Last updated: 18 August 2026.
What we collect
This site does not ask you to create an account, and it does not collect names, email addresses or payment details. There are no comment forms and no newsletter.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics to see which pages are read and which search terms bring people here. This tells us which puzzle pages to write next. We look at it in aggregate and never try to identify an individual reader, but Google receives the underlying visit data and handles it under its own privacy policy. We do not sell or share it ourselves.
Advertising
Pages carry advertising served by Adsterra. Adsterra and the advertisers buying through it may set their own cookies or read device identifiers in order to choose which ad to show and to limit how often you see the same one. That data goes to them, not to us — we never receive it and cannot match it to anything on this site. What they collect and how to opt out is covered by Adsterra’s privacy policy.
Cookies
Google Analytics sets two cookies on this domain, _ga and _ga_…, which are what let it tell a returning reader from a new one. They are first-party cookies, so they carry this site’s name even though the data behind them goes to Google. Adsterra and its advertisers may set further cookies of their own.
Readers in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland also get a consent banner, and the choice made there is stored so the question is not asked again on every page. That store is the only preference this site keeps about you, and it exists because you were asked something — it holds an answer, not a profile. Everyone else sees no banner and gets no such cookie.
Beyond those three sources we set nothing: no login, no theme or language preference, no analytics of our own.
Third-party links
Pages link out to Steam, the official Rusty Lake site and community guides. Once you follow one of those links, that site’s own privacy policy applies.
Children
This site is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them.
If you are in the EU or the UK
The GDPR gives you the right to know what is held about you, to get a copy of it, to have it corrected or deleted, and to object to it being processed. There is an honest complication in exercising those rights here: we hold nothing that identifies you. No account, no email, no form. The data that exists sits with Google and with Adsterra, and neither passes it back to us in a form we could look you up in.
So a request sent to us cannot be answered by searching our records — there are none to search. Requests go to the two named above, under their own policies, and the practical route is the one built into your browser and device: clear the cookies for this domain, or turn off ad personalisation in your Google account. Write to us anyway if something is wrong on this site; a request we cannot action is still worth knowing about, and we will say plainly which of the two it needs to go to.
If you are in California
The CCPA gives you the right to know what personal information is collected, to have it deleted, and to opt out of its sale or sharing. We do not sell your personal information and never have. What happens here is narrower and worth stating precisely: Adsterra and the advertisers buying through it may read device identifiers to decide which ad to show and how often. Under the CCPA’s definitions that can count as sharing for cross-context behavioural advertising, so we say so rather than hide behind the fact that no money changes hands over your data on our side.
To opt out, use the controls in Adsterra’s privacy policy and, for the analytics side, Google’s opt-out add-on. Both take effect without us being involved, which is also why we cannot confirm on your behalf that they worked.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or a request to have something removed, go to hello@servantofthelake.org — see the contact page.