To help personalize content to your interests, remember you, tailor and measure ads, provide a secure experience and improve Mists of Grianan’s Services, we use cookies. By using or navigating this site, you agree to the collection of information on and off our site through cookies. Learn more, including about available controls. You can use these controls now or later.
Welcome to Mists of Grianan! Our cookie policy explains the types of cookies and other similar tracking technologies that we and our partners apply when you visit or use the Mists of Grianan services.
When we say ‘Grianan,’ we’re referring to Grianan Studios Limited, and its subsidiaries. When we refer to ‘Mists of Grianan services’, we mean Mists of Grianan and any other games, websites, apps and services that link to this policy, regardless of how you access or use them, including through mobile devices.
Our cookie policy should be read in conjunction with the Privacy Notice for the Mists of Grianan services in your region. By using or accessing the Mists of Grianan services, you’re consenting to the practices described below (except to the extent you choose to disable them).
What is a cookie?
“Cookies” are small pieces of data (often text files) that are placed on your computer or device by the Mists of Grianan services that you visit or our partners. As a standard feature of major browser applications, cookies are widely used to make online services work or operate more efficiently, as well as to provide info to the providers of those online services about your browsing experiences. When you return to those same online services again, your browser sends the previously stored cookies back to the online service which allows it to recognise you and remember important info to make your use of the online services more personalized or convenient, such as by remembering your saved preferences.
We and our partners also use other technologies, including data stored on your web browser or device, identifiers associated with your device and other software for similar purposes. This includes the following:
- Pixel tags: Pixel tags (also called beacons or pixels) are small blocks of code installed on (or called by) a webpage, email, app, or ads which can retrieve certain info about your device and browser and how you interact with it. This includes, for example, information about your device type, operating system, browser type and version, website visited, time of visit, referring website, IP address, whether you’ve opened an email or clicked on an ad, and other similar info, including the small text file (the cookie) that uniquely identifies the device. Pixels provide the means by which third parties can set and read browser cookies from a domain that they do not themselves operate and collect info about visitors to that domain, typically with the permission of the domain owner.
- Local storage: This refers generally to other places on a browser or device where info can be stored by websites, ads, or third parties (such as HTML5 local storage and browser cache).
- Software development kits: Software development kits (also called SDKs) function like pixels and cookies, but operate in the mobile app context where pixels and cookies cannot always function. Pieces of code (the SDK) are installed in the app that allow us and our partners to collect certain info about your interaction with the app and info about your device and network.
- Flash cookies: This is a technology that can provide cookie-equivalent functionality and is capable of storing information on your device. This information is often stored in a different file to other cookies. This means it has to be managed and deleted in a different way. We explain below how you can do this.
- IP address: IP address is the short form for Internet Protocol address which is assigned by internet access providers to every computer that is connected to the internet. Website owners have access to IP addresses of their users. Using IP addresses, we and our partners can identify the country, state and city from which a computer is connecting to the Internet. IP addresses are, for example, used for IP geolocation purposes, e.g. by Matomo Analytics.
- Device identifiers: We may also collect your IP address, unique device identifier or create a unique device fingerprint (this is a unique combination of different information from your device so that we can single it out) so we can identify your device. We may then use this in a similar way to cookies.
In this policy, we refer to all of these and similar technologies as “cookies”.These technologies can be used to recognise when your device does things. For instance, they may recognise when you visit pages on our or others’ sites, use parts of an app or when you open emails we send you, or links in technologies.
Why are Cookies used on Mists of Grianan Services?
Currently we use cookies to automatically record some info about how you use and navigate the Mists of Grianan services and to recognize use of the Mists of Grianan services. This, in particular, helps to identify you, analyze, improve and secure the Mists of Grianan services and to personalise content and features and tailor and measure ads, both on and off the Mists of Grianan services.
Whilst the cookies used on the Mists of Grianan services change from time to time as we improve and update the Mists of Grianan services, they generally fall into the below categories of use:
ESSENTIAL COOKIES
Right now, we’re only dropping Essential cookies and Analytical cookies, but in the future we will likely use cookies for the following reasons:
- Authentication: to verify your account and determine when you’re logged in so we can make it easier for you to access the Mists of Grianan services and show you the appropriate information, experience and features. For example, we use cookies to keep you logged in as you navigate between different pages on the Mists of Grianan service or access secured portions of the Mists of Grianan services. Cookies also help us remember your browser so you do not have to keep logging into the Mists of Grianan services.
