Cookie Policy
The technologies covered here — cookies plus a handful of related browser-storage mechanisms — are listed below with their job, their lifespan on your device, and the controls available for removing them. Personal-data handling at the policy level is treated separately on the Privacy Policy page; you can think of this page as the technical annex to that one. Background on the site itself sits on the About page, while the flagship operator write-up is hosted on the Mystake Casino homepage.
1. What a cookie is, briefly
A cookie is a small text file a website asks your browser to store locally on your device. The next time the same site loads, the browser sends the file back, letting the site recognise the visit, remember a setting, or tally traffic. Cookies cannot execute code on your machine, cannot read other files, and cannot identify you personally without other information already tied to the cookie. Many things people loosely call "cookies" today are technically other browser-storage mechanisms — localStorage, sessionStorage, IndexedDB — that operate in much the same way; for plain English, the word "cookie" on this page covers all of them.
2. Categories of cookies used on Mystake
Three categories of cookie are in play on Mystake. The consent banner you see on a first visit lets you pick which categories run; that selection can be revised any time later through the footer link.
| Category | Purpose | Consent required |
|---|---|---|
| Strictly necessary | Make the site work: load the page, remember your cookie-banner choice, route traffic, prevent abuse. | No (legal basis: legitimate interest) |
| Analytics | Anonymous, aggregated traffic measurement: which pages are read, where readers come from, which links are clicked. | Yes |
| Affiliate tracking | Recognise that a click through to an operator came from Mystake so the partnership can be credited. | Yes |
There are no advertising or remarketing cookies running on Mystake. On-site display advertising isn't shown, programmatic ad networks aren't loaded, and we don't pixel-track readers as they move across other parts of the web. Anyone curious about how the site actually pays for itself instead will find the model documented on the Affiliate Disclosure page.
3. Specific cookies, third parties and lifetimes
Every cookie that could potentially appear on a Mystake visit is enumerated below. Anything set by an outside service — third-party cookies — is governed end-to-end by that third party, not by us, and we point you to their own policy documents for the fine detail.
| Name | Set by | Category | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|---|
mystake_consent | Mystake | Strictly necessary | Stores your cookie-banner choice so the banner does not reappear on every page load. | 12 months |
mystake_session | Mystake | Strictly necessary | Anonymous session identifier used to load assets and rate-limit abusive traffic. | Until browser closes |
_ga, _ga_* | Google Analytics 4 | Analytics | Aggregated traffic statistics: pages per session, traffic sources, average time on page. IP addresses are anonymised before storage. | 14 months |
mystake_aff | Mystake | Affiliate tracking | Records that a click on an outbound operator link originated from Mystake so the partnership is credited. | 30 days |
For the underlying third-party policies, refer to Google Privacy & Terms in the case of Google Analytics. Once a click takes you onward to an operator partner site, that operator's own cookies start to come into play, and those are governed by their privacy policy rather than by anything on this domain.
4. How to control cookies in your browser
Every modern browser allows you to block cookies, delete existing ones, or reject third-party cookies outright. The official documentation:
You can also use Mystake in your browser's private or incognito mode, which stops cookies from being preserved across sessions.
5. What happens if you decline non-essential cookies
Mystake keeps working exactly as it does for everyone else. Every page remains readable, every internal link still resolves, every click-through to an operator's site still works. A handful of small footnotes apply. Your visit will not appear in our traffic statistics. Clicking an affiliate link with affiliate tracking declined means the partnership commission doesn't register on our end — your bonuses, stakes and payouts on the operator are entirely unaffected; the only thing that misses is our cut. And if you wipe your cookies completely, the consent banner will return, because your previous answer was itself stored as a cookie. The full editorial framework that sits behind every page (including how affiliate links are surfaced) is documented on the Editorial Policy page, and the player-safety obligations live on the Responsible Gambling page.
6. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control
We respect Global Privacy Control (GPC) signals — if your browser is sending GPC, everything beyond strictly necessary cookies is blocked automatically on your behalf, and the consent banner doesn't appear at all. The earlier Do Not Track header was never standardised in any enforceable way, so it's not used here as a basis for anything.
7. Updates to this policy
Whenever the cookies operating on Mystake change in any way, this page gets updated and the "Last updated" stamp at the top is moved on. Material updates — a new category of cookie, a new third-party processor — are accompanied by a one-off refresh of the consent banner, so visitors who already gave consent are asked again. Smaller housekeeping edits (rewording for clarity, link updates) do not trigger a renewed consent prompt.
8. Questions and complaints
Specific cookie-level queries are best handled through the Contact page. UK-site complaints under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 are escalated externally to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), accessible at ico.org.uk.