Privacy policy
Who we are
Delidded (delidded.com) is a hobbyist site about CPU mods, cooling, BIOS work and keeping older PCs useful. In this policy, "we" and "us" mean the people who run and write the site. If you have a question about your information, write to bench@delidded.com or use the contact page.
This policy is written for readers in the United States, in plain English. It describes what the site actually does today, and it changes when the site does.
What we collect
Reading the site
You do not need an account to read Delidded, and there is no reader sign-up of any kind. We run no tracking pixels and no fingerprinting scripts. One thing to know: Microsoft says the cookies Microsoft Clarity sets may also be used for its advertising (more below). What we do measure is described below: a short reading note our own server keeps, and Microsoft Clarity, which records how pages are used. The site's fonts are served from our own server, so opening a page does not contact a font service.
Server logs
Like nearly every website, our server keeps standard logs of the requests it receives. A log line usually holds the IP address the request came from, the date and time, the page or file requested, the referring page if your browser sends one, and your browser's user agent string. We use these logs to keep the site running, find errors and spot abuse such as floods of automated requests. They are kept for a short period and then deleted, and we do not use them to build profiles of readers.
To slow down bots, parts of the site keep short-lived counters per address in the server's memory (for example, a limit on how many contact messages one address can send in a minute). These counters are never written to disk and disappear on their own.
The staff dashboard has a sign-in page. Attempts to sign in there are recorded with the IP address so that repeated password guessing can be blocked, and those records are cleared out after about a week. Readers never need that page.
The contact form and email
The contact form asks for your name (optional), your email address and your message. We store those three things in our database until we have answered you and no longer need the message, and then we delete it. We use your email address only to reply. It never goes on a mailing list and we do not pass it to anyone. Mail you send directly to bench@delidded.com is handled the same way.
Calculators and the HTML editor
The four Modkit calculators and the online HTML editor run entirely in your browser. The numbers and code you type stay on your device and are not sent to us.
Affiliate links and partner cookies
Delidded earns money through affiliate programs such as CJ Affiliate and the eBay Partner Network. Some pages carry links to shops in the CJ network or to eBay searches, and some may show banners supplied through CJ.
When you click one of these partner links, you leave Delidded. eBay, or CJ and the merchant, may then set cookies or use similar technology in your browser so they can credit the referral to us and record a qualifying purchase. That happens on their side, under their privacy policies. The reports we receive show which links earned a commission; they do not tell us your name, address or payment details.
Banners from CJ load their images from CJ's servers. Loading one sends a normal web request to CJ, which can log details such as your IP address and browser, and CJ may read or set a cookie at that moment.
You can read their policies here:
- CJ's privacy policy: https://www.cj.com/legal/privacy
Our cookie policy lists these cookies in a short table and explains how to block them.
How we count partner clicks
We want to know which kinds of links readers find useful, without watching anyone. So when you click a partner link, your browser sends our server a small note naming two things: where the link sat on the page (for example, inline in an article or in a sidebar) and which network it belongs to (for example CJ or eBay). The server adds one to that day's total for that combination, filed under the country Cloudflare reports for the visit. The link itself goes straight to the shop.
We do not store your IP address, set a cookie or keep any identifier for this. What ends up in our database is a table of daily totals (a date, a link position, a network, a country code and a number) and nothing that could point back to you.
The reading note
When you leave a page, or switch to another tab, your browser sends our own server one short note about that page: how many seconds it was actually on your screen, how far down you scrolled, the page address, and which site sent you here (only its name, which we sort into search engine, AI assistant, another site or none). The server adds whether the visit came from a phone or a computer and the country code Cloudflare reports. The note carries a random number made up by the open page so that a second note from the same page view updates the first instead of counting twice. That number is never stored in your browser and is dropped from our records after two days.
The reading note sets no cookie, and we do not store your IP address or your browser's details with it. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, no note is sent at all.
Microsoft Clarity: heatmaps and recorded visits
We use Microsoft Clarity to see how pages are read: heatmaps of where readers click and how far they scroll, and recordings of visits that replay mouse movement, scrolling and clicks on the page. It loads only after a page has finished loading, and it sets its own cookies in your browser (such as _clck and _clsk) to tie the pages of one visit together. Microsoft says these cookies may also be used for its own advertising. Microsoft processes this data under its own privacy statement: https://www.microsoft.com/privacy/privacystatement.
If you visit from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, or we cannot tell where you are, a small box asks first. Until you choose OK, Clarity is told that consent is denied and does not set its cookies; No thanks keeps it that way. Your answer is kept in one cookie from us, dld_thermcam, for six months, and the "Cookie choices" button at the bottom of every page lets you change it. Elsewhere Clarity runs without asking.
To opt out at any time: choose No thanks in that box, clear the dld_thermcam cookie and Clarity's cookies for delidded.com, or turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser, which stops Clarity from loading on Delidded at all.
Content delivery and security through Cloudflare
Delidded is delivered through Cloudflare, which sits between your browser and our server. Cloudflare speeds up delivery and protects the site from attacks and abusive traffic. To do that it processes the IP address and request details of every visit, and it may set a short-lived security cookie when it needs to check that traffic is coming from a real browser. Cloudflare handles that data under its own policy: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/.
Children
Delidded is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has sent us information through the contact form or by email, write to bench@delidded.com and we will delete it.
Your privacy rights in US states
California and a number of other states give their residents rights over personal information that businesses hold about them. Those rights generally include asking what personal information a business has collected, asking for it to be corrected or deleted, and opting out of its sale or of sharing for targeted advertising.
Whether or not a given state law applies to a site our size, we will honor these requests from any reader. In practice the only personal information we might hold about you is a contact message and the email address it came from. To ask what we have, or to have it deleted, write to bench@delidded.com. We may ask you to confirm the request from the same address, so we do not delete or disclose someone else's message by mistake. Asking will not change how the site works for you.
We do not sell personal information. The one advertising link is Microsoft Clarity, whose cookies Microsoft says it may also use for advertising; readers in the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland only get them after choosing OK, and Global Privacy Control keeps Clarity off for everyone. Beyond that, we do not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.
Keeping data to a minimum
The information we keep is small on purpose: contact messages until they are answered, brief server logs, sign-in records for the staff page, anonymous daily click totals and anonymous reading notes. Clarity's recordings are kept by Microsoft, not on our server. No method of storing data is perfectly secure, but keeping very little is the best protection we can offer.
Changes to this policy
If the site starts doing something new with information, such as adding a feature that stores data, we will update this page first and change the "Last updated" date at the top.
Contact
Questions or requests about this policy go to bench@delidded.com, or through the contact page.
Advertiser banners
A few pages show an advertiser banner from the MaxBounty network. Its image is a copy kept on our own server, so nothing is requested from MaxBounty while you read. Clicking it first asks our server for the tracked partner link, which is when the click is counted; your browser then opens that link, and from there the network or advertiser may use cookies for referral attribution. We record aggregate affiliate clicks to understand which placements are useful. We do not send contact-form details through these links.