Privacy and cookies

Who runs this site

Sims4UICheats is an independent fan project covering cheats and mods for The Sims 4. It is not affiliated with Electronic Arts or Maxis. For anything on this page, including a request to see or delete data, the contact is privacy@sims4uicheats.com. For the purposes of the UK and EU GDPR, the operator of this site is the data controller for the analytics described below.

What happens before you choose anything

Nothing belonging to Google loads when a page opens. The tag is not in the markup. A small script decides whether it may be loaded at all, and in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland the answer is no until you say otherwise. That means no cookie, no tracking pixel, and no request to a Google server, not even a DNS lookup, until you have agreed.

Outside those regions the standard in law is notice and a working opt-out rather than prior consent, so analytics starts on arrival and the banner tells you it has, with an off switch in the same place. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, that counts as the opt-out and analytics never starts.

To decide which of those two applies, the site reads the country your request arrived from using our own server, at /cdn-cgi/trace. That is a request to this site, not to anyone else, and nothing about it is stored. If it fails for any reason the site asks for consent rather than assuming it.

What Google Analytics collects

If and only if analytics is running, Google Analytics 4 collects the following about your visit:

We do not ask you for a name, an email address or an account, and there is nothing on this site to sign up for. Nothing you type into the search box is sent anywhere: the search index is a file your browser downloads, and the searching happens on your own machine.

The cookies, named

The last two are the site working as you asked it to, so they are set without consent, which the ePrivacy Directive permits for storage that is strictly necessary to deliver what you requested. The first two are not, which is the whole reason for the choice.

Why, and on what legal basis

The purpose is narrow: to see which pages people actually use, so that the ones worth expanding can be told apart from the ones nobody opens. It is not used to build a profile of you, and there is no advertising here for it to feed.

In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland the legal basis for storing and reading the analytics cookies is your consent, under Article 6(1)(a) of the GDPR and the national laws implementing the ePrivacy Directive. You can withdraw it at any time, and withdrawing is as easy as giving it: the same two buttons, in the same place, the same size. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of anything done before you withdrew.

Who else sees it

Google. Google Analytics is operated by Google Ireland Limited for users in Europe and by Google LLC elsewhere, acting as our processor under Google's data processing terms. Google's own description of how it handles Analytics data is on its privacy policy and its processor terms.

Nobody else. We do not pass the data to any other company, we do not use it for advertising, and we have switched off the two settings that would let Google use it that way: Google Signals and advertising personalisation are both disabled on this property.

Analytics data may be processed on Google's servers in the United States. Google relies on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses for those transfers.

How long it is kept

The Google Analytics property is set to the shortest retention Google offers, which deletes user-level and event-level records 2 months after they are collected. Aggregate reports, the counts with nothing identifying in them, are kept for longer. Your consent choice stays in your own browser until you clear it, and never reaches us.

Your rights in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland

You can ask for a copy of what is held about you, ask for it to be corrected, ask for it to be deleted, ask us to restrict what is done with it, object to it being processed, and ask for it in a portable form. You can also withdraw your consent at any time without giving a reason. Write to privacy@sims4uicheats.com and you will get an answer within one month.

One honest limitation: the identifier Google Analytics uses is random and is not linked to anything that identifies you, so in most cases we cannot find your data from your name or your email alone. If you want a specific visit found, you would need to send the identifier from the _ga cookie in your browser. If you simply want it to stop and to be deleted, turning analytics off in the footer does that immediately and without needing to write to anyone.

If you think we have handled this badly, you can complain to your national data protection authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office; in Switzerland, the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner; in the EU, the supervisory authority for the country you live in.

Your rights in the United States

State privacy laws in California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, Florida, Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland and a growing list of others give you the right to know what is collected, to have it deleted, to have it corrected, and to opt out of its sale, its sharing, or its use for targeted advertising. You also have the right not to be treated differently for exercising any of them.

We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, as those terms are defined in the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the CPRA. There is no advertising on this site. Because there is no sale and no sharing, there is nothing here for a "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" link to switch off, but the analytics off switch in the footer stops the collection entirely, which is the stronger version of the same thing.

We honour Global Privacy Control. If your browser sends the signal, analytics never loads and you are not asked. To make a request under any of these laws, write to privacy@sims4uicheats.com. If we refuse a request you may appeal by replying, and we will explain the outcome in writing.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

Both are respected here, which is worth stating plainly because many sites say they cannot. If your browser sends either signal, this site treats it as a refusal: no analytics loads, no cookie is set, and you are not shown a banner asking you to reconsider a decision you already made.

Children

This site is not directed to children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. The Sims 4 is rated T by the ESRB and 12 by PEGI. If you are a parent or guardian and believe a child has provided personal information through this site, write to privacy@sims4uicheats.com and it will be deleted.

Changes to this page

If what the site collects changes, this page changes first and the date at the top of it moves. If a change means collecting something new that needs your agreement, you will be asked again rather than opted in quietly.

Changing your choice

The analytics link in the footer of every page reopens the choice. Choosing to turn analytics off also deletes the Google Analytics cookies already in your browser, so it stops the collection rather than merely stopping the next page from starting it.

The rest of what this site does and does not do is on about, and the limits of what is written here are set out on disclaimer.