Cookie Policy

Last updated: 10 November 2026

This Cookie Policy explains how TCG Hamster uses cookies and similar technologies when you use our platform.

1. What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files stored on your device when you visit a website. They help the site work, remember your preferences, and keep you signed in.

2. Cookies we use

  • Essential cookies: required for the platform to function. These include authentication cookies that keep you signed in and a short-lived cookie that caches your profile status to speed up navigation. The platform will not work properly without these.
  • Preference cookies: remember settings such as your chosen theme (light, dark, or other).
  • Payment provider cookies: when you make a payment, our payment provider Stripe may set its own cookies to process the payment securely and prevent fraud. These are governed by Stripe's own cookie and privacy policies.

Advertising measurement cookies (only if you allow them): when you first visit, a small box asks whether we may use cookies to measure which adverts brought you here. If you choose “Allow”, Google (Google Analytics and Google Ads), Reddit, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and TikTok may set their own cookies to record that you arrived from one of our adverts and whether you went on to sign up, list or trade. If you choose “No thanks”, or do not answer, none of these cookies are set.

To know whether you have agreed, the Google tag loads on every page in Google's “consent mode”, set to refuse by default. Until you choose “Allow” it stores and reads nothing on your device and sends Google only basic signals with no cookie or advertising identifier, such as that a page was viewed or that a sign-up or sale happened. The Reddit, Meta and TikTok pixels do not load at all unless you allow it. You can change your answer at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser, which brings the box back.

Analytics. We use Vercel Analytics to count page views and see which pages people arrive on. It sets no cookies, stores nothing on your device, does not record your IP address, and cannot follow you to other websites: it tells us how many people visited a page, not who they were. Because it stores and reads nothing on your device, it needs no consent under the regulations described below.

Daily visitor count. We also count how many people visit each day, and how many of them were signed in. It too sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device. If you are signed in we count your account once that day; if not, we count a scrambled code made from your IP address, your browser type and the date, which changes every day, so it cannot be used to recognise you on another day and your IP address itself is never stored. These counts are deleted after 90 days.

Why we ask: UK law (the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations) requires consent for cookies that are not essential to the service you asked for. Essential and preference cookies need no consent; advertising measurement cookies do, so they are only set after you choose “Allow”.

3. Managing cookies

Most browsers let you control cookies through their settings, including blocking or deleting them. Note that blocking essential cookies will prevent you from signing in and using the platform.

4. Changes to this policy

We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time. We will post the updated policy with a revised “last updated” date.

5. Contact

Questions about our use of cookies can be sent to hello@tcghamster.com.