Privacy

Reading the site

Species profiles, articles and the glossary can be read without an account.

Page views are counted using Cloudflare Web Analytics. It sets no cookies and does not track visitors across websites. It records the page requested, the page that linked to it, the country, the browser and the time the page took to load. None of this is linked to an individual.

When a search finds nothing at all, with no species, article or glossary entry, we keep the words searched for, whether the page suggested a similar name, and the date and time of the search. We keep no network address or cookie with it, and nothing that links it to an account. A search containing an @ sign, or a run of six or more digits, is not kept.

Cloudflare holds these searches in its Workers Analytics Engine service and deletes them after three months. We use them to see which fish readers look for that the website does not cover.

The website is served through Cloudflare. Cloudflare logs each request and keeps the log for seven days. The log records the address of the page requested, including the words of any search, the page that linked to it, the network address the request came from, the browser and its language setting, and the approximate location Cloudflare works out from the network address. The contents of cookies are not recorded. We use the log to find and fix faults.

Advertising

Advertising on the website is managed by Ezoic. In the UK and the European Economic Area, no advertising partner receives a request until you have answered the consent banner. The banner lists every advertising partner and what each one is asking permission for.

If you refuse them all, no advertising partner is given permission to use information about you to choose advertising.

Your answer is stored in your browser. To be asked again, clear the cookies and stored data for seriouslyfish.com.

Accounts

An account requires an email address, a password and a display name. The email address is used to sign in, and to send you messages about your account and your contributions, and for no other purpose. These messages are sent through Resend.

Your display name is shown on anything of yours we publish. It is also listed in the Contributors panel on each profile you have improved, with the number of your contributions we have accepted across Seriously Fish. If you turn off Show my display name on the site in your account, your name is not shown on any public page.

Accounts and published content are held in a database hosted by Supabase, and photographs are stored by Cloudflare. Your password is stored only as a one-way hash, so nobody at Seriously Fish can read it.

You can change your display name, your password and your choice of metric or imperial units from your account. Your email address cannot be changed from your account.

Checks on account forms

The forms for signing in, creating an account, resetting a password and verifying an email address include a check by Cloudflare Turnstile. The check loads from challenges.cloudflare.com, and Cloudflare receives information about your browser and device, and your network address, to decide whether a person is filling in the form. We use it to refuse these forms when an automated program sends them.

When you submit one of these forms, we send the result of the check and your network address to Cloudflare to confirm the result.

Deleting your account

Deleting your account erases your email address and your password, and unlinks any Discord account. Your contributions remain on the website, and you choose at that point whether they keep your display name or are credited to “a contributor”.

Linking Discord

Linking a Discord account stores your Discord user ID and the username in use at the time. For a moderator or an admin, the link is used to give access to the staff channels on the Seriously Fish Discord server, and to identify them when they decide a contribution or a community note from Discord. Unlinking from your account page removes both.

Contributions posted to Discord

Each contribution and community note you send is posted to the #submissions channel on the Seriously Fish Discord server, so that moderators can review it. The post shows your display name, how many of your earlier contributions we have accepted or notes we have published, the change you proposed and the source you gave. A community note is posted in full, with any tank details and study you gave. A photograph is posted as the description you wrote for it, without the image. A report that something is wrong names the section and does not include what you wrote.

Your display name is shown in the post even if you have turned off Show my display name on the site. When a moderator decides a contribution or a note, the post is updated with the decision, the moderator’s name and any message sent to you about it.

Photographs you send us

Before storing a photograph you send us, we remove the location, the date and the other camera details recorded inside the file. We keep only which way up the picture is displayed and its colour profile. The image itself is not changed.

Cookies we set

We set cookies for signing in and using your account. One more cookie records whether you have chosen metric or imperial units, and it is kept for one year. None of these cookies can be read by another website.

Information stored in your browser

Once you have answered the consent banner, whether you accepted or refused, we check whether the advertising script loaded on pages that carry advertising. If it did not, we store the value 1 in your browser’s local storage under the name sf_ads_absent, and we leave out the empty spaces where advertisements would have appeared on the next page you open. The item is removed on the next page where the script loads. It holds no identifier and is not sent to us.

On the first page with advertising that you open in a browser tab after answering the banner, we also send a report of whether the advertising script loaded, and store sf_ads_reported in the tab’s session storage so the report is sent only once. Your browser deletes it when you close the tab. The report contains only that answer, and we add it to a count for the day of how many reports arrived and how many said the script did not load. We keep the count for 90 days.

On the page listing animals we have no profiles for, pressing Register interest for a group stores sf-interest- followed by the group’s name in your browser’s local storage, so the button shows as already pressed when you return. We add each press to a count for that group and day. The count holds no network address and no account details, and we keep it for one year.

To remove these items, clear the stored data for seriouslyfish.com.

Links to retailers

Some links to Amazon earn us a commission. The Amazon store a link opens is chosen from the country your request comes from. Your visit to Amazon is covered by Amazon's own privacy policy. Amazon reports a sale to us without identifying who made it.

Refused requests

Some requests are refused, for example after repeated sign-in attempts in quick succession. A refusal is recorded with the first three parts of the network address it came from, and this is deleted after 30 days. The request also appears in the Cloudflare request log described above.

Contacting us

For a copy of the information we hold about you, to request its removal, or for anything else on this page, contact us on Discord.