Privacy Policy

Development draft. Operator details, production service providers and retention arrangements must be confirmed before launch. This page describes the current development service.

This notice explains how the current Sighting development service handles information. The operator’s legal identity will be added before production launch.

Information we collect

Account information includes your username, email, password hash for email/password accounts, any names and profile image you provide, account status and membership roles. We store fan-site details, uploaded images, sightings, submission times and optional exact map coordinates, comments, chat, reactions, favourites, view counts and moderation records. A concern report stores its category, optional content link, optional reply email, message and review status.

How we use it and what others can see

We use information to operate accounts and fan sites, display contributions, manage permissions and moderation, screen text and produce the heat map. Approved sightings, their photos and comments, and enabled Fan Chat can be viewed without an account. Public contributions show your username. Membership management shows profile images and account names to permitted staff. Exact sighting coordinates are kept server-side for map generation rather than supplied as public point coordinates. Favourites are accessible through the account’s private favourites page.

Do not treat public posts as private messages. Public content can be copied, shared or captured by other people.

Privacy screening and automated decisions

Local rules screen new and edited text. If OpenAI screening is enabled, the submitted text, up to eight recent chat messages or comments and staff-verified venue names are sent to OpenAI for a redaction decision. Sighting description screening sends the description without a chat history. We do not deliberately include separate account identifiers or map coordinates in those requests, but user-written text may itself contain personal information. Requests set storage to false; this is not a claim that the provider has no processing or security retention. AI is used for screening, not for posting replies.

Pending sightings can be automatically approved after one hour without a moderator review. You may use the concern form to question a redaction or moderation decision. A human review or reply is not instantaneous or guaranteed.

Other services

Your browser requests fonts from Google Fonts and map imagery from CARTO or Esri when those features load. Those providers receive the network request and information needed to serve it, such as your IP address and requested resource. Location search sends the typed search query to the configured Photon geocoding provider. Optional Google, Apple or Facebook sign-in is available only when configured; the provider processes sign-in under its own terms and returns account information needed for authentication. Social links and sharing actions take you to external services.

Providers may process information outside your country. Production hosting, provider arrangements and likely processing countries have not yet been confirmed and will be documented before launch.

Cookies, regional settings and logs

Essential cookies support sign-in sessions and request security. A browser-timezone preference cookie lets dates and times appear locally; browser language preferences inform regional formatting. Your Light, Dark or System appearance choice is saved in browser local storage. Requests may appear in server or hosting logs. Concern-form rate limiting uses a keyed digest of the request IP in a short-lived cache; the raw IP is not stored in the concern record.

Retention and deletion

There is not yet an automatic account or contribution retention schedule. Posts do not expire simply because their map heat disappears. New screened text is saved with masked excerpts; older records may still contain original text even when the public display masks it. Changing or removing an image from a page does not guarantee that the old file or a backup is deleted. Production retention periods, backup handling and deletion procedures must be finalised before launch.

Access, corrections and concerns

You can edit the supported account profile fields, change a local password when available, and edit or withdraw your own sightings within the site’s permissions. For an email correction, account deletion request, data access request or privacy complaint, use Report a concern and optionally provide an email for a reply. Supply only the information necessary for your request. Administrators may need to verify ownership before making account changes.

For general information about Australian privacy rights and complaints, see the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. Which legal obligations apply to the production service must be confirmed for its operator and users.