Privacy policy

On your device

Your browser's local storage keeps a random device ID, a copy of your CS IQ, how many puzzles you have played and solved, your daily streak and daily progress, and whether sound is on.

CS Nerd sets cookies only for Steam sign-in: one that keeps you signed in (up to 180 days, until you sign out) and one that lives for the ten minutes a sign-in takes. Both are needed for signing in, and neither is used for tracking.

Google Analytics sets its own cookies (_ga and _ga_ followed by an ID, for up to two years) to tell visits apart. You can block or delete them in your browser's settings, or stop Google Analytics on all sites with Google's opt-out add-on (tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout); CS Nerd works the same without them.

On our server

When you answer a puzzle, we store it with your device ID: the puzzle, your answer, your score, your rating before and after, and the time. Buy call votes are stored the same way. Your current rating is kept with the device ID too, along with the country your last answer came from (a two-letter code Cloudflare derives from your IP address; the IP address itself is not stored).

We never ask for your name, email address or a password. Puzzle statistics (how many players gave which answer) are counted in aggregate and do not point back to you.

Signing in with Steam

Signing in is optional. You sign in on Steam's own page (steamcommunity.com), and Steam tells us only your SteamID, the public number of your Steam account; we never see your Steam password or email address. We then fetch your public Steam name and avatar from Steam and refresh them about once a day while you visit.

When you sign in, what you played in this browser moves to your Steam account: answers, votes and rating. If the account already answered the same puzzle, the account's answer is kept. From then on your plays are stored with the account instead of the device ID.

To keep you signed in we store a hash of the random token in your cookie, the account it belongs to and when it expires. Signing out deletes it.

Leaderboard

Players with a settled rating appear on the leaderboard with the flag of the country their last answer came from. Signed-in players appear with their Steam name and avatar, linked to their Steam profile. Everyone else appears as "Player #" followed by the first six characters of a hash of their ID, never the ID itself.

Hosting and third parties

The site and its database run on our own server, with Cloudflare in front of it. Like any web service, the server and Cloudflare process technical data such as your IP address to deliver pages and keep the site safe, and may keep it briefly in logs. Fonts and images load from this site: Steam avatars are fetched by our server, so your browser does not contact Steam to show them.

To see how the site is used, we use two analytics services. Cloudflare Web Analytics measures page views and loading speed without cookies and without identifying you. Google Analytics receives the pages you visit, your browser and device type, an approximate location derived from your IP address, and the cookie IDs, and shows us totals. Google processes this data under its own privacy policy (policies.google.com/privacy) and may store it outside your country. Ad features are turned off. CS Nerd uses no advertising trackers.

Puzzles link to match pages on HLTV, and sponsor slots link to sponsors' sites. Those sites have their own privacy policies. A sponsor link may carry a tag that tells the sponsor the visit came from CS Nerd; we never share your data with sponsors.

Age

CS Nerd is not aimed at children under 13. Sponsor content for case or skin sites is for adults only (18+).

Deleting your data

At the end of this page you can see your device ID, or the Steam account you are signed in with, and delete your data. Deleting removes your rating, answers and votes from our server and clears what CS Nerd keeps in this browser. For a Steam account it also removes the SteamID, name and avatar we stored and signs you out everywhere. Aggregate puzzle statistics stay. If you played in several browsers or devices without signing in, delete in each one.

For any other question about your data, use the contact page.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it.