Privacy policy

What loads, and when

wowbrowser.org is a static guide. Reading a page does not require an account, and we do not sell personal data. Three third parties are wired into every page: Google Analytics 4, Microsoft Clarity and Adsterra. They load by default on the first page view. The cookie banner is an information and withdrawal control, not a gate: it appears on the first visit, Accept keeps the default, and Reject turns all three off. Only Reject stores a refusal; doing nothing leaves the default in place. Cookie settings in the footer reopens the banner so the choice can be changed at any time.

The choice is stored in localStorage under wb_consent as JSON `{choice, exp}`, where choice is granted or denied and exp is 180 days after the decision. It is local storage, not a cookie, and it is the only record our own code writes for consent. Clearing site data for wowbrowser.org deletes it. Global Privacy Control (navigator.globalPrivacyControl) and Do Not Track are treated as Reject: the banner records denied, the Accept button is disabled, and no analytics, replay or ad request is made.

Our inline consent initialization runs before GA4 configuration and checks the remembered choice and browser privacy signals before creating Google's external tag. Its default sets ad_storage, ad_user_data and ad_personalization to denied and analytics_storage to granted, with ads_data_redaction and url_passthrough on. Reject changes analytics_storage to denied and sets ga-disable-<measurement ID> so later hits are not sent. GA4, Clarity and Adsterra are requested by default when no refusal is stored. Reject saves the refusal and reloads the page to terminate code already running; on the reloaded page none of these external scripts is created.

Advertising: Adsterra

Adsterra (Adsterra Ltd, adsterra.com) pays for the guide. Two units belong to Adsterra website 6174527 (wowbrowser.org, category Social): NativeBanner_1, dashboard unit 32086911, an in-page Native Banner shown below the article; and SocialBar_1, dashboard unit 32086912, a Social Bar that Adsterra anchors to the bottom of the window. Both are requested from bicea.org, the delivery host issued for this account. Adsterra's delivery chain can also use cdn.show-creative1.com, cdn.show-sb.com, cdn.cloudpiko.com, static.nresystems.com, tsyndicate.com, highperformanceformat.com and profitableratecpm.com for creatives and supporting resources; available creatives vary by location and inventory.

Storage: Adsterra delivery scripts may write identifiers beginning with pip_; the actual keys and expiry can vary with the delivered script and creative. Adsterra and its demand partners may also set or read their own cookies or local identifiers on bicea.org and on creative hosts once a creative is served; those names and lifetimes belong to them, not to us. We set nothing on your device for advertising. Control: ads load by default; use Reject or Cookie settings to withdraw and stop their scripts. Personalized advertising is optional: use https://optout.aboutads.info/ , https://optout.networkadvertising.org/ , or in the EU, UK and Switzerland https://www.youronlinechoices.eu/ to opt out of interest-based ads across sites. Adsterra's own policy is https://adsterra.com/privacy-policy-managed/ .

Show adult ads is switched off for website 6174527 in the Adsterra dashboard, as an account setting; it is not an independent audit of every creative. The floating Social Bar is constrained by our layout, not by the vendor's own close control: whatever Adsterra anchors to the window is clamped to max-width 100vw with box-sizing border-box and overflow hidden, body reserves 96px of padding-bottom so the bar cannot cover the footer, and Hide ad bar in the footer stores wb_adbar_closed in localStorage so the bar stays away on later visits rather than only until the next refresh. Show ad bar removes that key.

Analytics and session replay

Google Analytics 4 (Google Ireland Limited; google-analytics.com and googletagmanager.com). Purpose: count page views and see which guides are read, so pages can be fixed. Storage, first party on wowbrowser.org: _ga (up to two years) and a per-stream _ga_<container> session cookie (up to two years), both written on the first page view unless you choose Reject. Event retention depends on the Google Analytics property settings; we do not publish an unverified retention period. Control: loaded by default, stopped through Reject. Opt out with the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, or by choosing Reject here. Google's ad settings are at https://myadcenter.google.com/ and https://adssettings.google.com/ .

Microsoft Clarity (Microsoft Corporation; www.clarity.ms, scripts.clarity.ms and collection subdomains of clarity.ms). Purpose: heatmaps and session recordings, so a confusing page can be seen rather than guessed at. Provider-documented storage may include: _clck (about one year), _clsk (about one day) and MUID on .clarity.ms (about 13 months), plus Clarity's own identifiers where the recording SDK writes them. Clarity documents 30 days for standard recordings and 9 months for labeled/favorite recordings and heatmap data. Control: loaded by default, stopped through Reject. Reject, or Cookie settings, calls clarity('consent', false) so a running recording stops. Microsoft's privacy statement is https://privacy.microsoft.com/privacystatement .

YouTube and other embeds

YouTube (Google; www.youtube-nocookie.com and i.ytimg.com). Purpose: play the trailer on pages that carry a video. It is click-to-load: until you press the play button the page only shows a thumbnail we host, and no YouTube frame or script is created. After the click, YouTube may set cookies such as VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE, YSC and PREF, and may read its own local storage; retention is Google's. Legal basis: your click, which is consent for that embed. Google's privacy policy is https://policies.google.com/privacy .

No other third-party script is loaded on this site. In particular there is no traffic-mesh banner SDK, no AdSense tag, no second ad network, no social embed and no comment system. Fonts (Cinzel and Source Serif 4) are packaged with the site and served from this domain; images are files on this domain, except the poster images that YouTube serves after a click. If that changes, the new provider, its cookies and its retention will be named here before it ships.

Mail, rights, and changes

Email you send to [email protected] is stored so we can answer and keep a correction. We do not sell that mail. The legal basis for answering is the request you sent; for keeping a correction it is our legitimate interest in an accurate guide. You can ask for a copy, correction or deletion of mail we hold by writing to the same address. You can object to processing based on legitimate interest, and you can complain to your local data protection authority.

For analytics, replay and advertising data the controllers are the providers named above; the opt-out links in this policy reach them, and we will forward a request sent to our address. You can also withdraw consent here at any time: Reject updates the consent state and reloads the page, terminating running vendor code; the saved choice prevents all three scripts on subsequent visits for 180 days.

The operator is the WoWBrowser guide desk, reachable at the address above. This policy is posted on this URL; the date at the top changes when a provider, cookie or retention period changes. The current text was checked against the built HTML, ref/clarity.json, ref/adsterra.json and public/ads.txt on 2026-11-04.