Privacy
Your information, your choices, and how GaugeDB works.
Last updated
Who this notice covers
This notice describes information handled by GaugeDB at gaugedb.com, including public browsing and optional account features. GaugeDB is independent of Valve, Steam, Twitch and Kick.
Contact GaugeDB at [email protected] for privacy enquiries or support.
GaugeDB in ChatGPT
The optional GaugeDB ChatGPT plugin reads saved public game information without a GaugeDB account or Steam sign-in. ChatGPT sends the arguments for a tool call, such as a game title, Steam game IDs, store country and result limit. GaugeDB does not request your full conversation, private Steam profile, library, password or payment details. Game IDs identify catalogue entries, not Steam users. Returned game data and source links are sent back to ChatGPT to answer your request.
The plugin does not save tool arguments or conversation transcripts in its application database. Its temporary, process-memory rate counters reset on a one-minute window and disappear on process restart. Network and hosting providers may receive technical request information, including IP addresses and headers, and retain infrastructure logs under their own settings. This notice does not currently specify a verified retention deadline for those logs. OpenAI handles your ChatGPT conversation under its own privacy policy and account controls.
Disconnect GaugeDB through ChatGPT’s plugin controls to stop future tool requests. Contact [email protected] for privacy questions or deletion requests concerning data handled by GaugeDB. See the ChatGPT setup guide and OpenAI privacy policy.
Accounts and information from Steam
You can browse public game pages without signing in. If you choose Steam sign-in, Steam authenticates you on its own service. GaugeDB receives your Steam ID and retrieves available public profile information: display name, avatar links and profile visibility. We store these with your GaugeDB account, profile link and account/session timestamps to recognise you and provide saved features. GaugeDB does not receive your Steam password or your Steam contact email through this sign-in.
When you use Steam library or wishlist features, or signed-in game badges showing owned/wishlisted status on sales pages, GaugeDB requests the data Steam makes available for your linked Steam ID. This can include game IDs, wishlist entries and dates, playtime and last-played dates. These account-game responses are fetched on demand without the shared server data cache; the application does not save a copy of your entire Steam library or wishlist to its account database. Games you separately save to GaugeDB remain in your GaugeDB watchlist or collections.
The public Steam account calculator and game recommendations do not require sign-in. They accept public Steam profile URLs or Steam IDs and request the profile, library, playtime, level, account-standing and current regional price data Steam makes available, and places the Steam IDs in shareable result or comparison URLs. A comparison matches owned games by Steam App ID. GaugeDB saves the loaded public profile, account-standing and returned library snapshot by Steam ID so it can refresh profiles that have been loaded on the site. This includes each returned game’s name, App ID, playtime and last-played time. Missing games are queued for Steam catalogue metadata collection. Recommendations compare those saved playtime and last-played values with GaugeDB’s recorded tags, genres, developers, publishers, franchises, reviews, player counts and regional prices. Owned games are excluded from the results. The snapshot does not include country-specific prices or create a GaugeDB account. Results can also remain in a bounded server-memory cache for up to one hour to limit repeated Steam requests. Calculator and recommendation pages send a normalised analytics path without the Steam ID and never load GaugeDB’s replay script.
Steam privacy settings and API availability control what can be retrieved. GaugeDB cannot reveal private Steam data or change your Steam account, library or wishlist. Without sign-in, saved account features are unavailable; without public Steam game details, the calculator, recommendations and some library or wishlist views are unavailable.
Saved games, preferences and security
We store the games you follow, collection names and membership, price targets, store country, alert settings, notification content and read status. These support your watchlist, collections and alerts; they are not published as a public GaugeDB profile.
Device timezone and language settings help suggest a Steam store country and display local times. The resulting timezone/country hints are sent to GaugeDB and saved in a preference cookie. For signed-in users, the detected device timezone is also saved to the account so price-alert emails use the same local time; selected preferences can also be saved there. This is not GPS location access, and a suggested country may be wrong. You can change it in the site’s country/time controls.
Requests necessarily expose network information such as an IP address to the servers handling them. Session records may include IP address and browser user-agent information. Abuse controls use hashed IP-based keys and, for some account operations, account identifiers. These records help protect sign-in and prevent excessive requests. Network information can also be processed by hosting or infrastructure services handling a request.
