Plain language, no dark patterns
The short version: the board is here to be looked at, not to look back at you. We measure how it's used in aggregate, we never sell anything, and we never try to work out who you are.
On The Board and these marketing pages we use Microsoft Clarity (and, if the operator turns it on, Google Analytics) to understand how people use the site — which boards get attention, and roughly which countries visitors come from. This is aggregate and anonymous: it is counts by country, never a name, an address, or a way to identify you as a person. These load only after you accept the cookie notice. The TV version loads neither, on a lobby screen or on your phone.
Our own server counts the pages it serves, for every visitor, whatever you choose in the cookie notice: how many times each page was opened each day, and whether a visit came from another website or from one of our campaign links, and which. On The Board and these marketing pages it also notes whether the visit came from a phone, a tablet, a computer or a TV, and how many different visitors each page had that day. To tell visitors apart within the day it combines your IP address and browser type under a key that is made fresh each day, held only in memory and then thrown away, and it keeps only the day's totals. It sets nothing on your device, sends nothing to anyone else, and keeps no IP address and nothing that could be traced back to you. On the TV, the science screens and the cockatoo it counts only how often the page is opened and how people got there, never who.
If you accept the cookie notice, we set one small first-party cookie: a random tag, kept for a year, that lets us count visitors rather than page loads, and that the approximate-city count below is kept against. No name, no tracking across other websites, no sharing. Decline and it is never set, and if you accepted before and change your mind, it is removed, and we delete the days it was counted and the town kept against it. (Records from before 3 October 2026 were scrambled so that they no longer match any tag, so we can't pick out yours; they are all gone by the end of 2026.) Otherwise the days it was counted are kept for about two months, then deleted; only a running total of visitors outlives them. No screen gets one without asking, not even a venue's lobby TV. Your game streaks and passport stamps don't depend on it: the board keeps them under an ID it stores in your own browser the first time you play, and our server keeps your progress under that ID, whatever you choose here.
If you accept the cookie notice, we find the rough city your visit comes from so we can show a map of where the board is watched. Your IP address goes to an outside lookup service (by default, ipwho.is) that turns it into a town; we then discard the IP — we keep only the town against your device tag, never your address, and never the IP itself. That per-device record expires after about 90 days, and the town totals on the map are counted from those records, so they go with them. Decline and none of this happens; change your mind later and it is deleted at once.
If you tap to tell The Board which town you're in, send a shoutout, answer the daily question, or play the games and the passport, we use exactly what you gave it and nothing more. Public surfaces — leaderboards, champion boards — show only the two or three initials you chose. Town reports appear only as aggregate totals; a real person reviews every shoutout before it airs.
Speaker's Corner is the one place the board shows a face — and only because you put it there, from your own phone. Before anything airs, the photo and text are checked by two automated screening services (Microsoft Azure Content Safety and Sightengine); anything they can't clear waits for a human instead. An aired post retires after about an hour and its photo is permanently deleted; rejected photos are deleted immediately; the operator can take a post down at any moment. Your post is used for that hour on the board and for nothing else.
When you send us one of our forms (for a board, for advertising, to be a passport stop, or about a cuckoo clock for your town), what you type goes to the people who will answer you, and we use it to answer you and to follow up on what you asked. Our own record of who we're talking with keeps your name, your organization and what you asked about. It never keeps your email or phone; those stay with the form you sent.
The big screen in a venue is that venue's own display, set up by the venue to show the board. It carries no device tag: we count screens only by how many are connected at once. It loads no analytics either: no Microsoft Clarity, no Google Analytics. Neither does the TV version when you open it on your own phone or computer, since it has no cookie notice to ask you with. It doesn't profile the people in the room; it just shows the board. Our server does count how many times the TV page is opened, and from which link, as it does for every page (see A count of visits).
The Elements and the Molecule Gallery collect nothing about the people looking at them: no analytics and no device tag, on a lobby screen or on your phone. Explore as long as you like; our server counts how often the page is opened, never who opens it. If you turn on the Ambient soundscape, your browser remembers that choice and its volume on your own device, so the next screen picks up where you left off; none of it is sent to us.
Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to anyone. There is no market in it here.
The analytics we use report groups and places, not people. We couldn't tell you who visited even if we wanted to — and we don't want to. Anything that does carry your initials or your face is on the board because you chose to put it there.
No advertising pixels, no cross-site trackers, no retargeting. Sponsor slots on the board are supplied by the businesses themselves — they don't watch you back.
The "where people watch from" map is drawn at the country level — plus, for viewers who opted in, an approximate city. It shows reach, not addresses: a pin for a town at most, never a pin on a person or a home.
On The Board and these pages, the analytics cookies and our own device tag are set only if you click Accept; the TV version sets neither, on any screen. Decline and none are set, and the ones an earlier Accept set on this site are removed, along with what we kept against our own tag. Your choice lasts a year, and we ask again sooner if this notice changes what it asks for. No screen carries the tag without its visitor's say-so: not a venue's lobby TV, and never a screen saver, which can't be asked.
Two small cookies only do what you asked for: tc-consent, set when you click Accept, tells our server you agreed and lasts as long as your choice does (a refusal stays in your browser's own storage); and tc-districts, set only when you check in at a passport stop, remembers the districts you've collected this month and lasts 40 days. Two more come from our host, Microsoft Azure, on every page, the TV version and the science screens included: ARRAffinity and ARRAffinitySameSite name the server your visit goes to, not you. Everyone sent to that server gets the same value, they last only for your browser session, and our own code never reads them. As for your choice, you can change your mind any time:
One more is only ever set on our own team's browsers: tc-internal, when one of us signs in, so our own visits are left out of the counts. It says only "1", and a visitor never gets it.
You can also clear cookies in your browser, or use your browser's Do-Not-Track / privacy settings. Because we don't build profiles, there's nothing to "opt out" of beyond the analytics cookies themselves.
The Snoqualmie Towne Crier is operated by ITMedic (Green IT Consulting LLC), Snoqualmie, Washington.
If you're in a place with data-protection rights (the EU/UK and others), you can ask what we hold about you — realistically a random device tag (if you accepted the cookie notice), game progress under initials you chose, aggregate counts, and any form you sent us — and ask us to delete it. Email and we'll help.
Questions, requests, or a security report:
flapcast@itmedic.ai · 425-242-3378
If this policy changes, the updated version lives here. Last updated October 2026.