1. What this policy covers
Cookies are small files a website stores on your device. Websites also use similar technologies — browser local storage, session storage, pixels and software development kits — which do the same job in a different way. This policy covers all of them, and uses "cookies" as shorthand.
It sits alongside our Privacy Policy at /legal/privacy, which explains what we do with personal data generally.
Users are hereby requested to read this policy, along with our Terms & Conditions and our Privacy Policy, before answering the cookie banner. A user under 18 is advised to seek their parent's or guardian's guidance before proceeding any further.
One thing worth knowing up front: most of what C4Chess itself stores on your device is not a cookie at all. It is browser local storage, which stays on your device and is not attached to requests sent to our servers. We have listed it here anyway, because what matters to you is what is being kept on your machine, not the technical name for it.
2. Strictly necessary — always on
These keep the service working and secure. They cannot be switched off, and they are not covered by the consent banner because the service cannot be provided without them.
Your sign-in session (stored by our authentication provider under a key beginning "sb-"): keeps you signed in between page loads and refreshes your session. Lasts until you sign out or the session expires.
"c4chess_cookie_consent_v1": stores your answer to the cookie banner — accepted or declined. Without it we would have to ask you on every page. Persists until you clear your browser storage.
"c4chess_guest_token" and "c4chess_guest_display_name": a random identifier and display name that let you play or solve puzzles without an account. Not linked to a name or email. Persists until you clear your browser storage.
"c4.askc4.guestMessages": counts how many messages a guest has sent to Ask C4, so that after five the chat can ask them to sign up. It holds a number and nothing else, is not linked to a name or email, and is not sent to us. Persists until you clear your browser storage.
"c4chess_account_blocked" (session storage): carries a message explaining why a sign-in was refused. Cleared when the browser tab closes.
Security and load-balancing cookies set by our hosting provider in the course of serving the page.
3. Functional preferences stored at your request
These are not switched on in advance and they are not a category you have to accept. Each one is created only when you choose the setting it remembers — pick a board theme and we store the board theme — and it is used for nothing else. They stay in your browser and are not transmitted to us or to anyone else. They are listed so you know what is on your device.
"c4chess_language" (portal language), "c4chess_portal_theme" (light or dark), "c4chess_portal_mode" (academic or play view), "c4chess_appearance" (board theme, piece set and background), "c4chess_play_settings" and "c4chess_bot_setup_v1" (how you like games set up), "c4chess_spoken_feedback" (whether spoken feedback is on, for accessibility), "c4chess_chessdaily_voice" (article read-aloud voice), and "c4chess_portal_tour_v1" (whether you have seen the welcome tour).
For guests, "c4_guest_xp_total_v1" and related keys hold progress locally so a guest can keep their XP and course progress without an account.
For members, "c4.askc4.profileOffer." followed by your account ID remembers when Ask C4 last offered you its chess-profile form, so it is not offered more than once a week.
For members, "c4_chest_dismissed_v1" holds the date on which you last closed the daily-chest pop-up, so it is not shown to you again that day. It holds a date and nothing else.
Clearing your browser storage removes all of these. Nothing breaks; the platform simply forgets your preferences.
4. Optional — analytics
Only set if you accept optional cookies. Until then the Google Analytics tag is not on the page at all, so nothing is set and nothing is sent.
Google Analytics 4 (property G-V8S30EV4MN) sets "_ga" and "_ga_V8S30EV4MN", which hold a randomly generated identifier used to recognise a returning browser. Google's current default lifetime for these is up to two years.
What is measured, and what is deliberately not sent to Google, is set out in section 9 of our Privacy Policy. In short: pages and a small set of named events; never your name, email, account ID, messages, homework, games, or the text of anything you search for.
Advertising signals — advertising storage, advertising user data and advertising personalisation — are denied for everyone and never granted, because there is no advertising on C4Chess. Analytics data is not used to build an advertising profile.
Cloudflare Web Analytics is not in this section because it is not optional storage: it sets no cookie and writes nothing to your browser, so there is nothing here for it to list. It does run without consent, on every page; section 6 explains that, and section 9 of the Privacy Policy explains what it measures.
5. No advertising cookies
C4Chess shows no advertising, so no advertising cookie or advertising storage is set on your device, whatever you answer to the banner.
If advertising were ever introduced, this section would list every cookie it set before anything changed.
6. What loads before you accept, and what does not
Google Analytics does not load before you accept. The tag is not written into our pages; it is injected by our own code, and only after your acceptance has been recorded. Before that point no Google Analytics request is made and no analytics cookie is set.