Optional email alerts
If you provide an email address in Settings, GaugeDB stores it separately from your Steam identity and sends a verification code using Resend. Price emails remain off until you verify the address and enable them. Codes expire after 15 minutes; expiry is not a promise that every associated database record is deleted at that moment.
To deliver a message, Resend receives the recipient address and message content, including the relevant game/price details and an unsubscribe link for alerts. GaugeDB stores verification/subscription status and delivery records, including recipient, message content, timestamps, delivery status and provider identifiers. When delivery webhooks are configured, delivery, bounce and complaint information is used to update those records or stop further emails.
You can switch emails off in Settings or use an alert’s unsubscribe link. Turning emails off does not delete your account, contact address or past delivery records, and cannot recall a message already submitted for delivery. Providing an address is optional; public browsing and non-email account features do not require it.
Optional donations and badges
If you request a Donator badge, GaugeDB creates a short-lived claim code for your account. You can put that code in a Ko-fi payment message. Ko-fi handles the payment and sends GaugeDB a payment webhook containing the message. GaugeDB checks the code and payment details, then saves the payment message ID, award date and your badge visibility choice. We do not save the supporter email, payment amount or full message from the webhook.
Badges start hidden. You can choose to show yours next to your name on your GaugeDB calculator profile, or hide it again on the support page. The badge does not change your Steam profile. Account deletion removes the linked code and badge from the active application database; Ko-fi handles its payment records separately.
Steam data contributions
The token collector compares app and package IDs with GaugeDB. It sends token values only after you choose to contribute and connect the collector in your browser. GaugeDB checks the signed-in Steam account before linking the submission. GaugeDB saves the app and package IDs you submit and their submission dates, then marks IDs that Steam verifies. It does not save token values or your Steam login credentials.
Submitted IDs and their verification status appear in your Settings and account export. The Contributor badge starts hidden and is available after a verified contribution. You can show or hide it on your public GaugeDB profile. Deleting your account removes the linked submission history and badge from the active database. Contributed product data may remain in GaugeDB after account deletion.
Website analytics
Usage analytics and Session recordings are separate choices and start off. Recordings require usage analytics to establish the recording session. Declining does not affect browsing, sign-in or saved features. Save or withdraw your choices below; the page reloads to stop running scripts, including in other open tabs.
Embedded player charts use separate first-party aggregate usage counts: external loads, visible impressions and outbound link clicks, grouped by game, embed ID and referring website hostname when available. These counts do not store full referring URLs, visitor identifiers or recordings, and do not enter Umami visitor reports. Existing analytics opt-outs, Do Not Track, Global Privacy Control and the collection pause apply. Temporary random load and click receipts prevent duplicate counts. During collection activity, cleanup removes daily totals older than 365 days and receipts older than two days.
We use Umami to understand how people use GaugeDB’s public, account, calculator, legal, unsubscribe and administration pages. Pageviews send the hostname, normalised page path and title, browser language and screen size. Pageview URLs omit query strings and fragments, except the five standard UTM campaign tags on public pages. Campaign labels are limited to 100 characters using letters, numbers, spaces, dots, underscores, hyphens and tildes; duplicate tags and values containing URLs or email addresses are excluded. Other URL parameters are excluded. Calculator result paths omit the Steam ID. Incoming referrers are reduced to their origin; private GaugeDB referrers are omitted. Public client-side navigation can include the previous normalised page path.
The integration does not attach your GaugeDB account ID, Steam ID, contact email or custom event data to pageviews. That does not mean a network request is anonymous to every server handling it. The analytics server may derive browser/device or approximate location information from requests.
We also use Ahrefs Web Analytics on approved public pages after you allow usage analytics. It receives the public page URL without query strings or fragments, the fixed title “GaugeDB”, browser language and screen dimensions. An isolated frame excludes referrers, page links and forms. Private pages and embedded charts do not load Ahrefs. Ahrefs processes network and browser information to derive approximate location and visitor statistics; it does not use tracking cookies. See Ahrefs’ data collection details. Your analytics choice applies to both providers.