- Security: We use cookies to provide necessary checks and controls to protect both you and us. For example, they help us to authenticate your use, prevent fraudulent use of access credentials, maintain the confidentiality of your data and to help us detect malicious activity and violation of our Terms of Service.
- Functional Cookies: Preferences and features: We use cookies to enable the functionality that helps us provide the Mists of Grianan services. For instance, we use cookies to help us remember certain info about your choices, preferences, how far you are through an order and what you’ve seen or done on the Mists of Grianan services to enhance your experience on the Mists of Grianan services. They allow us to better personalise your visits to the Mists of Grianan services by remembering things like your selected region, language, or display settings. This helps us show you appropriate options and display customized content accordingly when you return to the Mists of Grianan services. For example, by remembering your region and language, the Mists of Grianan services may be able to provide you with local articles or schedules for upcoming events in your area, and do so in your local language. We may also use cookies to capture your preferred audio and visual settings (such as, text size, font, resolution, etc.), reference websites, the sequence of pages within the Mists of Grianan services that you visit, and other similar details about your browsing behaviour and choices about how the Mists of Grianan services behave or look. This helps us to, among other things, monitor and improve the Mists of Grianan services, personalize your browsing experience and facilitate return visits. Many of the features should still work without preference cookies. However, your experience may be less functional and you may need to re-enter your preferences each time you visit.
- Analytical Cookies: Analytics and research: We use cookies to collect info about your interactions with the Mists of Grianan services which helps us to understand and analyse how you use the Mists of Grianan services and improve them. For example, they help us understand and analyse which pages are the most frequently visited, identify when you may encounter difficulties and identify ways to improve the Mists of Grianan services. In other words, they allow us to see and analyse overall patterns of usage on the Mists of Grianan services, analyse general traffic and show the ways you interact with the Mists of Grianan services. We may also engage partners from time-to-time to help us better understand and analyse how you interact with the Mists of Grianan services, including by placing analytics and research cookies on our behalf. For example, we use third-party analytics providers like Matomo, to help evaluate and report on use of the Mists of Grianan services. These companies may set and read their own tracking technologies to gather info about your online activities across websites and services.
- Advertising Cookies: Advertising, insight and measurement:- We and our partners use cookies to collect info about your visit to the Mists of Grianan services and your use of them to deliver ads for businesses and other organisations that we or our partners think may be of interest to you, both on and off the Mists of Grianan services. This is done based upon your usage of our and others’ sites. For example, we or our partners may draw insights about you based upon what you use on the Mists of Grianan services or viewed on other sites and use that to deliver an ad considered relevant to you. These types of ads are called “Interest-Based Advertising.” We and our partners also use cookies to measure the performance of ad campaigns. For instance, we and our partners use cookies to count the number of times an ad is shown and to measure how often people do things like click on or view ads both on and off the Mists of Grianan services. We work with third-party partners that set their own cookies in this regard. For example, our advertising partners may use cookies to help serve you ads better tailored to the interests you’ve shown by browsing the Mists of Grianan services or other online services operated by third parties, determine whether you’ve seen a particular advertisement before (to prevent showing you duplicate ones) and for other lawful business purposes.
We and our partners may link any of the information we collect through cookies and other technologies (such as browser history): with information you provide; and with information we obtain from other sources, including from both online and offline data providers (such as demographic data and interest based data); and where you agree to this in accordance with your privacy settings on social sites, with information we obtain from social sites (such as with respect to your usage of it or your posts, messages or comments on it).
Who Places Cookies on my Device
Cookies may be placed on your device by Grianan Studios Limited as the operator of the Mists of Grianan services. These cookies are called “first party” cookies. Some cookies may also be placed on your device, when using the Mists of Grianan services, by one of our partners. These cookies are called “third party” cookies and are used to provide services to us and others. Therefore, some cookies that have been set on the Mists of Grianan services are not related to Grianan Studios Limited.