Cloudflare Web Analytics does load before you answer, and whatever you answer. Our hosting provider adds it to every page as the page is served. It sets no cookie, writes nothing to your device and gives you no identifier; it reports a page view, the page, where you came from, your country, device and browser type, and how quickly the page loaded. Because it stores nothing, the banner has nothing to switch off. Blocking scripts from static.cloudflareinsights.com in your browser stops it, and nothing on C4Chess depends on it.
No advertising tag loads at all, whatever you answer: C4Chess shows no advertising, so nothing is requested from any advertising service. Features you actively use, such as an embedded video, are covered in section 8.
Optional tags are also suppressed on pages whose address could carry a sign-in or password-reset token, regardless of consent, so a credential cannot reach a third party in a URL.
No analytics tag loads when the site is running on a local development host, so our own testing does not enter your figures or ours.
7. Cookies and children
Our platform is used mainly by children, and that changes what is acceptable here.
Nobody is shown advertising on C4Chess, so no child is profiled for advertising or shown an advertisement of any kind, and nobody is followed across other websites.
Analytics is the honest exception to how simple the rest of this page is, so we will not round it off. Where you have accepted optional cookies, Google Analytics 4 gives your browser a randomly generated identifier that persists between visits and records which pages and features were used. We do not send it your name, email, account ID, messages, homework, games, or the text of anything you search for. Every advertising signal is denied for everyone, so it cannot feed an advertising profile. Whether that should run on signed-in pages at all, on a platform used by children, is under review — section 11 of the Privacy Policy sets out our thinking. Declining is a single click and costs you nothing here.
Cloudflare Web Analytics runs for children as well, without consent, because it stores nothing on the device and gives no identifier: it counts that a page was viewed, not who viewed it. We are not treating that as beyond question either, and section 11 of the Privacy Policy says so.
Section 9(3) of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 prohibits tracking, behavioural monitoring and targeted advertising directed at children, and the Act treats everyone under 18 as a child. With no advertising on the platform, targeted advertising does not arise for anyone; the analytics question is set out above and in section 11 of the Privacy Policy.
Where a child holds an account, a parent or guardian can change the cookie choice from the same place the child can — portal → Settings → Account → Analytics cookies.
8. Other domains that see your browser
Loading a page can involve fetching a file from somewhere else, and whoever serves that file sees your IP address and browser information. These are listed for transparency; they are not tracking cookies.
The most significant entry on this list is the one we removed. The typefaces used across the site were previously fetched from Google Fonts on every page load, which meant Google saw the address of every visitor to every page before anyone had agreed to anything. They are now served from our own domain, and fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com are no longer permitted to be contacted at all by the security policy this site sends to your browser.
jsDelivr — serves the chess piece artwork for some board themes.
flagcdn.com — serves country flag images.
Lichess (lichess.org) — when you search Scout for a FIDE player by name, your browser asks Lichess's public copy of the FIDE rating list for matching players, so Lichess sees your IP address and the name you typed. The request carries no cookie.
YouTube, through its privacy-enhanced player (youtube-nocookie.com) — used in the video library. It sets no cookie until you press play.
LiveKit — receives your media stream while you are in a live class.
Cloudflare — static.cloudflareinsights.com serves the Cloudflare Web Analytics script on every page; it sets no cookie, and its reports go to our own domain. See section 6.
Our own hosting and database providers, in the course of serving pages and data.
9. Your choices, and how to change your mind
When you first arrive, a banner asks whether you accept optional cookies. Declining is a single click, on the same footing as accepting. Google Analytics does not load until you accept. Cloudflare Web Analytics runs either way, storing nothing, as section 6 explains. No advertising is shown, so your answer has no advertising effect.
You can change your answer at any time in the portal, at Settings → Account, where "Analytics cookies" sits towards the end of the section. If you are browsing as a guest, the same control is on the Settings page itself — a guest has no account section, and putting the only way to withdraw consent behind creating an account would mean consent that cannot be withdrawn. Turning it off stops reporting immediately in that page, without a reload or a sign-out. If you have C4Chess open in more than one tab, the other tabs apply your new choice when they next load.
Consent you cannot withdraw is not really consent, which is why that switch exists as a permanent control rather than only as a one-time banner.
Your browser can also block or delete cookies and clear local storage. Clearing our storage will bring the banner back and will reset your preferences. Blocking strictly necessary items will stop parts of the service from working, including staying signed in.
Google offers a browser add-on that opts you out of Google Analytics on every site, if you would rather set this once for the whole web.
10. Changes and contact
We may update this Cookie Policy — in particular if we add or remove a provider. Each version carries a version identifier and a last-updated date, and the current version is always at /legal/cookies.
Where a change requires consent, we will ask again rather than assume your previous answer carries over.
Questions about anything on this page: privacy@c4chess.com.