Privacy Policy

If you don’t sign in

You can use Sifter without ever signing in. Your imported game library, your backlog, the playtime Sifter measured on this device, your play history, your theme choice and your Steam ID all stay in your browser’s localStorage, on that device only. Nothing is transmitted to us except a single request through our proxy to Steam, which is discarded once it has been answered. You can erase all of it at any time from Settings, or by clearing your browser’s site data — no request to us required.

Signing in through Steam creates an account

When you sign in through Steam, Steam confirms your identity and shares your public 64-bit Steam ID with us. That is the only credential your account has — there is no separate password and no email. From then on our servers store what an account needs: your Steam ID, your imported library across every store you connect, your backlog, when games entered and left your library, and anything you actively use — friend requests, discussion posts, mod entries.

This mirrors how Steam’s own servers work. Valve always has full visibility into what you own, and its privacy settings control what other players can see, not what Valve itself collects. Sifter works the same way: your raw game list, your play history and your friend requests are shown to nobody but you. The only thing another person ever sees is a small summary — your game count, total hours, number of stores and most-played title — and only to friends you have accepted, and only for as long as you keep that connection.

Play history

The desktop app watches for the game after you press Play, so it can show that you are playing, time the session, and close a launcher it opened for you. Five of the stores Sifter reads report no playtime at all, so for those games this stopwatch is the only record that exists.

Each finished session — the game, when it started, when it ended, and how long it ran — is kept on your device, and synced to your account when you are signed in. Sessions shorter than a minute are not recorded at all. We keep this indefinitely rather than expiring it, because its whole value is being able to look back at years rather than weeks; the same reasoning Steam applies to the playtime it has held for you since 2003. It is never shown to another user and never sold. You can export the whole history as a file, or erase it, from Settings.

Connecting other stores

Xbox, Epic, GOG, Amazon and itch.io are connected by signing in to that store, exactly as you normally would. Sifter stores the token that store gives back, encrypted, and uses it to read what you own — nothing else. Disconnecting a store deletes its token. Some libraries can only be read by the desktop app looking at what is installed on that PC; nothing about those installs leaves your machine except the list of games itself.

Your own Steam API key (advanced option)

If you choose the advanced import and paste your own Steam Web API key, it travels from your browser to Steam through our proxy as a request header, is used for that single request, and is then discarded. It is never written to our servers or our logs. It is stored only in your browser.

Server logs & abuse prevention

Like any website, our hosting provider may process standard request metadata (such as your IP address) transiently to serve pages and to rate-limit abuse of our Steam proxy. We do not use this to build a profile of you.

Third parties

To fetch game data we contact Valve’s Steam services (the Steam Web API and store). Your use of Steam is governed by Valve’s Privacy Policy. We may use privacy-friendly, aggregate analytics to understand overall usage; if enabled, it does not track you across other sites.

Your rights & choices

Take it with you. Settings exports everything Sifter holds for you as a single file — your library, your backlog, your play history and the playtime it measured. Keeping your data indefinitely and letting you take all of it are two halves of the same deal, and one without the other is not one.

Erase it. If you have never signed in, everything lives in your browser and Settings clears it outright. If you have signed in, signing out ends your session but does not delete the account — email us and we will delete it.

Where privacy laws such as the GDPR (EU/UK) or CCPA/CPRA (California) apply: we do not sell or share your personal information, and we do not use it for targeted advertising. Email us to access, correct, export or delete your account data and we will help.

Children

Sifter is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data.

Changes

We may update this policy; the “last updated” date above will change when we do.

Contact

Questions about your privacy? Email hello@siftergames.com.