Privacy Policy

What your consent choice controls

Whether analytics runs before you choose depends on where you are. In the European Union, the wider European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland — and whenever we cannot tell which country a request comes from — analytics is off until you accept it in the consent banner, and if you decline nothing is ever sent to PostHog. Everywhere else analytics is on by default, and you can switch it off at any time with the Analytics preferences link at the bottom of every page. When analytics runs, Bitespan uses PostHog, which records the pages you visit and the actions you take on them (for example searching for a lake or opening a bite score), a Core Web Vitals performance report, and a session replay of how the page responded to your clicks and scrolling — with everything you type into a form masked out, and your location masked wherever the page shows it. We use it to see how anglers use the site and to improve bite predictions. PostHog is reached through this site's own address, and it receives the address of the page you were on, your browser and operating system, and the IP address your request came from. When you search, the words you typed are sent too, after anything shaped like an email address, phone number or long number has been masked out in your browser — and they are removed from every page address PostHog receives. If you decline, nothing is sent to PostHog.

What loads either way

One tool is not covered by that choice: Sentry, our error monitoring. It starts with the page rather than after the banner, because a crash during the first moments of a visit — before anyone has answered a consent prompt — is exactly the kind we most need to see and fix. When something breaks, Sentry receives the error message and stack trace, the address of the page you were on, your browser and operating system, and the IP address your request came from. We have it configured not to attach personal details such as your name or email, and we do not use it to measure traffic, build a profile of you, or advertise to you.

For the same reason, Bitespan sends itself a short error report when part of a page fails on your device — for example when the lake search cannot reach our server, or a piece of the map fails to download. These reports go to us and to no one else. Each one contains only the name of the failure, a short code such as "unavailable", the HTTP status if there was one, and the path of the page you were on (never the address bar's query, so nothing you type into the search box is ever included). No name, no account, no location, no identifier, and no record of who sent it — we do not log the address it came from, so a report cannot be traced back to a visit.

Bitespan also receives a report when your browser blocks something our security policy doesn't yet allow for — a diagnostics tool, not a vendor, and not something your consent choice controls. We keep these reports in our own server logs for a limited retention window to spot real problems, but we truncate the network address a report came from before it is ever written to a log (for example, the last portion of an IPv4 address is replaced with zero) rather than storing it in full, so a report is never tied back to your exact device or location.

Cookies and storage

Bitespan sets one cookie of its own, consent_region. It holds a single digit — whether you are in a region where we ask before running analytics — worked out from the country your request comes from, and it expires after a day. Your consent choice itself is kept in your browser's local storage on this device — the answer you gave, the date you gave it, and which version of this page it applied to — and is never sent to us. Of the tools above, PostHog sets its own cookie and a local storage entry once analytics runs, to recognise the same browser across pages and visits; Sentry does not.

One more thing is kept in that same local storage: your recently viewed lakes. When you look at a lake, Bitespan remembers it on this device so a later visit can offer it back instead of making you search for it again. The list holds at most five lakes, and for each one only the lake's name and town, its address on this site, the species you last paired with it, and when you looked at it. Nothing else about your browsing is recorded, and it is never sent to us or to anyone else — it exists only in this browser, which is why it works without an account and is not part of the consent choice above. You can erase it at any time with the "Clear recent lakes" button shown wherever the list appears — on the conditions page, the calendar, and the lake list — or by clearing your browser's site data.

You can change your mind at any time. The Analytics preferences link at the bottom of every page erases your stored choice and brings the consent banner straight back. Declining there stops analytics and session replay immediately — you do not need to reload the page. Clearing your browser's site data for this domain does the same thing to your stored choice, and also removes the cookies the tools above set.

We do not sell your data. This page is a placeholder pending a full, counsel-reviewed policy.