Where you respect the speed of sound

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 7 November 2026

Who we are

Sonic Scene (sonicscene.net) is a Sonic the Hedgehog fan site run by Luke Hackett in the United Kingdom. Luke decides how the personal information described here is used (in legal terms, he is the “data controller”). In this policy, “we”, “us” and “our” mean Sonic Scene.

You can reach us through our contact form.

This policy explains what information Sonic Scene collects when you visit the site, send us a message or join as a member, why we collect it, who else receives it, how long we keep it and what your rights are.

Cookies and the consent banner

Sonic Scene uses a small number of cookies and similar technologies, such as your browser’s local storage. Some are needed for the site to work, and we use those without asking. Everything else stays switched off until you agree to it.

On your first visit, a consent banner (made by the Complianz plugin) asks what you’d like. You can choose Accept, Deny, or pick categories under View preferences:

  • Functional (always on): what the site needs to work, such as remembering your consent choice and keeping members logged in.
  • Statistics: Google Analytics, which helps us see how the site is used (see “Statistics (Google Analytics)” below).
  • Marketing: content from other websites that can set its own cookies and follow you across sites. On Sonic Scene this means Google AdSense adverts and YouTube videos (and posts from X, if we ever embed one).

Nothing in the Statistics or Marketing categories loads until you agree. We store your choice in cookies whose names start with cmplz_ (for example cmplz_functional, cmplz_statistics and cmplz_marketing) for 365 days. You can change or withdraw your consent at any time with the Manage consent button at the bottom of the screen or the Manage consent link in the footer of every page. Our Cookie Policy lists these cookies in more detail.

You can also block or delete cookies in your browser’s settings. If you block all cookies, some parts of the site, such as logging in, won’t work.

Cookies and browser storage we use

  • Consent cookies: the cmplz_ cookies described above (365 days).
  • Login cookies: if you log in, WordPress sets its usual login cookies (wordpress_logged_in_…, wordpress_sec_… and wordpress_test_cookie) so the site knows it’s you. They are removed when you log out or the login expires.
  • Password reset: while you choose a new password from a reset link, WordPress keeps your reset code in a short-lived cookie (wp-resetpass-…) that is deleted when you close your browser.
  • Age check: if someone who says they are under 13 tries to join, we set a cookie named ssm_age_block for 24 hours so that browser can’t immediately try again. It contains no personal information.
  • Local storage (not cookies): our games and wordsearches use your browser’s local storage to remember unfinished puzzles and guests’ results (see “Play” below). When you read a reader review, a fan fiction story or a Sonic Memory, a small note in local storage stops the same visit being counted twice in that page’s view count.
  • Advertising and statistics cookies: only if you accept them, Google AdSense and Google Analytics set their own cookies (see “Advertising (Google AdSense)” and “Statistics (Google Analytics)” below).

YouTube videos

Many Sonic Scene pages, including game pages and cartoon episode pages, include YouTube videos. We embed them using YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com), and we block them as well: until you accept Marketing cookies in the banner, or click a video’s placeholder to accept, your browser doesn’t contact YouTube at all and you see a placeholder instead.

Once a video loads, YouTube (a Google service) receives information such as your IP address, details of your browser and device, and the page you’re on, and it may set its own cookies or use local storage, particularly when you play the video. The legal basis is your consent. Google’s privacy policy is at https://policies.google.com/privacy.

Posts from X (formerly Twitter)

Sonic Scene doesn’t currently embed posts from X; a few pages simply link to them. If we embed one in future, it will be blocked like a YouTube video until you accept Marketing cookies. Once it loads, X may set cookies and receive information about your visit. X’s privacy policy is at https://x.com/en/privacy.

The links to our X, Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube pages in the site footer are ordinary links: nothing loads from those sites unless you click one.

The contact form

When you send a message through our contact form, we ask for:

  • your name and email address;
  • what your message is about (the topic);
  • if you like, a company or website name and a subject line;
  • your message.

The form emails these details to Sonic Scene’s owner, with your email address as the reply address, so we can answer you. Messages are not saved in the website’s database. We keep the emails only for as long as we need them to deal with your message, and delete them after 12 months at the latest.

To keep out spam, the form also uses a hidden field that people don’t see, a time check, Cloudflare Turnstile (see below) and a limit of five messages an hour from each connection. That limit is counted with a scrambled (hashed) version of your IP address, which is deleted automatically after an hour.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in answering messages sent to us and keeping the form free of spam.

Cloudflare Turnstile

Our join, log-in (including “resend confirmation” and “forgotten password”), contact and submission forms use Cloudflare Turnstile, a security check that confirms you’re a person rather than a bot, usually without you having to do anything. To do this, Cloudflare processes information about your browser and connection, including your IP address. Turnstile runs only on those forms, is used only for security (never for advertising) and is needed for the forms to work, so it isn’t part of the consent banner. Cloudflare’s privacy policy is at https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in protecting the site and members’ accounts from spam and abuse.

