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Cookie & Tracking Policy

Last updated: 2026-05-17.

This Cookie & Tracking Policy explains how Railfans Live and its regional subdomains (operated by Dynamanic LLC, collectively the “Service”) use cookies, local storage, and similar technologies. It complements our Privacy Policy.

1. What Are Cookies?

Cookies are small text files placed on your device by your browser. “First-party” cookies are set by the site you are visiting; “third-party” cookies are set by other domains embedded on the page. We use first-party cookies for essential account and preference functions, and we operate our product analytics through a first-party reverse proxy so that third-party cookies are minimized. We also uselocalStorage and sessionStorage for client-side state, which we treat the same way as cookies for the purposes of this policy.

2. Categories of Cookies We Use

2.1 Strictly Necessary

These cookies are required to operate the Service and cannot be disabled in our systems.

  • NextAuth session cookie — signs you in and maintains your session across all regional subdomains. Scoped to .railfans.live so a single login works on florida.railfans.live, texas.railfans.live, and other regions. HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite=Lax.
  • CSRF token cookie — protects form submissions against cross-site request forgery.
  • Region-preference cookie (rfl_region) — remembers which regional subdomain you prefer so the apex landing page can route you appropriately on return visits.

2.2 Functional

  • Map and layer preferences — stored in localStorage to remember which carriers, scanners, railcams, and overlays you have toggled.
  • UI preferences — theme (light/dark), unit choice (miles vs. kilometers), and similar display settings.

2.3 Analytics

  • PostHog distinct_id — identifies your browser for product-analytics purposes. Events are delivered to PostHog through our first-party /ingest reverse proxy. When you are signed in, we attach your account user ID to events so that we can measure feature usage by user; when you are signed out, only the anonymous distinct_id is used. PostHog is the only third-party analytics processor we use.

We do not use advertising cookies. We do not sell personal information.

3. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

Web browsers send a variety of opt-out signals, and there is no industry consensus on how sites should respond to them. We honor the Global Privacy Control (Sec-GPC) header where required by applicable state privacy laws. We do not engage in cross-context behavioral advertising regardless of signal.

4. Managing Cookies

You can manage or disable cookies through your browser settings. Disabling strictly necessary cookies will prevent you from signing in. Disabling functional cookies will reset your preferences each visit. To opt out of PostHog analytics from inside the Service, use the analytics toggle in your account settings; you can also clear our cookies from your browser at any time.

5. Subdomain Scope

Some cookies (the session cookie and the region-preference cookie) are deliberately scoped to the apex domain so they work across every regional subdomain. Others (such as map-layer-preference localStorage) are scoped per subdomain and may differ between regions. This is intentional and reflects our multi-region architecture.

6. Changes and Contact

We may update this Cookie & Tracking Policy from time to time; the “Last updated” date above reflects the most recent revision. Questions about this policy or about your analytics preferences: privacy@railfans.live.