on this portal, so there is nothing to attribute.
• No cross-site tracking or data sharing with ad networks, brokers or "audience" platforms.
• No device fingerprinting. We do not read canvas output, installed fonts, audio stack characteristics, screen metrics or hardware identifiers.
• No social network embeds. There is no like button, no share widget and no embedded feed, which is why no social platform learns that you were here.
• No external fonts or content delivery networks. Inter is served from our own domain as a self-hosted woff2 file, so no font provider sees your request.
• No storage from the support chat. The assistant runs entirely in your browser, answers from a fixed script, and keeps nothing between visits — closing the tab discards the conversation.
• No storage behind the newsletter form. Subscribing is a plain form submission, not a tracked event.

How consent works here

On your first visit the banner appears and nothing optional loads while it is unanswered. Pressing Accept records "accept" and permits the analytics measurement described above. Pressing Reject records "reject" and permits nothing beyond the strictly necessary items. Closing or ignoring the banner is treated as a refusal, because silence is not consent under the UK GDPR — and because a banner that quietly opts you in on scroll is the practice the ICO has been telling sites to stop.

Your answer is stored locally rather than in a cookie sent to us, which has a useful side effect: we hold no record of your choice, so there is nothing about it for us to lose, share or misuse. It also means the choice is per-browser and per-device, so answering on your phone does not answer for your laptop.

Third-party content beyond our control

When you follow a download button to a Google Play listing you leave this site. Google may then set its own cookies on its own domain under its own policy, and we have no visibility into or control over that. The same applies to any external link we publish, including links to the Information Commissioner's Office. Nothing displayed inside officialplayportal.com is loaded from another host, which is why the inventory above is complete for as long as you stay on the portal.

Changing or withdrawing your choice

Your decision is not permanent. Clearing site data for officialplayportal.com in your browser settings removes the stored preference; the banner then appears again on your next visit and you can answer differently. You can also block or delete storage for this site entirely:

• Chrome (desktop): Settings → Privacy and security → Third-party cookies for global rules, or Site settings → View permissions and data stored across sites for a per-site rule.
• Chrome (Android): Settings → Site settings → Data stored → select the site → Delete.
• Safari (macOS): Settings → Privacy → Manage Website Data, then remove the entry for this domain.
• Safari (iOS): Settings → Safari → Advanced → Website Data, then swipe to delete the entry.
• Firefox: Settings → Privacy & Security → Cookies and Site Data → Manage Data.
• Edge: Settings → Cookies and site permissions → Manage and delete cookies and site data → See all cookies and site data.

Most browsers also offer a private or incognito window, which discards all storage when the window closes. That is the simplest way to read the portal without leaving anything behind at all.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

We do not need to act on either signal, because we run no advertising and no cross-site tracking to switch off. If you send Global Privacy Control, nothing about this site's behaviour changes — there is no sale or sharing of personal data here for it to prohibit.

What happens if you block everything

The reviews still work. Every page, image, font and script on this portal loads without a single cookie, so blocking storage costs you no content and no functionality. The one visible consequence is that the banner will ask again on every page load, because the answer can no longer be remembered. That is the trade-off of blocking a preference key: the site is not being obstructive, it genuinely has nowhere to write your answer.

A worked example: what a first visit actually stores

Suppose you arrive on the home page from a search result, read the Space Kitty Rescue review, click through to Game Modes, and press Reject on the banner along the way. Here is the complete list of what exists in your browser afterwards: one hosting session cookie, which disappears when you close the browser, and one local storage key containing the word "reject". That is the entire footprint of a two-page visit.

Now suppose you press Accept instead. The list gains the analytics measurement described above, which registers that two pages were viewed and where you arrived from, without recording who you are. Nothing else changes — no new domain is contacted, no identifier is written to a cookie, and no request leaves the portal carrying your reading history.

Why local storage rather than a cookie

Most sites record a consent decision in a cookie. We use local storage instead, and the reason is worth spelling out: a cookie is transmitted to the server with every single request, which means we would receive a copy of your choice thousands of times over the life of the site and would have to explain what we do with those copies. Local storage is never transmitted unless a script deliberately reads it and sends it, and ours does neither.

The practical result is that your consent decision stays entirely on your device. We cannot report on it, aggregate it, or hand it to anyone, because it never reaches us in the first place. The trade-off is that the choice does not follow you between browsers or devices, which we consider a fair price for holding no record of it at all.

Changes to this policy

If we add, remove or change anything stored in your browser, this page is updated before the change goes live and the date at the top moves. We do not add optional storage retroactively under an old consent — a new purpose means a new question.

Questions and complaints

If something on this page does not match what you observe in your browser's developer tools, tell us and we will either correct the page or remove the offending item. Write to support@officialplayportal.com. You can also raise concerns with the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. For how we handle personal data more broadly, see our Privacy Policy; for the rules governing use of the portal, see our Terms of Service.