Privacy policy

Who is responsible for your data?

CreatureData (creaturedata.com) is run by CreatureData, which is the data controller for the little personal data the site handles.

What stays in your browser

These are stored on your device and are never sent to us:

• Your life list: sightings with their dates, countries, places, counts and notes.
• Favourites, your wish list and your own lists.
• Recently viewed animals and saved searches.
• Your light or dark theme, and your answer to the visit-counting question.
• Copies of pages you have opened, so they work without a connection.

You can export or delete your lists on the My lists page. Clearing this site’s data in your browser removes everything.

What reaches our server

• Web server logs. Like any website, the server records each request: IP address, time, the page asked for, the referring page and the browser’s user agent. We use these to keep the site running and secure. They are deleted after 14 days. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in operating a secure service.
• Searches and filters. What you type in the search box is sent so that results can be returned. It is not linked to you.
• Importing a list. If you import a file from iNaturalist or eBird, only the species names in it are sent, to match them to animals on file. Your dates, places and notes stay in your browser.
• Animals near me. Only if you press that button, your browser’s location is rounded to about 11 km on your device and sent once to find your country. It is not stored.

Visit counts, only if you agree

If you say yes, each page you open adds one to a daily tally for that page. We also record the host name of the site you arrived from, and the text of any search that returned nothing, so that we can see which pages are useful and what is missing. No cookies are used, no identifier is created, and your IP address is not stored with the counts. The legal basis is your consent, which you can withdraw at the top of this page. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat that as a no.

Cookies

This site sets no cookies. The storage described above uses your browser’s local storage, which only this site can read.

Other organisations

• Hosting. The site runs on a server in France operated by OVH.
• Sound recordings. Recordings are played directly from Wikimedia Commons. When you press play, Wikimedia receives your IP address in the ordinary way; nothing is requested from them until you do.
• Links. Pages link to sources such as Wikidata, GBIF and the IUCN Red List. Those sites have their own policies.

There are no adverts, analytics services, social media widgets or third-party fonts on this site. If adverts are introduced, this policy and the choice at the top of the page will change first.

Children

The site is suitable for children. It asks for no name, email, age or account, builds no profile, and shows nothing based on who you are.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask for a copy of personal data we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, and object to its use. In practice the only personal data we hold is the server log described above. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. Anything that would collect more than is described here will be asked about first.