Privacy Policy

Information we collect

• Account information, such as your email address, username, profile details, and authentication provider details when you sign in with Google or another provider.
• User-submitted content, including bear sightings, trip reports, descriptions, photos, approximate or precise coordinates, trail context, timestamps, flags, and moderation information.
• Public-source wildlife data, including iNaturalist observation links, photos, location labels, coordinates, dates, and source names when those records are used on BearSee.
• Usage and technical information, such as pages visited, browser or device details, IP-derived region, cookies, session identifiers, logs, and security events.
• Affiliate and outbound-link interaction data when you click safety gear or partner links.

How we use information

• To operate BearSee, publish community reports, show bear activity on maps, and preserve report drafts during sign-in.
• To authenticate users, prevent abuse, moderate reports, respond to flags, and keep the service reliable.
• To improve trail, locality, safety, and gear guidance and understand which pages are useful.
• To comply with legal obligations and protect BearSee, users, wildlife, and the public.

Public reports and location privacy

BearSee is built around shared wildlife context. Reports you submit may be visible to other users and search engines. BearSee may display coordinates, location labels, photos, and report details, but we may also generalize, hide, or remove sensitive locations, residential coordinates, unsafe content, or reports that need moderation.

Service providers and third parties

We use service providers to run the site, including hosting, database, authentication, storage, maps, analytics, security, email, and affiliate-link services. These providers process information only as needed to provide their services to BearSee. OAuth sign-in is also subject to the privacy policy of the provider you choose, such as Google.

Cookies and similar technologies

BearSee uses cookies and similar technologies for sign-in sessions, language preference, security, analytics, and core site functionality. You can adjust browser settings to limit cookies, but some features may stop working.

Data retention and deletion

We keep information for as long as needed to operate BearSee, maintain safety context, comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, and prevent abuse. You may request account deletion or removal of your own submitted content, subject to legal, safety, moderation, and backup limitations.

Children

BearSee is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

Contact

For privacy requests or questions, contact the BearSee operator at privacy@bearsee.ca. If that address changes, we will update this policy.