This page outlines how Cheat Happens (https://www.cheathappens.com) complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as well as its Privacy Policies. Cheat Happens is classified as a "data controller" under the GDPR. If you have any questions regarding this information, please contact Chris O'Rorke (see: About Us).
LAST REVISION: SEPTEMBER 29, 2021
CHEAT HAPPENS WEBSITE:
Personal Information Collection and Use
Cheat Happens is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others in ways different from what is disclosed in this statement. Cheat Happens collects information from our users at several different points on our website. Third parties that advertise through our website may also collect information through cookies and you may find their privacy policy at the corresponding advertiser's website. Our primary advertiser is Venatus and you can find their privacy policy here: https://venatus.com/privacy.
Cheat Happens offers memberships which include both free and paid levels. We only require and store User Alias, E-Mail Address, Password, Security Question/Answer and IP address(es). We do not ask for or store other personally identifiable information such as Real Name, Date of Birth, Social Security Number or any kind of Financial Data. All financial data is processed securely via either PayPal (PayPal Privacy Policy) or PayPro (PayPro Privacy Policy).
Site Security
Cheat Happens operates only using SSL for all pages served through our site. All data is stored securely behind 2 independent firewalls in an effort to secure all data, personal or otherwise. Cheat Happens utilizes services by Akamai to help increase security, improve the performance of our our site and protect against DDoS and other attacks. You can view Akamai's privacy policy here: https://www.akamai.com/legal/privacy-and-policies.
Third Party Advertisers
We work with third-party companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to our website in order to provide advertisements on this website, other websites and other forms of media about goods and services that may be of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice please click here for the Freestar privacy policy. If you would like information about opting out of our advertising network, please click here.
Cookies
A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's hard drive containing information about the user. Cheat Happens uses cookies to enhance the user's experience, often allowing a user to browse the site more quickly. Some cookies are necessary for the website to function, especially those used when signed in as a registered user. Some of our business partners use cookies on our site (for example, advertisers). Additional cookies may include those used for gathering site statictics and analytics, user preferences and marketing. Under the GDPR, users may opt in or out of all cookies not deemed necessary. All visitors will be prompted to either allow or decline these cookies upon first visiting our site and then may change their previous choices at any time (see bottom of page).
Log Files and IPs
IP addressess are logged in the server's log file which is used for administering the site. Log files contain no personally identifiable information other than IP address(es). Under very rare circumstances, log files may be furnished to 3rd party advertisers for proof of traffic information. IPs are also stored within our message board area and are used to ban those users that do not comply with our message board rules. IPs are also documented upon user registration, login, when downloading files and during our trainer authentication process (more on this below).
Google Analytics
Cheat Happens utilizes Google Analytics to gather information on our visitors and track certain site stats and metrics. IP anonymization is automatically enabled for all data collected by Google Analytics. This also includes statistics collected by Vimeo via Google Analtics about the various videos throughout our site.
LiveChat
Cheat Happens utilizes ZenDesk (www.zendesk.com) to provide members and guests with assistance through real-time chat and support tickets. Our ZenDesk software is GDPR compliant. You may request a transcript of chats and support tickets along with other personal information gathered by our LiveChat software by clicking here. If you would like for us to purge your chats and support tickets along with other personal information gathered by our LiveChat software, please click here. Please note that depending on your response to our cookie declaration policy, you may not see or be able to use the LiveChat system.
Links
This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that Cheat Happens is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy policy applies solely to information collected by this site.
Your Privacy Rights
Under the GDPR, you have a right to request all personally identifiable information that we collect and store on our server as well as the option to have this data purged at any time. This data is only stored for registered users and the option to request or purge this data can be found under the PRIVACY tab of the user account settings page. You must be logged into your account to access these options. Optionally, you may open a support ticket to make these requests.
Email Options
Cheat Happens uses the email address of registered users in order to notify them of site updates, changes, notifications of updated content as well as password and security Q&A resets. Users may opt in or out of these emails through the PRIVACY tab of the user account settings page. Note that some emails, specifically those related to site operation and important updates, will still be delivered even if you have opted out of receiving emails. Examples include lost password reset and updates to our privacy policies.
