CrossfiledPrivacy and cookies
Last updated 21 September 2026
The short version. Crossfiled is paid for by advertising, not by you. You do not need an account to read it. If you make one, we store your display name, your email address and your settings, and nothing else. We do not sell anything about you, and we have nothing to sell that you did not choose to give us.
What we collect if you never sign in
Nothing we keep. Your ranking weights, muted sources and lean tags are stored in your own browser and never reach us. Clearing your browser data erases them, and we cannot recover them, because we never had them.
Our web server writes ordinary access logs, which include your IP address and the page you requested. Those are operational records used to keep the site running and to investigate abuse.
What we collect if you sign in
Sign-in is optional and buys exactly one thing: your settings follow you to another device. We use Google or Microsoft to identify you, which means we never see or store a password.
- Your name and email address, as the provider gives them to us
- Your settings: ranking weights, muted sources, your own lean tags, theme, and the Shorts and opinion switches
- When you last visited, so the site can show you what is new
By default we do not record what you read. You can switch on a reading history if you want one, and it is off until you do.
If you switch on your reading history
Crossfiled keeps a record of the stories you opened so it can show that record back to you at your reading page: what you read, roughly how long for, which subjects and outlets came up, and what time of day you tend to read.
- It is never used to rank anything. The ordering of stories is the four settings on your own dial and nothing else. Nothing you read changes what you, or anybody else, is shown next. That is a deliberate design limit, not a promise about our intentions.
- Nobody else sees it. It is not shared, sold, aggregated into a profile, or used to target advertising.
- You can stop it and erase it, in one click each, from your reading page. Erasing is immediate and permanent.
- Guests are never recorded at all, whether or not they have ever signed in.
Advertising cookies
Ads are served by Google AdSense. Google and its partners use cookies to serve ads and, where you have consented, to personalise them based on your visits to this and other sites.
- You can opt out of personalised advertising at google.com/settings/ads.
- Options for opting out of other vendors are at aboutads.info.
- In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland you will be asked for consent before any personalised ad is served, and you can change that choice at any time.
Video
Videos play through YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed, so the outlet keeps the view. YouTube may set cookies once you press play. Until you do, nothing is loaded from them.
Other people's journalism
Crossfiled shows headlines, a short extract and a thumbnail, and links to the outlet that did the work. We do not host or reproduce articles. Every link and every video play goes to the publisher.
Deleting your account
Write to kevin@champlinenterprises.com and we will delete your row and everything attached to it. There is no waiting period and we will not ask you to reconsider.
Changes
If this page changes in a way that affects what we collect, the date at the top changes with it.