The Ratist

Cookie Policy

Last updated: May 10, 2026

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that websites store on your device. We use cookies and similar technologies (such as localStorage and sessionStorage) to keep you signed in, remember your preferences, measure usage, and serve relevant ads.

This page describes the categories we use and what each one does. You can change your choice at any time via the Your Privacy Choices link in the footer.

Categories

Necessary

Always on

Required for the site to function. Without these you can't sign in, your session wouldn't persist across pages, and security checks couldn't happen. These do not require consent and cannot be disabled.

Examples: Firebase authentication tokens, session ID for the current visit, CSRF tokens, your typing-guard / onboarding state, and a small handful of UI preferences (theme, default watchlist) saved in localStorage.

Analytics

Helps us understand how visitors use the site so we can fix friction and improve features. Anonymous in aggregate; we do not use it to identify individual users.

Provider: Google Analytics 4. Examples of events tracked: page views, the onboarding-tour funnel, recommendation-tool usage, share-button clicks, and AI-feature usage. Default: off until you opt in.

Advertising

Personalized ads. When granted, we share signals with Google AdSense and its partners so the ads you see are more relevant. When denied, ads still appear but they're non-personalized (selected based only on the page you're currently looking at, not your prior browsing).

Provider: Google AdSense. Default: off until you opt in. Backstage Pass subscribers do not see ads regardless of this setting.

California (CCPA / CPRA):turning Advertising off constitutes an opt-out of cross-context behavioral advertising, which California treats as "sharing." If your browser sends the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal, we honor it automatically and default Advertising to off.

Third-party cookies

Some cookies are set by third-party services we integrate with. Each provider has its own privacy policy:

  • Firebase (Google) — authentication and real-time features.
  • Google AdSense — display advertising.
  • Google Analytics 4 — product analytics.
  • Stripe — payment processing for subscriptions.
  • GIPHY — animated image search inside community comments.

Full provider list and links to each privacy policy are in our Privacy Policy.

Managing your choices

You can manage cookies in three places:

  • The Your Privacy Choices link in our footer reopens the consent banner so you can change Analytics or Advertising at any time.
  • Your browser's settings let you block or delete cookies for any site. Note: blocking all cookies will break sign-in.
  • Google offers separate per-product controls: Google Ads Settings and Google Analytics Opt-out.

Changes to this policy

We may update this Cookie Policy when we add, remove, or change the cookies we use. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision. If we add a new category, we will re-prompt you for consent.