Privacy

Surf Gateway TV is a free community project. Watching requires no account. Optional features and their account or cookie use are described below. The spectator shows no ads and loads no third-party trackers or analytics. This page lists everything it keeps about your visit.

When you open the site

Your browser connects only to this site. Like every website, our server sees your IP address and your browser’s user agent. The app uses your address only in memory, to apply per-visitor limits: watching up to three servers at once, and how often you can send reports. It doesn’t store it. Our web server’s access log keeps a shortened address, with the last two parts of an IPv4 address and most of an IPv6 address removed, and is overwritten as it reaches a fixed size.

Stored in your browser

• Your viewing options and whether sound is on.
• The player you last chose on each server, as the game’s numeric player ID, for six hours, so the viewer can return to them.
• Your server list search and filter, for the current tab only.
• With anonymous viewing stats enabled, a short preparation timer for the current tab, used once when the viewer opens and ignored after ten minutes.
• Up to two demos you open locally, for at most one day, when browser storage is available. Otherwise the file lasts only while its demo page stays open.
• Engine and map files in your browser’s normal cache, so later visits load faster.

You can clear all of this in your browser’s settings for this site.

Demo playback

A local demo’s complete file stays in your browser. The app sends a bounded portion of its connection sign-on and local sound names to prepare map assets. Sign-on can contain recorded player information; it is parsed only for map and resource facts, never added to viewing stats, and deleted when preparation finishes or fails. Cancelled or expired jobs are removed too. Interrupted preparation is cleaned up when the service restarts. Prepared assets expire after a day without use. Record links fetch their public metadata and demo from speedrun.eu into a bounded shared cache. Recorded playback does not join a live server’s spectator list or community chat.

Anonymous viewing stats

While you watch, the viewer sends a summary of how well it runs after about 15 seconds and then about once a minute: frame times, load times, errors, the server and map, and your device type (operating system, browser, graphics chip and screen size). It also includes whether you use the home-screen app or fullscreen, orientation, background/restore and network changes, coarse connection/data-saving hints, and long main-thread task counts and timings where your browser supports them. These are diagnostic hints, not a speed test or an exact device model. Each page gets a random ID that is never reused or kept on your device. We don’t store your IP address, your full user agent, player names, chat or anything else that identifies you. Summaries are deleted after 30 days.

To stop sending them, turn off Share anonymous viewing stats in the viewer’s Options. Browsers that send Global Privacy Control never send them.

Problem reports

When you send a report, we save what you wrote, the contact you gave (if any), your device type and the page’s technical details: the server and map, the viewer’s state, frame rate and errors, and its recent log, which can include public messages from the game server. Your IP address isn’t saved.

We get a short notification in our private Discord channel with the report’s reference, the server, map and page, your device type, the start of your description and the contact you gave (if any), so we can reply. The full technical details stay on our server. Reports are kept on our server for up to 90 days; to have yours deleted sooner, send another report quoting its reference.

Game information

Player names, chat and movement come from the game servers’ spectator feed and are shown as the servers broadcast them. Player names in the server list come from the servers’ public status.

Who you watch

While the viewer is open and visible, it tells our server which player it shows, as the game’s numeric player ID. The game server gets only the number of SGTV viewers on each player and shows it in that player’s in-game spectator list, for example “2 watching on SGTV”. Nothing identifies you, and nothing is stored.

Links to other sites

Record links open speedrun.eu and source links open GitHub. Nothing is sent to them unless you follow a link; they have their own privacy policies.

Optional Steam chat

Chat requires Steam sign-in to read or send; watching stays anonymous. Signing in opens Steam and sets secure cookies scoped to this feature. Chat sign-in is remembered for up to 30 days on this device, including app closure and service updates. Sign out revokes it. Hashed login handles and session identity/expiry metadata remain in private server storage until logout or expiry. Authored messages, your Steam identity, display name and destination are stored in the existing community chat history and can remain after sign-out. Private retry metadata is retained for seven days. Local chat reaches the watched Speedrun server; Global chat is shared across Speedrun servers. Conversation is live even when the picture is delayed. Your address is checked against existing moderation rules without being stored by this extension. Viewing statistics remain separate. Signed-in viewers appear by their Steam name in in-game spectator lists; unsigned viewers are grouped as guests.