Cookies & Storage Policy
Everything The Wire stores on your device, and why there's no banner asking about it.
Version 1.0 · In effect from 28 July 2026 · Read alongside the Privacy Policy
The short version
- The Wire sets two cookies, and stores five small values on your device. That is the complete list.
- Both cookies exist to keep you signed in. Neither can track you across other websites. If you never sign in, no cookie is ever set.
- Reading without an account? Your topics and reading history are held only on your device, and there's a Clear all button in ⚙ Topics that wipes the lot.
- There are no third-party cookies, and there can't be — no other company's code runs on this site.
- There is no advertising, analytics or tracking storage of any kind.
- That is why you were never shown a cookie banner. The law requires consent for non-essential storage; we don't use any. The full reasoning is in §5.
1. What this covers
UK law — the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 ("PECR"), regulation 6 — governs storing information on, or reading information from, your device. It applies to more than cookies: it covers local storage, service workers and anything similar. So this page lists everything The Wire places on your device, not just the things technically called cookies.
2. Cookies
Both are first-party (set by wire.databased.business, readable by nobody else), HttpOnly (JavaScript cannot read them, which blunts an entire class of attack), Secure (never sent over an unencrypted connection) and cryptographically signed (an altered cookie is rejected, not trusted).
| Name | What it does | Lifetime | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
sess |
Keeps you signed in. Holds nothing but your account identifier — no name, no email address, because we never receive either — signed so it cannot be forged. | 90 days, or until you sign out — at which point it stops working on our side too, not just in this browser | Strictly necessary |
aflow |
Set for the few seconds you spend on Apple's sign-in screen. Carries a one-time random value that ties Apple's response back to the request you started, which is what stops someone forging a sign-in on your behalf. Deleted the moment you land back on The Wire. | 10 minutes, then expires by itself | Strictly necessary |
aflow is marked SameSite=None. Apple returns you to The Wire by sending a form from Apple's servers to ours — a cross-site request. A stricter setting makes the browser withhold the cookie, the security check fails, and sign-in breaks. It is set for ten minutes, contains a random value and nothing about you, and cannot be read by any other site.
3. Other on-device storage
Private reading — three values
You can read The Wire without an account at all. When you do, your preferences have nowhere to live except your own device, so they live here:
| Key | What it holds | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
wire_local_follows |
The topics you chose to follow and how strongly, so your edition can be ordered for you. This is what makes anonymous reading personal. | Until you clear it |
wire_local_read |
The identifiers of stories you've already opened — at most the last 300, oldest dropped — so the feed stops showing you the same thing twice. | Until you clear it |
wire_local_hint |
Whether you've dismissed the "you're reading privately" note, so it isn't shown again. | Until you clear it |
The calm check-in — two numbers
Set only after you sign in, and only in connection with an occasional one-tap check-in that asks whether The Wire is leaving you calmer than the news you had before.
| Key | What it holds | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
wire_survey_at |
The date you last answered or dismissed the check-in, so you are not asked again for at least a week. | Until you clear site data |
wire_editions_seen |
A count of editions you've opened, so a brand-new reader is never interrupted with a question. You are not asked before your third visit. | Until you clear site data |
Neither value is ever sent to us. They stay on your device and exist solely to make the app ask you less often. If your browser blocks local storage, The Wire simply never asks — nothing else changes.
Notes you've already read — two values
Two short notes explain themselves once and then get out of the way: one on your first edition, saying that the headline, summary and "why it matters" on each news card are written by AI from the outlet's own report — and that weather, flood, energy and planning alerts are not; and one the first time you open Catch-up, explaining that it is an edition that ends. Each has a "Got it" button, and these remember you pressed it.
| Key | What it holds | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
wire_ai_tip |
Whether you've dismissed the note about how these stories are written, so it isn't shown again. The same statement stays in the footer of every page, permanently, whether you dismiss this or not. | Until you clear it |
wire_catchup_tip |
Whether you've dismissed the note explaining what Catch-up does, so it isn't shown again. It holds nothing about what you read or when you caught up — only that the explanation has been seen. | Until you clear it |
Neither value is ever sent to us, and both are cleared along with everything else by ⚙ Topics → Clear all.
Service worker
If — and only if — you turn on notifications, a small background script is installed so alerts have somewhere to arrive. It is deliberately minimal: it caches nothing and intercepts no network requests. It cannot serve you a stale edition and it cannot see your browsing. Turn notifications off, or uninstall the app from your home screen, and it goes.
Push subscription
Turning on notifications also creates a subscription with your browser's push service (Apple, Google or Mozilla, depending on your device) and sends us its address and encryption keys. This is how web notifications work everywhere; it is covered in the Privacy Policy. Consent is the permission prompt your browser shows, and it is withdrawn by turning alerts off.
