Privacy

Updated 20 October 2026

Wildlife Network is a free, non-commercial, open source project run by Arun Rajiah in Chennai, India. There are no accounts and no ads, and no data is sold. This page lists everything the site collects. Questions or requests: arunrajiah@gmail.com.

Visit statistics

Every page loads Google Analytics, which counts visits so the project can show funders and researchers how it is used. It records the pages you view, the features you use (choosing a species or animal class, playing a year, downloading a CSV, showing coverage), your approximate location at city level, your device and browser, and the site you came from. It sets cookies (named _ga) to recognise a returning browser. Google processes your IP address to do this. Advertising features are off. The data is kept for the period set in the project's Analytics account (Google's default is two months) and then deleted by Google. Google's own policy: policies.google.com/privacy.

To opt out, block cookies for this site in your browser, use a tracker blocker, or install Google's Analytics opt-out add-on. The site works the same either way.

The question box

If you ask a question, its text is sent to Google's Gemini API to write the answer. That service is used on its free tier, under which Google may use what is sent to improve its products, so please do not include personal information. The question and answer are kept for 30 days, with a keyed hash of your IP address (not the address itself) to limit how many questions one visitor can ask, then deleted.

Stations and devices

• Registering a device stores the name you give it, its type, an optional contact email, and a keyed hash of your IP address to limit sign-ups. The API key itself is stored only as a hash. A device registered through the device registry also stores its hardware serial number, which is never shown publicly.
• Device health reports (battery, storage, temperature, uptime, connection type and signal, detections waiting to be sent, software versions) are kept for 30 days, and the latest one is shown on the stations page under the device name. They contain no detections and no location unless the device chooses to send one, which is never shown.
• Detections your device sends (species, time, confidence, location rounded to about 1 km on the device, and the station name you chose) are shown on the map and in the API, kept as individual records for 30 days, and after that only as counts per species, 5 degree area and week. They may be included in open data releases under the licence you chose (CC BY 4.0 by default). No recordings are uploaded.
• BirdWeather stations that opt in (at /stations/join) give their station token, which is checked with BirdWeather, stored encrypted and used only to read that station's daily species counts; plus the name, licence, location precision and optional email they choose. Withdrawing, or revoking the token at BirdWeather, deletes the token and the station's data.
• Marine records from OBIS (up to 12 months), Orcasound and Acartia (7 days each) are kept with the species, count, time, position and the dataset, hydrophone or platform that published them. The names, usernames, signatures, photos and comments of the people who reported Acartia sightings are not stored. Killer whale positions from Acartia, and sensitive species from OBIS, are rounded to 0.1 degree.
• BirdWeather stations appear only as approximate positions (rounded to 1 degree) without names or identifiers; individual detections are kept for 3 hours (bat detections for 24). Stations that stop reporting are deleted after 30 days.
• iNaturalist and GBIF records are public records used under their CC0 or CC BY licences; observers are credited as their publishers ask.

Hosting

The site runs on Vercel and its database on Neon, both in the United States. Vercel processes IP addresses and request details to serve pages and protect the service, and keeps them in logs for a short time. No other cookies or tracking are used.

Reference recordings in species panels are streamed straight from xeno-canto.org, and only when you press play (the sonogram image loads with the panel). Your browser then contacts xeno-canto, which sees your IP address. To pick the recordings, this site sends xeno-canto the species name and, for most species, the continent in view. Never your location or a detection's coordinates.

Removal and your rights

Email arunrajiah@gmail.com to see, correct or delete anything held about you or your station, to hide a species or a location, or to withdraw a station. Requests are handled within two days. Data already published in a dated, citable release cannot be recalled from people who downloaded it, so future releases will leave it out. You have these rights under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and, in the EU and UK, under the GDPR.

Changes

Changes to this page are dated above and recorded in the public code history.