Hosting

Sonic Scene is hosted by hosting.com on servers in Dallas, Texas, in the United States. Like any website, our server records basic technical information about each request in its logs, such as your IP address, browser type, the page requested and the time, so that the site works and stays secure. Our hosting company handles this information only on our behalf. Because our servers are in the United States, information about your visit is handled outside the UK. When that happens, we make sure it has the protection that UK data protection law requires for transfers abroad.

We also use a caching system (LiteSpeed Cache) so pages load faster. It stores copies of public pages, not information about you.

Advertising (Google AdSense)

We show Google AdSense adverts to help pay for the site. AdSense loads only if you accept Marketing cookies in our consent banner. Google uses cookies to show and measure these adverts. You can read how Google uses information from websites that show its adverts at https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites, and you can view and change your ad personalisation choices in Google’s Ads Settings at https://adssettings.google.com.

Statistics (Google Analytics)

We use Google Analytics to understand how people use Sonic Scene, for example which pages are popular. It runs only if you accept Statistics cookies in our consent banner. Google Analytics uses cookies (such as _ga) to collect information about your visit: the pages you view, how long you stay, the website that sent you, and your device, browser and approximate location. Google gives us reports; we don’t use them to identify you. Google’s privacy policy is at https://policies.google.com/privacy.

Member accounts

When you join Sonic Scene we ask for:

  • A member name. It is shown on your profile, your passport and next to anything you share. Please don’t use your full real name.
  • Your email address. We use it to confirm your account, to let you reset your password and to tell you when a moderator approves or declines something you sent. It is never shown on the site.
  • A password. It is stored scrambled (hashed) by WordPress; nobody at Sonic Scene can read it.
  • Your month and year of birth. We only use these to check that you are 13 or over. They are not stored.

Your profile and passport are private until you choose otherwise. If you tick “Show my profile and passport publicly” on My account, your member name, avatar, rank, rings, stamps, bio, favourite game, join date and the work you have shared appear on your profile page, in the member list and on the leaderboards. Your profile page also becomes visible once a moderator publishes something you’ve shared, so readers can see who made it, but you only appear on the leaderboards if you tick the box.

Logging in sets the normal WordPress login cookies, which are needed for the site to know it’s you.

Things you share (fan art, fan fiction, reviews, Sonic Memories, quizzes)

  • Everything you send is checked by a moderator before it appears. Moderators can see your member name and email address while they do this.
  • Pictures: we re-save every image you upload, which removes hidden information such as camera details and location data. Until a piece is approved it is kept in a private folder that visitors can’t open.
  • Once approved, your work is shown on Sonic Scene with your member name: fan art in the Fan Art gallery, stories in the Fan Fiction section, reviews on the game’s page and the Reviews page, Sonic Memories (with a photo if you added one) on the Memories page, quizzes you make in the “Made by members” section of Play, and all of it on your profile.
  • You keep ownership of your work. You can ask us to take something down through the contact form.
  • We email you when a moderator approves your work. If we decline a submission, we email you to say why.

Play (Daily Sonic Challenge, Guess the Game, quizzes, wordsearches)

  • If you are logged in, we save your results (score, date, streak, finished puzzles) so they count towards your rings, stamps and the leaderboards.
  • If you play as a guest, your results are kept only in your own browser (local storage) for up to three days, so they can be added to your passport if you join or log in. Nothing about a guest’s game is saved on our server apart from a temporary game token that expires after three hours.
  • Leaderboards only ever show members who have made their profile public. Staff accounts never appear.

Security

  • To stop spam and abuse we count how often forms and games are used from each connection. We store a scrambled (hashed) version of your IP address for this, and it is deleted automatically within 24 hours.
  • Our join, log-in, contact and submission forms use Cloudflare Turnstile to check that you are not a bot (see “Cloudflare Turnstile” above).

Emails we send

  • A link to confirm your email address when you join (and a new one if you ask). The link lasts 48 hours, and accounts that are never confirmed are deleted automatically.
  • Password reset emails, if you ask for one.
  • A message when a moderator approves or declines something you sent.

We don’t send newsletters or marketing to members.

Keeping and deleting your information

  • Your account stays until you delete it.
  • Delete my account (on My account) permanently removes your account, your passport, rings and stamps, and all your Play results including your leaderboard entries. Your fan art and anything still waiting for a moderator are deleted straight away. Other work you’ve shared is taken off the site at once and kept in the site’s bin for 30 days before it is deleted for good. Deleting your account can’t be undone.
  • You can also ask us, through the contact form, for a copy of the information we hold about you, or to delete it. We use WordPress’s privacy tools to export or erase it.

Children

You must be 13 or over to create an account. Anyone can play the games as a guest without giving us any personal information.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

  • ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
  • ask us to correct it if it’s wrong or incomplete;
  • ask us to delete it;
  • ask us to limit how we use it, or object to how we use it;
  • ask for it in a format you can take elsewhere;
  • withdraw your consent at any time where we rely on it (for example, by changing your choices with Manage consent). This doesn’t affect anything we did before you withdrew it.

To use any of these rights, contact us through the contact form. We’ll reply within one month. If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time, for example when we add a new feature to the site. The date at the top shows when it last changed.

Questions

Use the contact form if you have any questions about this policy.