Cookie policy

1. What This Policy Covers

This Cookie Policy explains the cookies and similar technologies — including local storage, session storage, and mobile app storage — that pokernexus.com and the PokerNexus mobile applications use, and the choices you have about them. It should be read together with our Privacy Policy, which explains what we do with the information these technologies produce. If you have questions, write to us at legal@pokernexus.com.

2. The Short Version

On the web, we set three cookies: one that keeps you signed in, and two used only while you are in the middle of signing in with Google or Apple, to secure that process. None of them are used for advertising or cross-site tracking. We use no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies of any kind. We measure how many people visit our website using a service that sets no cookie and stores nothing on your device. Nothing on the Service loads from a third party unless you take an action that requests it, such as tapping play on an embedded video or tapping a venue's location to open a map.

3. Strictly Necessary Cookies

__Secure-better-auth.session_token is a first-party cookie, scoped to pokernexus.com, set with the HttpOnly, Secure, and SameSite=Lax attributes. It identifies your signed-in session so the server recognizes you between page loads; HttpOnly keeps it out of reach of scripts running on the page, and SameSite=Lax is what stops another site from using it to act in your name. It lasts seven days from your last visit, renewing as you keep using the Service, and is removed when you sign out. Because it is strictly necessary for a service you have asked for — staying signed in — no consent is required for it and we do not ask for any.

__Secure-better-auth.state is a first-party cookie, scoped to pokernexus.com, set with the HttpOnly, Secure, and SameSite=Lax attributes. It is set only when you press Continue with Google or Continue with Apple, holds a random value we check when the provider sends you back, and confirms the return belongs to the sign-in that started it — a standard anti-forgery measure. It lasts five minutes and is not renewed.

__Host-pn.social-pending is a first-party cookie, scoped to api.pokernexus.com, set with the HttpOnly, Secure, and SameSite=Lax attributes. The __Host- prefix in its name is a browser-enforced guarantee that no other subdomain can set or overwrite it, which matters because this cookie is itself a credential: whoever holds it can finish creating an account. It is set only when Google or Apple has confirmed someone who does not yet have a PokerNexus account, and it identifies that half-finished sign-up so it can be completed on the next screen. It lasts ten minutes and is deleted the moment the sign-up is completed.

Both are set only in direct response to an action you have just taken, are not used for analytics, advertising, or profiling, and are not read by any third party. Like the session cookie above, we treat both as strictly necessary for a service you have requested, so no consent is required for either.

4. Local and Session Storage

These are stored by your browser directly rather than sent to us with every request, and, except where noted, we do not receive their contents at all.

• pokernexus.venue-location — the place you last chose to browse venues from, so results can be shown without asking again. If it came from your device's location, the coordinates are sent to our servers to find nearby rooms but are never written to any record there. Cleared by clearing site data.
• pokernexus.venue-filter — the venue type, game type, stakes, and other filters you last set, so the list looks the way you left it. Cleared by clearing site data.
• tsr-scroll-restoration-v1_3 — a scroll-position marker, held only for the current tab, so that navigating back returns you to where you were on a list. It is discarded when you close the tab and never reaches our servers.

5. Audience Measurement

We measure the audience of our website using Simple Analytics, based in the Netherlands. It sets no cookie, writes nothing to and reads nothing from local or session storage, and takes no device fingerprint — it cannot recognize you on a later visit or on another site. It reports, for each page you view: the page address (without query string), the address you arrived from, campaign parameters if any, your device's time zone and language, your browser's user-agent, your screen and window size, and how long you stayed and how far you scrolled. The provider states it does not retain IP addresses. This measurement is used on the website only and is not present in our mobile applications, and it excludes direct-message and administrative pages entirely.

Because this technology does not store anything on your device or read anything already there, it does not require the cookie consent that the ePrivacy Directive, UK PECR, and similar laws require for other technologies, and we present no cookie banner. If we ever add a technology that does store or read something on your device and is not strictly necessary, we will update this policy first and ask for your consent before turning it on.

