Privacy Policy

Effective date: April 30, 2026

1. Introduction

This Privacy Policy describes how A House Divided (“we”, “us”, or “our”) collects, uses, and handles your information when you use our website and game at ahousedividedgame.com. By using the service, you agree to the collection and use of information as described in this policy.

2. Information We Collect

Account data

When you register, we collect your email address, username, and a hashed password. Plain-text passwords are never stored.

OAuth sign-in data

If you sign in using Google or Discord, we receive your email address and display name from that provider. We do not receive your password for those services.

Gameplay data

We store your in-game character name, party affiliation, policy positions, in-game actions, election history, and other gameplay activity as part of operating the simulation.

Browser fingerprint

To enforce our one-account-per-person rule, we collect a hashed browser fingerprint on registration and login. This fingerprint is derived from characteristics including your browser's canvas rendering, WebGL renderer, user agent string, screen resolution, timezone, and hardware concurrency. The resulting hash is stored server-side and is used solely for multi-account detection. It is never sold or shared with third parties.

Usage and performance data

We record first-party page views on our own servers (path, timestamp, and an anonymous browser cookie id) for aggregate traffic dashboards visible to administrators only; these records expire automatically after a limited retention period.

Error data

Sentry collects error reports when something goes wrong, including browser information and stack traces. This helps us identify and fix bugs.

3. Cookies

Authentication cookie

We set an HTTP-only JWT cookie when you log in. This cookie is required for authentication and cannot be read by client-side scripts. It expires after a period of inactivity.

Anonymous traffic cookie

We may set an HTTP-only cookie named __ahd_track with a random identifier. It is used for duplicate-account signals and aggregate first-party traffic statistics. It is not readable by client-side scripts.

Consent and advertising preferences

When required for visitors in regulated regions, we use Google's Privacy & Messaging consent platform to present advertising and analytics choices. On pages where that message is active, you can reopen it from the footer's Privacy & cookie settings link to review or revoke your choices.

Third-party advertising cookies

Google and other third-party vendors use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to this and other websites. See section 6 below for how to opt out.

Display preference cookie

We store your UI layout preference in a cookie named ahd-display-mode. This contains no personal data.

4. How We Use Your Data

To create and operate your account and in-game character
To run and simulate the game world
To detect and prevent multi-account abuse using browser fingerprinting
To display advertisements, including player-run banners and ads served by Google
To monitor site performance and diagnose errors

5. Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services. Each has its own privacy policy.

Service	Purpose	Privacy policy
Sentry	Error tracking	sentry.io/privacy
Discord OAuth	Optional sign-in	discord.com/privacy
Google AdSense	Advertising; uses cookies based on your prior visits	policies.google.com/technologies/ads
Google Privacy & Messaging	Consent collection and revocation where required	support.google.com/adsense/privacy-messaging
Google Analytics	Traffic and product analytics	policies.google.com/privacy
Google reCAPTCHA	Bot/abuse protection on forms	policies.google.com/privacy
Google OAuth	Optional sign-in	policies.google.com/privacy

6. Advertising and Personalization

We participate in Google AdSense. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to this and other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to our users based on their visit to this site and/or other sites on the Internet.

You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings. You can also opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies for personalized advertising by visiting aboutads.info. For more information about how Google uses data when you use our partners' sites or apps, see policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

In addition to Google, we work with other advertising partners who may also use cookies to serve ads based on your prior activity. Our ads.txt file lists the authorized sellers of advertising on this site.

7. Data Retention

Account and gameplay data is retained for as long as your account is active. You may delete your account at any time from the Settings page, which removes your account and associated character data from our systems.

8. Children's Privacy

A House Divided is not directed at children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a person under 13 has provided us with personal information, please contact us via Discord and we will delete the data.

9. Your Rights

You may delete your account and associated data at any time via the Settings page. For consent choices tied to our Google consent message, use the Privacy & cookie settings link in the site footer on pages where that message is shown. For other data access or deletion requests, contact us on our Discord server.

10. Contact

For privacy-related questions, email us at [email protected] or reach us on our Discord server.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The effective date at the top of this page will be updated to reflect any changes. Continued use of the service after changes are posted constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.

See also: Terms of Service