What we collect, and what we do not
The Cruise Brief is a news channel, not a service you sign up for. There are no accounts for readers, no newsletter, and nothing to fill in. This page says plainly what that means.
Visiting this site
We do not set advertising or analytics cookies, and we do not track you between sites. Our web host keeps ordinary server logs — the address of the page requested, the time, your IP address and browser — which exist so the site can be operated and abuse investigated. We do not use them to build a profile of you.
The pages load a web font from Google Fonts. That request goes to Google and is subject to Google's privacy policy.
Watching or listening
Video on this site is served either from our own storage or embedded from YouTube. An embedded YouTube player is governed by Google's privacy policy, not this one. Podcast audio is a plain file: your podcast app requests it, and our storage provider logs that request in the ordinary way.
If you contact us or comment
Comments on our videos live on the platform you leave them on and are covered by that platform's policy. We read them, and we may quote a comment on air when correcting an error — we will not publish your email address or any contact detail you send us privately.
What our publishing tool accesses
This section exists because The Cruise Brief uses the YouTube Data API to publish its own videos. It concerns the channel's own operators, not viewers.
No viewer data is involved. The application authenticates as the owner of the @CruiseBrief channel and touches only that channel. It cannot see, and never requests, information about anyone who watches.
What it accesses, and why
Two permissions are requested from the channel's own Google account:
- Upload videos — so a finished bulletin can be published to our channel without a person re-uploading it by hand each morning.
- Read YouTube analytics, read-only — so audience retention for our own videos can be attributed back to the individual stories that were on screen, which tells the desk what is worth covering.
What is stored, and where
An OAuth refresh token for the channel's Google account, held in the operator's own configuration store. It is not written to our database, is never sent to a browser, and is not visible anywhere in our web interface. Video performance figures we retrieve are stored alongside our own editorial records so they can be compared with what we published.
What is never done with it
Google user data obtained through these permissions is used solely to operate The Cruise Brief. It is not sold, not transferred to anyone else except as required by law, not used for advertising, and not used to train any machine learning or AI model. Our use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
Revoking it
The channel owner can withdraw this access at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Publishing then stops; nothing already published is affected.
Who we are
The Cruise Brief is published by Cruises with Friends. Mia Cruise, an associated travel agency, sells cruises from lines we cover; how that is handled editorially is set out on the editorial policy page.
Questions about this policy, or about anything we hold, can be sent to us through the channel. If you are in the UK or EU and want data held about you, say so and we will tell you what there is — in most cases, for a reader, the answer is nothing beyond server logs.
This page describes our actual practice. It is written to be accurate rather than exhaustive, and it is not legal advice. If our practice changes, this page changes with it.