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Privacy Policy
CubingHQ is a speedcubing practice site. This page explains, in plain terms, what happens to your data when you use it — what we keep, what never leaves your device, which third parties are involved, and what you can ask us to do about it.
CubingHQ is operated by an individual, not a company. Throughout this policy, "we" and "us" mean the operator of CubingHQ, contactable at martimcubing@gmail.com. For the purposes of the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation, that person is the data controller.
The short version
- Your solve times, sessions and settings are stored in your browser, not on our server.
- We do not ask you to create an account, and we never ask for a password.
- If you sign in with your World Cube Association account, we read your public WCA profile only. We cannot post anything as you.
- Messages you send in a Battle room are stored on our database and are visible to anyone in that room.
- We use Google Analytics and Google AdSense. Both may set cookies. In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland they are switched off until you consent.
- We do not sell your data. There is nobody to sell it to.
What stays on your device
Most of what CubingHQ remembers about you never reaches us at all. The following
live in your browser's localStorage, on the device you are using:
- Your solve times, sessions, personal bests and simulation history
- Your theme, accent colour and language choice
- Timer preferences — inspection, ambient volume, mute state
- Any WCA ID you have looked up, so the form remembers it next time
We cannot read this data. It is not transmitted anywhere. Clearing your browser's site data for CubingHQ erases all of it permanently, and because there is no server-side copy, we cannot restore it for you. If a session matters to you, export it before you clear anything.
What we do store
| Data | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Battle room messages, room names and the display name you choose | So other people in the room can see them — that is the feature | Until the room is cleared; rooms are pruned periodically |
| Battle results (times posted to a shared room) | To build the room's live leaderboard | Until the room is cleared |
| Community-submitted algorithm corrections | To keep the algorithm database accurate | Indefinitely, as part of the database |
| Anything you send us by email or the contact form | To reply to you | Until the exchange is finished |
This data is held in Google Firebase Realtime Database. Please treat a Battle room as a public space: pick a display name you are comfortable with strangers seeing, and do not type anything into a chat room that you would not want kept.
Signing in with your WCA account
CubingHQ offers sign-in through the World Cube Association. If you use it, the WCA asks you to authorise us, and we then read your public WCA profile: your WCA ID, name, country, avatar, competition results and personal records. All of that is already published on the WCA's own website.
We use it to pre-fill your personal bests in the simulator and to show your profile in the Stats view. The access we request is read-only — we cannot enter you into competitions, change your profile, or post anything as you. Revoking access in your WCA account settings disconnects it immediately.
CubingHQ is an independent fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the World Cube Association.
Advertising, and the cookies that come with it
CubingHQ carries advertising to cover its running costs. We use Google AdSense.
- Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites.
- Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to CubingHQ and other sites on the internet.
- You can opt out of personalised advertising at any time by visiting Google Ads Settings.
- You can opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info.
- Google's own explanation of how it uses data from sites that use its services is at policies.google.com/technologies/ads.
Opting out of personalised ads does not remove ads. It means the ones you see are chosen without using your browsing history.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics 4 to understand which parts of the site people actually use — how many visitors reach the simulator, whether the timer works on their device, which guides get read. It reports in aggregate. We do not use it to identify individuals, and we have never attempted to.
We also use Vercel Web Analytics, which is cookieless and does not track visitors across sites.
Consent, if you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland
If you are visiting from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, advertising and analytics storage are set to denied before any Google tag runs. Nothing is stored for those purposes until you make a choice in the consent dialogue we show on your first visit.
That dialogue is Google's certified consent management platform. You can reopen it and change your answer at any time using the privacy settings link it provides. If you decline, you will still see ads — they will simply be non-personalised.
Where we rely on consent, the legal basis is your consent. Where we do not — running the site, keeping a Battle room working, answering your email — the basis is our legitimate interest in operating the service you asked to use.
Third parties your browser contacts
Using CubingHQ causes your browser to make requests to a handful of services. Each one necessarily sees your IP address, as any web request does:
- World Cube Association API — competition, ranking and profile data
- Google Firebase — Battle rooms, chat and the algorithm database
- Google AdSense and Google Analytics — as described above
- Vercel — hosting and cookieless analytics
- Google Fonts, jsDelivr and cdn.cubing.net — fonts, charting and 3D puzzle rendering
- flagcdn.com — country flag images
Children
Speedcubing has a lot of young competitors, and we are conscious of that. CubingHQ is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. We do not require an account, and the only way to volunteer personal information is to type it into a Battle chat — which is exactly why we ask everyone not to. If you believe a child has posted identifying information, email us and we will remove it.
Your rights
If you are in the EEA or the UK, you have the right to access, correct, erase, restrict, port and object to our processing of your personal data, and to complain to your national data protection authority. Because most CubingHQ data lives on your own device, you can exercise most of these yourself by clearing your site data.
For anything we hold — a Battle message, an algorithm submission, an email — write to martimcubing@gmail.com and we will action it within 30 days. You do not need to explain why.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a way that affects you, we will update the date at the top of the page. Continuing to use CubingHQ after a change means you accept the revised policy.
Contact
Questions about anything above: martimcubing@gmail.com, or use the contact page.