6. What Loads Only If You Ask For It

Embedded videos

Where a post links to a video, we show a still preview image served from our own storage; nothing is requested from the video's host until you tap play. Once you do, the provider's player loads in a frame — YouTube's privacy-enhanced player at youtube-nocookie.com, Vimeo's player, or whichever the link declared — and that provider receives your IP address, your user-agent, and any cookies your browser already holds for it, under its own policies. We receive nothing back, not even which video you played.

Maps

Tapping a venue's location opens Apple Maps, Google Maps, or your device's own map handler outside the Service. That map application receives the location you looked up and whatever it separately collects as part of your normal use of it, under its own privacy and cookie policies, entirely outside our control.

Link previews

When someone posts a link, our own infrastructure — not your browser — requests that page to build a preview, carrying no cookie or identifier of yours; the linked site learns only that some PokerNexus user posted it, not who. The preview image itself is served from our storage, so viewing it makes no request to the linked site. Links inside direct messages are never fetched this way.

7. What We Do Not Use

We set no advertising or retargeting cookies, we do not embed social media widgets or "like" buttons, and our typefaces are served from our own storage rather than a font network that could otherwise see you. We do not participate in cross-site tracking, identity resolution, or real-time bidding of any kind.

8. The Mobile Application

The PokerNexus app does not use browser cookies. Instead, it stores, in the platform's own on-device storage:

• Your authentication token, serving the same purpose as the web session cookie, removed when you sign out.
• Your push-notification device token, issued by Apple or Google, so we can deliver notifications to your device.
• Whether you have turned push notifications off for that device.
• The same venue location and filter values described above, plus cached content so the app starts quickly.
• On Android, an installation identifier kept by Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging library, which is what a notification is addressed to. It is a messaging component, not analytics or advertising, and we neither read it nor receive anything from it beyond the push token above.
• On Android, when you sign in with Google, a copy of Google's signed confirmation of who you are and the list of permissions you granted, kept in the app's own private storage on your device until the app's data is cleared or the app is deleted.
• On iOS, when you sign in with Apple, a copy of Apple's signed confirmation of who you are, together with your first and last name if Apple provided it, kept against Apple's identifier for you. Apple sends your name only on your very first sign-in, so the app keeps its own copy to show you if you sign in again later. This stays on your device until the app's data is cleared or the app is deleted.

The app contains no advertising or analytics SDK, does not read your device's advertising identifier, and is not measured by the audience-measurement tool described in Section 5. You can clear everything the app has stored by deleting it from your device.

Our error-monitoring tool, Sentry, described further in our Privacy Policy, stores a small amount of technical session information on your device as well, solely to associate a crash or error report with the app run in which it occurred. This is separate from, and does not affect, the device-storage items listed above.

9. How to Control Cookies

Every major browser lets you view, delete, and block cookies, generally from a privacy or site-settings menu. Because the cookies we set keep you signed in, or are used only to complete signing in with Google or Apple, blocking or deleting them may sign you out or interrupt a Google or Apple sign-in already underway; they will not affect anything you have posted or any part of your account. Clearing local storage will discard your saved venue location and filters, which you can simply set again.

10. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

No common standard for responding to browser "Do Not Track" signals was ever adopted, and we do not respond to it directly, though our audience-measurement provider does not count a visit from a device sending that signal. We do honor Global Privacy Control signals as an opt-out request; because we do not sell or share personal information for cross-context advertising, there is no such practice for that signal to stop, but we treat it as an instruction regardless, for as long as that remains true.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Cookie Policy as the technologies we use change. We will update the "Last updated" date above when we do, and where we introduce something that is not strictly necessary, we will say so clearly and ask for consent before turning it on.

12. Contact Us

PokerNexus LLC
5511 Parkcrest Dr., Suite 103
Austin, TX 78731
legal@pokernexus.com