Cookies and you

This website uses cookies. Cookies are small bits of information which are stored locally on your device, and are used to enhance your experience. For more information, please visit cookiesandyou.com .

As required under the GDPR, the ePrivacy directive and various other privacy legislation worldwide, you can exercise per-category control over the cookies placed on your device. Click Manage preferences to review or change your choices at any time.

Functional cookies (always on)

Functional cookies are required for the website to function. They keep you logged in, store preferences, and protect the site against abuse. This data is not used for any other purpose.

Device identifier (udid)

A random 16-character identifier stored in the udid cookie (10-year expiry). It is used to recognise your device across sessions for security purposes (e.g. detecting new-device logins) and to pseudonymously identify you in the consent audit trail described below. No consent is required to set this cookie.

Analytics cookies

Analytics cookies help us understand how the site is used. All analytics services are initialised in consent-denied mode and only activated after you grant consent.

  • Google Analytics (google-analytics): Statistical analysis of site usage via Google's GA4 platform. Enabling this grants analytics_storage in Google's consent mode v2 .
  • Application Insights (application-insights): Microsoft's browser SDK for tracking JavaScript errors and exceptions in your browser while you browse the site.
  • Microsoft Clarity (microsoft-clarity): Session recording and heatmap tool that helps us understand how visitors use TSC and identify usability issues. Clarity may record mouse movements, clicks, and scrolling behaviour. Data is processed by Microsoft under their Privacy Statement . Cookies set include _clck, _clsk, CLID (on .trainsimcommunity.com) and MUID, MR, SM (on Microsoft/Bing domains).
  • TSC Campaigns (tsc-campaigns): Used to understand how users view and interact with ads run on TSC.

Advertising cookies

  • Google Ads (google-ads): Enables Google demographic data in Analytics by granting ad_storage, ad_user_data, and ad_personalization consent signals.
  • TSC Analytics (tsc-analytics): Also covers advertising attribution as part of TSC's own campaign tracking.

External content cookies

Some pages embed content from third-party providers. Because these providers may set their own cookies, external content is blocked until you grant consent.

  • YouTube (youtube): Video embeds from YouTube. Uses Klaro's contextual consent: each embed shows an individual prompt before loading.
  • Vimeo (vimeo): Video embeds from Vimeo. Also uses per-embed contextual consent.
  • External media (external-media): Blanket consent for other external images and embeds not covered by a dedicated service above.

External content is provided by third-party websites outside TSC's control. We cannot guarantee how those sites handle your data once content is loaded.

Consent audit trail

Each time you save your consent preferences, we record the following in our database:

  • Your device identifier (the udid cookie value)
  • Your user ID, if you are logged in
  • The set of services you consented to or declined
  • The consent UI version and privacy policy version in force at the time
  • A one-way SHA-256 hash of your IP address (not the IP itself)
  • Your browser's user-agent string
  • A UTC timestamp

These records are retained to demonstrate compliance with GDPR consent obligations. They are not used for any other purpose.