All analytics scripts are excluded from development, localhost and preview hosts. After you allow pageview analytics, private, calculator, legal, unsubscribe and administration pages load the Umami pageview tracker but never Ahrefs or the replay/heatmap recorder. Crossing from public browsing into these areas opens a separate document, stopping the public-page recorder. Contribution pages also exclude recording. Basic pageviews can occur on public pages when signed in.
Replays, heatmaps and your choices
For public pages opened while signed out, our analytics tools may capture page structure, interactions, clicks and scrolling for replays and heatmaps. Replays and heatmaps require the separate Session recordings choice. The configuration samples 15% for each, uses strict masking and limits a replay to five minutes. Five minutes is the recording duration, not the storage-retention period. Form inputs and page text are masked; account-menu, notification and consent widgets are blocked from replay capture. Masking reduces risk but does not make recordings anonymous or replace consent.
Recordings can include public page URLs and game-filter parameters. Basic pageviews exclude arbitrary query strings. Do not place private information in public search/filter URLs. The recorder does not load for a public document opened while signed in, or until the tracker has an analytics session.
All analytics stay off when a supported Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal is enabled, even if you previously allowed analytics. You can also block the analytics host in your browser and reload any open GaugeDB pages. These controls do not remove data already sent. You can withdraw your choice under Website analytics above.
Other services and public source data
Hosting/database providers process requests and stored data to operate GaugeDB. Steam supplies sign-in and public game/account data. Resend processes optional email delivery. We also use analytics and recording services. These providers may process information outside your country.
Public game pages may show Twitch and Kick channel names, IDs, titles, language, profile images and viewer counts obtained from their APIs. The latest observed channel list is stored; historical category chart samples contain aggregate counts. Public game news and artwork come from their stated sources. These public-source records are distinct from a visitor’s private GaugeDB account.
YouTube videos in Steam news posts are outbound links; GaugeDB does not load a YouTube player automatically. Following a video link opens YouTube under its own privacy choices. Loading externally hosted Steam, Twitch or Kick content sends a request to that provider, which can receive your IP address and browser information. Following an external link or signing in with Steam takes you to a service with its own rules. See the Steam privacy policy, Twitch privacy notice, Google privacy policy and Resend privacy policy.
Retention and deletion
Saved account data remains available until changed, removed or the GaugeDB account is deleted. Settings → Delete account removes the account and related profile, sessions, watchlist, collections, preferences, notifications, email contact and linked delivery records from the active application database. It does not delete your Steam account or data held independently by Steam.
Account deletion does not automatically erase browser storage, provider logs, backups, emails already sent or analytics that were not linked to your account. The application has no general automatic age-based purge for saved account or email-delivery records. Expired sign-in state, nonce and rate-limit records are pruned by the sync job when that job runs.
GaugeDB’s self-hosted Umami database is hosted in New Zealand. Usage analytics are kept for 12 months; session recordings and heatmap interactions are kept for 30 days. A daily cleanup removes expired records in bounded batches. Analytics are not linked to your GaugeDB account, so deleting an account does not identify or remove those records.
Umami application and database container logs rotate by size, with up to three 10 MB files per container. This is a storage limit, not a fixed deletion deadline. Other infrastructure logs and provider-held records follow their own settings; their retention periods remain under review. Contact us using the details below for retention or deletion requests.
Access, correction and enquiries
Settings provides an account-data export covering account details, profile, watchlist, collections, preferences, contribution history, donation badge and claim status, email status and up to the latest 100 notifications. It is not an export of every security record, provider log or email-delivery record. You can edit saved preferences, watchlist items, collections and your optional contact address in the site. Update public Steam profile details through Steam; GaugeDB refreshes its linked profile on sign-in.
You may have rights to request access, correction or other handling of your personal information under applicable law. Email [email protected] for these requests and complaints, including requests the self-service export cannot fulfil. Do not send passwords, session tokens or unnecessary identity documents with an enquiry.
If New Zealand privacy law applies, you can also seek guidance or complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Other rights and regulators may apply depending on your location and how you use the service.
Changes to this notice
Updates to this notice are posted on this page with a revised “Last updated” date. A privacy notice explains processing; it is not, by itself, consent to optional tracking.
See also the terms of use.