Why Registration is Required
We require users to create an account for a few key reasons:
- Security & Protection: A login wall makes it incredibly difficult for automated web crawlers, third-party bots, and copyright trolls to access or scrape the site's contents.
- Access Levels: It allows us to safely separate temporary Guests from verified, permanent Members.
- Community Features: An account is necessary to power features like the notification inbox, game request tracking, and your personal favorites/bookmark lists.
The "Zero-Knowledge" Vault
We believe in collecting the absolute minimum. When you register, we only ask for a Username and Password, while logging your IP Address behind the scenes to prevent spam. Here is how we make that data bulletproof:
- Irreversible Passwords: Passwords are run through heavy cryptographic hashing before they ever touch our database, turning them into an irreversible string of gibberish. Even if a hacker somehow downloaded our entire database, they wouldn't be able to see your actual password.
- Never Stored Locally: Our main website database literally does not contain a single IP address.
- Double Shielded: Before your IP is sent anywhere, it gets salted and mathematically scrambled into an unreadable 64-character hash.
- Total Isolation: That hashed IP is moved to a completely separate, encrypted Virtual Private Server (VPS). If our web server is compromised, attackers find zero IPs. If the VPS is compromised, they only find a list of meaningless hashes that cannot be converted back into real IP addresses.
Why We Need Your IP
To keep the community safe, our moderators need the ability to issue IP bans. This is our primary defense mechanism to keep the Hub clean and permanently lock out malicious trolls, spam accounts, and bot networks.
You Are in Complete Control
- IP Removal: You can remove your IP address from our secure servers at any time via your account settings. (Note: Doing so will revert your account status to a "Guest").
- Right to be Forgotten: You can instantly and permanently delete your account, wiping all of your data from our servers with a single click in your settings tab.