Privacy Policy

The Council. is a non-commercial, fan-made companion site for the PokeMMO community. We collect the bare minimum needed to let you sign in with Discord, save the teams you build, run the moderation queue, and (only if you say yes) measure how the site is used.

We do not sell data, we do not run ad networks, and we do not share anything with third parties beyond what Discord itself sees while you are signing in. Everything else stays on the servers we operate.

Signing in uses Discord. We ask Discord only for the basic information needed to identify you: your Discord username and a stable identifier for your Discord account. We do not request access to your email, your servers, your direct messages, or your friends list.

Alongside that, we keep a small account record on our side that holds your role on the site (which controls what you can do here) and the dates your account was created and last signed in.

We do not store your Discord avatar, your Discord email, your IP address, or your browser fingerprint. We do not retain anything else Discord hands us during the login round-trip.

When you sign in we set a single secure session cookie so the site can recognise your browser between page loads. The cookie is set by The Council. itself, is not shared with any other site, and is cleared when you sign out.

Your browser also stores a few preferences locally so the site remembers them on your next visit: your cookie consent decision, your theme and light/dark preference, your language, and short-lived drafts for tools such as the team builder so an accidental refresh does not lose your work. Only your language is also sent to us: it is kept in a language cookie that travels with each page request, so pages arrive already in that language. If you have not chosen a language yet, your first visit may pick Simplified or Traditional Chinese from your browser's language settings and save it the same way. Clearing your site data resets every one of these preferences.

When you save a team in the team builder we store the build itself (species, items, moves, EVs, IVs, the optional team name) and a share code so the team can be shown again later. Saved teams are accessible to anyone who has the share code.

When you report a team, we store the report alongside the team it targets, the reason you picked, and any optional note you typed. Reports are visible only to moderators.

Free-text fields (team names, report notes, resolution notes) are run through a small profanity filter before they are saved. We keep no separate log of strings the filter rejected.

Until you click Accept on the cookie banner we do not record any analytics whatsoever. If you click Reject or simply ignore the banner, no analytics are sent.

When analytics are enabled, every page view contributes to an anonymous, aggregated counter on our server. We can tell, for example, that “the breeding page got several hundred visits today” and split that between signed-in and signed-out visitors, but we cannot tell which visitor any specific hit came from. We do not record IP addresses, browser fingerprints, sessions, click trails, mouse movement, scroll depth, or referrers.

You can flip your decision at any time using the Cookie Settings link in the footer. Choosing Reject after having accepted does not delete previously aggregated counts; those counts carry no link back to you, so there is nothing user-specific to remove.

Discord is the only external service involved in running the site. When you sign in, your browser is redirected to Discord, you authorise the application, and Discord redirects you back. Discord’s own privacy policy governs anything they record during that handshake.

We do not embed third-party analytics, advertising, social tracking pixels, or chat widgets. Monster names, sprites, and game data are trademarks and copyrights of Nintendo, Game Freak, and the franchise rights holders; The Council. is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of them.

The default retention rules are intentionally short:

• Sessions expire automatically, and end as soon as you sign out or delete your account.
• Saved teams persist until you delete them, a moderator removes them, or you delete your account.
• Analytics counts are anonymous aggregates and are kept for trend analysis.

Deleting your account from the account page removes your account and signs you out everywhere immediately. Teams you own, and any reports filed against those teams, are removed at the same time. Reports that you filed against other people’s content are kept because moderators still need that history, but they are no longer linked to your now-deleted account.

If your account is currently banned and you ask to delete it, we keep a minimal record of the ban in place. This is what lets us continue to recognise the ban if the same Discord account tries to sign in again. Everything else listed above (teams, reports against your teams, sessions) is still removed.

• Sign out from the account page to revoke the current session.
• Delete your account from the account page; the behaviour is described above.
• Change your analytics decision with the Cookie Settings link in the footer.
• Reset local preferences by clearing the site data in your browser.

The site is not directed at children under 13, and Discord itself requires users to be at least 13 (or older where local law sets a higher age). If you believe a child has signed in, please reach out via the contact channel below and we will remove the account.

We will update the date at the top of this page whenever the policy changes in a way that materially affects what we collect or how we use it. The site has never had a paid relationship with anyone, and that is not going to change.

For privacy questions, takedown requests, or a request to delete a specific piece of content, the fastest route is the same Discord community the site is built around. Moderators can also be reached through the in-site moderation tools if you already have an account.

See also the Terms of Service.