The iOS app
The iOS app is a thin shell around the same website, so it uses the same two cookies and the same two stored numbers, held in the app's own container. Deleting the app deletes all of it. The app contains no advertising identifier, requests no tracking permission, and uses no third-party SDKs.
4. What is not here
- No third-party cookies. Not reduced, not phased out — structurally impossible. The Wire embeds no third-party script, iframe, font, image, pixel or player, so no other party is ever in a position to set one.
- No advertising or marketing cookies. There is no advertising in The Wire.
- No analytics cookies — no Google Analytics, no Plausible, no Segment, no SDK of any kind. Our usage counts are aggregate totals recorded on our own servers, carry no identifier, and involve nothing stored on your device.
- No social media pixels, no share widgets, no embedded posts.
- No fingerprinting. We do not read your fonts, canvas, plugins or hardware to identify you.
- No cached articles. The service worker holds no content, so nothing you read is left sitting on your device by us.
5. Why there is no cookie banner
Under PECR regulation 6(4), consent is not required for storage that is strictly necessary to provide a service the user has explicitly requested. Everything above falls inside that exemption, and here is the reasoning for each, so you can judge it rather than take our word:
sessandaflow— you asked to sign in. Authentication cookies are the textbook example the ICO gives of strictly necessary storage.- The service worker and push subscription — installed only when you ask for notifications, and separately gated behind your browser's own permission prompt. That prompt is the consent, and it meets the GDPR standard: specific, informed, freely given, and revocable in one tap.
wire_local_followsandwire_local_read— these are the service you requested. Choosing topics and not being shown the same story twice is what reading The Wire without an account consists of; there is no server-side copy, so removing this storage does not reduce what we know about you, it simply breaks the feature you asked for. This is the clearest case the exemption covers.wire_local_hint,wire_ai_tip,wire_catchup_tip,wire_survey_atandwire_editions_seen— these hold no personal data and never leave your device. Their only function is to remember that you have already been asked, or already been told, something — so you are not asked or told the same thing again. Storage whose sole purpose is to honour a preference you expressed — the "don't show me this again" case — is treated as strictly necessary. Storing nothing would mean interrupting you every single visit, which is worse for you on every axis the rules exist to protect. One limit we hold ourselves to: where the thing you dismissed was a disclosure rather than a question —wire_ai_tip— dismissing it hides the note, never the fact. The statement that the headline, summary and "why it matters" on each news card are written by AI stays in the footer of every page, permanently, whether you dismiss the note or not — this page included, and a test fails the build if any page drops it.
A banner is a request for permission. Requesting permission for storage that requires none — and that we would still need in order to run the Service — would be theatre, and irritating theatre at that. If we ever introduce storage that does require consent, you will get a real choice, with a genuine "reject" that is exactly as easy to click as "accept", before anything is stored.
If you disagree with our reading on the two local-storage values, you can clear them at any time — see below. The Wire behaves identically without them, save that it may ask you the check-in question again.
6. Controlling all of this
- ⚙ Topics → Clear all (reading without an account) — erases every value The Wire has stored on your device, in one tap, without leaving the app. The panel tells you what's there before you clear it.
- Never sign in — then no cookie is ever set, and nothing about you exists on our servers to begin with.
- Sign out — in the app. Clears
sesson this device and revokes the session on our servers, so a copy of the cookie taken from this device stops working too. It signs you out everywhere, not just here: the cookie in another browser stays on disk until its 90 days run out, but it is a dead value from the moment you sign out. - Turn off notifications — in the app, or your browser or OS settings. Removes the push subscription; deleting site data or uninstalling removes the service worker.
- Clear everything on your device:
- iPhone/iPad (Safari) — Settings → Apps → Safari → Advanced → Website Data → find databased.business → swipe to delete. If you added The Wire to your home screen, deleting the icon removes its data too.
- iOS app — delete the app.
- Chrome — ⋮ → Delete browsing data → Cookies and other site data. Or, for this site only: padlock icon → Cookies and site data → Manage on-device site data.
- Safari on Mac — Safari → Settings → Privacy → Manage Website Data → search databased.business → Remove.
- Firefox — ☰ → Settings → Privacy & Security → Cookies and Site Data → Manage Data.
- Block cookies entirely — The Wire will still load and you can still read the public edition, but you will not be able to stay signed in, so personalisation, alerts and Catch-up won't work.
- Delete your account — see Privacy Policy §9. Removes everything on our side as well as yours.
7. Changes
If we add or change any storage, this page is updated and the version raised before the change ships. Adding anything that needs consent means adding a consent mechanism, not quietly extending this list.
| Version | Date | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 28 July 2026 | First published. |
8. Questions
privacy@databased.business. If you think something is stored on your device that isn't listed here, please tell us — that would be a bug in this page, and we'd want to fix it.