The Analytical cookies Grianan Studios Limited use contain the following data:
- Visitor information
- A cookie containing the session ID to identify the visitor when they return
- IP address - the last octet is not stored, so for example 123.45.67.89 becomes 123.45.67.x
- Based on the IP address, we use a GeoIP database to determine the user’s location down to the city level (e.g. Londonderry, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom)
- Visitor actions
- The page being viewed
- The previous page (e.g. the visitor clicked a link on Twitter that led them to our website)
- Clicked links (e.g. they clicked the link on our website leading to our Twitter account)
- Time of each action in the user’s local time zone
- Device/browser information:
- Browser engine and version (Google Chrome 83.0 with Blink engine)
- Operating system (Windows 10)
- Device type (desktop, phone)
- Device details (Samsung Galaxy S10)
- Screen resolution (1920x1080 pixels)
- Enabled plugins (cookies, Flash…)
And here’s how we use it:
- We use the raw data to create aggregate data in the form of reports or archives, which summarise the data for a given time period (daily, monthly).
- We store an aggregated version of the raw data, for example:
- Number of visitors from Londonderry: 5
- Number of visitors using Windows 10: 30
- Number of visitors using Google Chrome: 20
- Number of views of the home page: 50
Because the data is aggregated in this way, we aren’t able to identify users further. Using the above example, we couldn’t find the number of visitors from Londonderry using Google Chrome on Windows 10, making it impossible to identify any individual visitors.
When you visit a page with content embedded from, for example, Twitter or Facebook or social media widgets like the Facebook like button, these service providers may use their own cookies or similar technologies. We do not control them.
How can I manage cookies?
Where the relevant Mists of Grianan service has the Cookie Consent Tool incorporated, you can use it to refuse or accept cookies from the Mists of Grianan services at any time.
You can find out more about how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and disable them at All About Cookies. You can also find info about how to enable or disable cookies on your Internet browser provider’s website via your help screen.
If you want to clear all cookies left behind by online services including the Mists of Grianan services you have visited, here are links where you can download programs that clean out tracking cookies: Lavasoft and Spybot.
Cookie management tools provided by your browser will not remove Flash Cookies. To learn how to manage privacy and storage settings for Flash Cookies, please consult the instructions provided by Adobe here.
When you install our apps, SDKs are installed. You cannot deactivate an SDK. Consequently, do not install our apps if you are not happy with the use of SDKs.
We do not control third party cookies and cannot access them due to the way that cookies work, as cookies can only be accessed by the party who originally set them. You should check the third party websites for more info about these cookies.
Please note that opting-out of interest-based advertising won’t necessarily entirely prevent info from being collected automatically on the Mists of Grianan services, and it doesn’t mean you’ll receive fewer ads or stop them from being displayed. Instead, the ads you do receive won’t be interest-based any longer and, therefore, might be less relevant to your interests.
Please be aware that if cookies are disabled, not all features of the Mists of Grianan services may operate as intended.
So how long would we retain/store the cookie “raw data” and what do we do with it?
By using Matomo for our analytics, we implement the following solution:
- The raw data is stored for 367 days so we can generate a yearly report (366 days of a leap year +1 day to ensure the report is processed before deleting the data). After that, it is automatically purged from our database.
- We automatically process the data to create daily, weekly and monthly reports to create the aggregate data, which is stored in perpetuity.
- Additionally, we regularly create automated backups of our database, containing all data in the database at that point in time. These backups are stored in perpetuity. When raw data is deleted from the database, it is not removed from the backups because that’s not technically feasible.
Do-not-track signals
Our services don’t respond to Internet browser “Do Not Track” signals. Some newer Internet browsers incorporate DNT features. If activated, these features often send a signal to the services you visit indicating that you don’t want to be tracked in some way. Those services (or content on them placed by third parties) may continue to engage in activities you may view as tracking even though you’ve expressed this preference, depending on the service’s privacy practices.
Because there is not yet a common understanding of how to interpret the DNT signal, Grianan Studios Limited. does not currently respond to browser DNT signals on the Mists of Grianan services.
Policy updates
We may update our policy from time to time to reflect changes in technology, legislation, our operations, or as we otherwise determine is necessary or appropriate. Any such changes will become effective when we make the revised policy available on or through the Mists of Grianan services. We encourage you to review the “Effective date” legend above frequently to ensure you are aware of when our policy was last revised, and to help you better understand the nature of your interactions with the Mists of Grianan services.
