Cookie and Local Storage Policy

1. What This Policy Covers

SweepFeed uses cookies, local storage, and similar browser technologies to keep the service secure, remember choices, and—only when permitted— measure use or load advertising. This policy describes the current web controls. A provider may use additional identifiers under its own policy after the relevant category has been enabled.

2. Essential Storage

Essential storage supports authentication, security, privacy choices, referral attribution, and continuity of requested actions. Examples currently used by the web service include:

• __user_session and __session — signed session or administrative authentication state, depending on the login surface. The ordinary signed web session has a Duration: 7 days.
• emailForSignInState — a signed, HttpOnly, short-lived value that binds an email sign-in request to a browser and is cleared after use.
• sf_cookie_consent — the current analytics and advertising choices, stored in both a first-party cookie and local storage for up to 180 days.
• sf_do_not_sell — a first-party marker that keeps non-essential analytics, personalized advertising, and sharing disabled after a GPC or account-level opt-out.
• sidebar:state, sf_age_verified, sweepfeed_ref, and sweepfeed_pending_contest — interface, age-confirmation, referral, and short-lived sponsor-return state when those features are used. The sponsor-return value contains no sponsor form data.

3. Optional Analytics

If you enable analytics and have not opted out of sale or sharing, SweepFeed may initialize PostHog to measure page use, product events, errors, and performance. PostHog may set identifiers such as cookies beginning with ph_. SweepFeed does not initialize this optional processing while your account-level privacy choice is still unresolved.

4. Optional Advertising

If you enable advertising and have not opted out, configured advertising providers such as Google AdSense may set or read their own cookies for delivery, frequency control, fraud prevention, measurement, and—where enabled—ads informed by prior visits to SweepFeed or other websites. Those identifiers and durations are controlled by the provider. You can change Google's personalized-ad setting at Google Ads Settings. Rejecting optional advertising storage does not prevent clearly labeled direct sponsorships that do not require cross-context tracking.

5. Purchases and Third Parties

Stripe may use its own security and payment technologies when a sponsor or other eligible customer starts a paid transaction. Firebase and Vercel support authentication, hosting, security, and service delivery. SweepFeed does not list an integration here merely because it may be considered for a future feature; this section describes providers tied to current or conditionally available flows.

6. Your Controls

• Use the cookie banner or footer Privacy Settings control to accept, reject, or customize optional analytics and advertising.
• Use Your Privacy Choices to opt out of sale, sharing, and targeted-advertising uses described in the Privacy Notice.
• Signed-in users can save the same choice to their account at Privacy Settings.
• Browser controls can delete or block storage, although removing essential session values can sign you out or interrupt a requested flow.

7. Global Privacy Control

When SweepFeed receives a Sec-GPC: 1 signal or the equivalent browser Global Privacy Control value, it treats the signal as an opt-out for that browser. Optional analytics and advertising fail closed, the durable opt-out marker is set when possible, and a signed-in user can persist the choice to the account. SweepFeed does not treat the older Do Not Track signal as consent because it does not provide the same standardized opt-out instruction.

8. Changes and Contact

We update this page when the browser-storage practices described here materially change. Where law requires notice or renewed consent, we provide it before relying on the changed practice. Questions may be sent to privacy@sweepfeed.com.