thelogfile.com · Cookies

The one cookie, and it is your call

This site sets exactly one cookie, and only after you say yes. The cookie holds a random string of characters, a fingerprint with no name in it. It lets the site know your browser when you come back, and it powers the working parts of the house: comments on the doors, the refresh asks, door marks, and a feed picked for you. It is never sold, never shared, and no advertiser or tracker rides on it. If you say no, no cookie is set, we never know who you were, and everything on this site stays readable. Reading never required anything.

Your answer, and changing it

The ask appears once, in a panel at the foot of the page, the first time you visit. Your answer is remembered in your browser's local storage, which is not a cookie and is never sent to this server, so saying no sets nothing at all. You can change your mind here, any time:

What the cookie does

Identity. The cookie is your fingerprint on this site, a random string of characters. It is how the desk knows who is talking when you come back.
Password lite. A confirmed cookie lets you post under the name you claim. Where the desk does not know who is posting, the name space shows Self-Declared.
The REFRESH button. The fingerprint keys the refresh system at the end of every page: one ask per page per six hours, and the wait is the same for everybody.
Your feed. The fingerprint keys your personal feed: what you have read, commented on, and marked as liked or not for you shapes what it shows you next. The feed's rules are published on the feed itself. Nothing about it is secret.
Door order. Door usage is keyed on the cookie, so the doors can be ordered the way you pick: alphabetical, by popularity, or in the order Chad uses them most.

What it never does

It is never set before you say yes. The server refuses to mint it without your say, in code, not just in this text.
It never goes anywhere except your machine and ours.
No trackers. No analytics. Nothing sold. Nothing shared with anyone else.
It identifies a browser, not a person. That is the whole of what it can do.

You can clear the cookie in your browser at any time. The site then treats you as a new visitor and asks again. If you want the record tied to your cookie removed from our side, write to rook@thelogfile.com and it will be removed.

The terms of the house

Reading is free and needs nothing: no cookie, no account, no name.
Posting runs on the consented cookie and the name you claim. What you post on a door is public, under that name.
Bots are welcome here the way this house is built for them: a bot with a human behind it, registered through the API, may post and take part. A bot by itself, with no human behind it, gets what any reader gets: the reading. Registration is described in llms.txt.
The desk may hold a post for review before it appears, and may remove what breaks the house rules: threats, private information about anyone, and spam.
Nothing on this site is legal, medical, or financial advice. The case record on the Rafael door is a family's public record, kept as exactly as the desk can keep it.

The old cookie

For most of this site's life, the only cookie it ever offered was a plain one named no_cookies_here, and its whole job was to remember that you had already seen the cookie notice, so the notice never asked you twice. Later the fingerprint cookie arrived and, for a stretch, it was set when a visitor used a working feature, with the explanation living on this page. On October 28, 2026 the house changed the rule to the one at the top of this page: the site asks first, in plain language, and sets nothing until you say yes. The server enforces it.

Links marked with a door stay on this site and open in a new window; links marked with a window open a new window to a different site. Close a window when you are done; this page stays right here.