Notification of Changes
If changes or updates are made to our privacy policy, we will post the date of those changes at the top of this page (https://www.cheathappens.com/privacypolicy.asp) so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify users on our homepage. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.
CHEAT HAPPENS APPLICATIONS:
Cheat Happens Personalized Trainers
In an effort to maintain the integrity of the files downloaded from our site and to prevent illegal file sharing, our personalized trainers will perform an authenticity check while in use. This check requires an internet connection and the trainer will not run if a connection is absent or if the trainer is blocked by a security application. The information sent to Cheat Happens during this process is a uniquely generated string that can only be used to identify the member for which the trainer was personalized. Other information collected includes the use of other third party cheat tools running alongside the trainer, Cheat Happens UserID embedded in the trainer and public IP address. This information is useless outside of the Cheat Happens website as it does not correlate to any personally identifiable information aside from the public IP address. This check is only performed on trainers that have been personalized for individual use, not our PROMO or FREE trainers. If you want/need to use the trainer offline, please go to our trainer troubleshooting page for instructions on how to obtain an offline key to avoid online checks. Some trainers may collect and show debug information which may contain some personally identifiable information in plain text. This information is not automatically sent to the Cheat Happens website. It is up to the end user to submit this information in order to help with troubleshooting trainer functionality. Some trainers may also feature a report function allowing users to send feedback to Cheat Happens. This feature may contain email address or other personally identifiable information but is optional.
Cheat Happens is a Software as a Service Company
Cheat Happens offers two different types of personalized software downloads, those that are purchased individually and those that are downloaded via a membership. Beginning on January 1, 2019, an active (non-expired) membership will be required for personalized trainers to continue to function. The only exceptions to this are those trainers that were purchased individually and/or those people that are eligible to download an offline key. Once a membership expires, all trainers will become disabled and will be unable to authenticate online until the membership is renewed or brought back to active status. Once that happens, previously banned trainers will work again.
Cheat Happens Offline Key Tool
This tool may be downloaded from our trainer troubleshooting page in order to generate an offline key that can be used to authenticate personalized trainers in an offline situation. This tool collects hardware specific information about the user's computer which is then used to generate a unique string of characters that correlates to a Cheat Happens user account. No personally identifiable information is included in the data obtain or sent back to Cheat Happens by this tool.
Cheat Happens Trainer Manager (RETIRED)
This tool consists of two parts. One is a built-in web browser in which everything listed above under "CHEAT HAPPENS WEBSITE" applies. The second part is a compilation of personalized trainers located on the user's computer. If selected by the user, the application can check for new versions of trainers as well as the trainer manager application by making a simple request to the Cheat Happens website containing only information about the trainer and/or application, not the user. As a part of routine website logging, the originating IP address may be collected.
The Trainer Manager uses Microsoft's WebView2 which itself uses Microsoft's Edge (Chromium). The same telemetry data as on Microsoft's Edge will be sent to Microsoft, this may include the website you visit, information about your system/OS and a unique identifier (please see Microsoft's Edge privacy policy for a full and up to date list about what they collect: https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement and https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2112165). You can reduce the telemetry to its absolute minimum by taking the switch in your Windows 10 or 11 settings 'Diagnostic and feedback' page.
Cheat Happens Aurora
AURORA is a Windows application that was developed to house all of the trainers created by our programmers. Data that is collected includes IP address, a list of games installed on the computer running Aurora (only known game libraries are scanned, NOT the entire PC/hard drive), each user's interaction with Aurora, the status of each user's Aurora "achievements", a list of running processes (required for Aurora to identify games running in the background and only non-personal game identifiers are uploaded to our server, however they are NOT linked to the user), user-submitted form information, limited hardware information (required to create a unique "offline key" should the user request one -- this data is not collected if no offline key is requested), local date and time as reported by the user's computer, detailed hardware and software information (only when a user elects to generate and submit a DEBUG file for troubleshooting purposes) and files contained within the user's configured "stand-alone trainers" folder.
Cheat Happens CoSMOS
This tool performs a routine check to see if a new version is available. No personal information is sent during this process. As a part of routine website logging, the originating IP address may be collected. A feedback as well as crash log routine is included in which users may choose to send this data to Cheat Happens. This may contain email address or other personally identifiable information but is optional.
CHEAT HAPPENS COOKIE DECLARATION: