Privacy Policy

What your consent choice controls

Analytics is off until you accept it in the consent banner. If you accept, Bitespan loads Google Analytics 4, Vercel Web Analytics, a Core Web Vitals performance report, and — where we have it configured — Microsoft Clarity, so we can see how anglers use the site and improve bite predictions. If you decline, none of those four load and nothing is sent to them.

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 no cookies of its own. Your consent choice 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, Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity set their own cookies once you accept; Vercel Web Analytics and Sentry do 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, and anything that was loaded on your consent stops 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.