Cookie Policy

1. What Are Cookies?

Like almost all professional websites and platforms, TARZ uses cookies. Cookies are tiny text files that are downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. They allow the site to recognize your device, remember preferences (such as Dark Mode or login sessions), and provide a superior, tailored user experience.

2. How We Use Cookies

TARZ uses cookies for several vital reasons, detailed below. We do not use tracking cookies to sell your data to third-party ad networks. Our cookies exist primarily to keep the platform functioning at peak performance and ensuring your authenticated state across the Global Feed and TARZ Arena.

3. Types of Cookies We Set

Account & Authentication Cookies (Strictly Necessary)

When you create an account or log in through Google or Facebook Single Sign-On, we use cookies for the management of the signup process and general administration in NextAuth.js. These are strictly necessary for the platform to recognize that you are logged in as you navigate from the Global Feed to the Arena. Without these, you would need to log in on every single page. These cookies act as JWT session tokens.

Site Preferences Cookies (Functional)

In order to provide you with a great experience on this site, we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it. For example, your preference for Light/Dark mode, or any Skeuomorphic ranking UI defaults. To remember your preferences, we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page.

Performance and Analytics Cookies

TARZ uses privacy-focused native analytics to understand how our users engage with the platform. These cookies track metrics such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to streamline the Arena voting process and improve the Global Feed algorithm.

4. Managing Your Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser or by using the site's "Manage Cookies" dialog in the footer. Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will completely break the ability to log in and participate in the TARZ Arena. Therefore, it is recommended that you do not disable strictly necessary cookies.

5. Third-Party Cookies

In some special cases, we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. As TARZ uses Google and Facebook OAuth for authentication, those platforms will set cookies to manage the handshake and your identity verification on their respective ends. We also utilize Vercel Web Analytics, which sets minimal performance cookies that are fully GDPR-compliant.

6. More Information

Hopefully, this clarifies our cookie policy for you. If there is something that you aren't sure whether you need or not, it's usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site (specifically NextAuth authentication). You can manage your specific consenting categories via the Privacy Preferences popup available in our footer at any time.