Privacy
You can read everything on situ.news without an account and without us knowing who you are. We only hold personal data if you sign in with X, comment, or contact us.
Last updated 9 October 2026.
Who we are
situ.news ("Monitoring the situation") is run by Tom Osborne in the United Kingdom, who is the data controller. Contact us through the contact form.
What we collect
- Reading: to count visits and stop bots, we use a code made from your IP address and browser that changes every day. We never store your IP address itself. Searches typed into the site are counted the same way.
- Signing in with X: your public X profile (account ID, handle, display name, profile picture link, account creation date, follower count and verification type). We use X only to read this once; we discard X's access key straight away and can never post for you.
- What you do while signed in: your comments, votes, reports, appeals, suggested sources and the stories you watch.
- Contact form: your message, and your name and e-mail address if you give them.
Why, and on what basis
- To run the site and the features you use (legitimate interests, and to provide what you sign up for).
- To keep discussion safe and lawful: checking comments, handling reports, strikes and appeals (legitimate interests and our legal duties under the Online Safety Act).
- To answer messages and complaints (legitimate interests).
We do not sell data, show adverts or build profiles of readers.
Who else handles it
- Cloudflare delivers the site, runs the human check and forwards contact-form messages to our inbox.
- X handles sign-in.
- Ollama runs the automated check that reads comment text before it is published, and helps write story pages from published news.
Some of these providers process data outside the UK, under their standard data-protection terms.
Cookies
Two cookies, both needed for the site to work: one that keeps you signed in and one that remembers you passed the human check. Your language choice is saved in your browser. There are no advertising or tracking cookies, so there is no cookie banner.
How long we keep it
- Daily visit codes are replaced every day; counts are kept only as totals.
- Account data, comments and votes: while your account exists. If you ask us to delete your account, we delete it, except moderation records about breaches of the rules, which we keep for up to 12 months.
- Contact messages: up to 12 months.
Your rights
You can ask to see, correct or delete your data, or object to how we use it, through the contact form. If you are unhappy with our answer, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.