Privacy notice

Who runs this site

CanI.fish is run by David Todd, an individual based in England. He decides what this site collects and why, which is what data protection law calls the controller.

Write to contact@cani.fish about anything on this page.

Summary

• Nothing is needed to read this site or to contribute to it — no account, no name, no email.
• There are no adverts and no cross-site tracking, and nothing here follows you around the web.
• An account is needed to add a photograph, log a catch, save waters, keep a record of waters fished, keep a private note on a water, tell us about a visit, or look after a club’s pages.
• Checking where you are standing happens on your device — your position is never sent to us, and we never see it.
• If you do write to the site we keep a one-way hash of your IP address for twelve months, to stop one person flooding it. Never the address itself.

There are no adverts and nothing that follows you around the web. You can read every page on this site, and contribute to it, without an account, a name or an email address.

You can also create one. An account is optional, it is 18+, and the only thing it asks for is an email address — never your name. It exists so that saved waters follow you between devices and so that what you contribute can be credited to you if you want it to be.

If you contribute something, report a mistake, tell us a page was helpful, or search for a water, we keep a one-way hash of your IP address so that one person cannot flood the site. We keep it for twelve months and then delete it, and the key it is made with is replaced every month.

If you make an account

You do not need one to read this site or to contribute to it. Seven things need one: saving waters, keeping a record of the waters you have fished, adding a photograph, logging a catch, telling us about a visit, keeping a private note on a water, and looking after a club’s pages.

If you make one we hold your email address, because the account has to be verified, and a username if you choose one — you do not have to, and until you do your profile is not public. Your profile is private unless you make it public, and that is the default.

You must be 18 or over. We ask you to confirm it; we do not verify it and we do not keep a date of birth.

We do not hold your name, your address or any payment details.

Photographs

A photograph you upload has its location and camera data stripped before it is stored. We never see where you were standing. Every photograph is looked at by a person before it appears anywhere, and anybody can ask for one to be taken down.

Where you are standing

A water page can tell you whether you are inside the stretch it describes. Tapping “Check where I am” asks your browser for your position, and everything after that happens on your device: the comparison with the boundary, the distance, and which bank you are on. Your position is never sent to this site, never written down, and never kept. Your browser asks you first, and you can say no; the page works either way.

Catch reports

What you log is published as a total on the water’s page and never as an individual record. No name, no date, no single catch. There is no page on this site that lists what one person caught, and no way to ask for one.

Trip reports

If you tell us about a day you fished, the answers you ticked — the date, whether the page matched what you found, the water, what you caught, whether you would go back — appear on that water’s page straight away, with the date and your username, or as “An angler” if you have not set one. Anything you write in your own words is read by a person first, and may never appear.

That is the point of a trip report: a page is worth trusting because somebody says they were standing there on a particular day. We never publish the price you paid or the parts of the page you said were wrong — those go to whoever keeps the page right, not onto it.

It is in your data export, and it is deleted with your account.

Private notes

You can keep one note on each water: a swim number, a gate code somebody gave you, where the fish were. It needs an account, because it has to belong to somebody.

Only you can read it. It is never shown on the water’s page, never shared with the club, never counted into any total, and nobody at CanI.fish can see it. It is the one thing you can write on this site that no person here reads.

It is in your data export, and it is deleted with your account. If your saved waters are kept for reading without a signal, the note is on your own device with the page.

Clubs

If you ask to look after a club’s pages, we keep what you send with the request — the page or the address you offered as evidence, and anything you wrote in the note — and the decision we reached. If we then give you the pages, we also keep a note of who we spoke to and when, because that is the record of why your club controls that page. None of it is published. The address itself is deleted twelve months after we decide, whichever way we decide — and if nobody ever decides, twelve months after you asked. What we keep after that is the decision and the note of who confirmed it, for as long as your club looks after the page. Nothing removes that automatically if it ends, so ask us and we will.

Some of this is about other people — a club secretary who has never used this site, named in a note about who confirmed what. We hold it for the same reason and delete it on the same request.

Once your club looks after a water, we email you when somebody suggests a change to it. Those messages are written and stored here until they are sent, so what we hold is your email address and the message itself; a sent one is deleted after a month. We send nothing else to that email address, and telling us to stop is a reply to any of them.

What we collect, and how long we keep it

• A hashed IP address, when you submit something, report a mistake, suggest a feature, mark a page helpful, or search for a water. It stops one person flooding the site, and it counts a water’s feedback once per person rather than once per click. Kept for twelve months, then emptied.
• What you typed into a form — the name, the price, the permission, the correction. It is the contribution, and it is the evidence behind what the page ends up saying. Kept for as long as the water is on the map.
• An email address, but only if you choose to give one, and only on the report form. We use it to reply to you about that report and nothing else. It is never added to a mailing list. Kept for twelve months, then deleted.
• The words of a search — what was typed, never who typed it, and the rough point it was looking at, to about a kilometre. Every search is kept, whether it found anything or not: the ones that found nothing decide which water to add next, and the ones that worked show us what people come here for. The words are kept; the hashed address attached to them is deleted after twelve months.
• An email address, if you ask about enhanced listings. No account needed. We use it to tell you when they exist and to answer what you asked, and for nothing else: it is not added to any mailing list. Kept for twelve months, then deleted.
• An idea you send us about the site, from the Suggest a feature link. A person reads it and it is never published. The words are kept; the hashed address attached to them is deleted after twelve months.

If you create an account: - Whether you agreed to be emailed, and when. Each time you turn one of those tick boxes on or off we keep the date and the wording that was in force, so that we can show what you agreed to. This is one of the two things that outlive the account — see Deleting your account below. - Your email address, so that we can confirm it is yours and reach you about your account. We send nothing else unless you ask us to: there are three tick boxes on your account page, all of them off until you turn them on, and turning them off again stops it. Kept until you delete your account. - A username, if you choose one. It is optional, changeable, and the only thing about you that anybody else ever sees. Leave it empty and your contributions show as Anonymous. - Which waters you have saved, the names of your lists, and any waters you have marked as fished. Private. There is no setting that makes them visible to anybody else, no water shows how many people have fished it, and we do not use any of it to work out anything about you. - A private note on a water, if you write one. Yours alone. It is never published, never shown to a moderator, and never counted into anything. Kept until you delete it or delete your account. - What you told us about a visit. The answers you ticked are published on the water’s page, with the date and your username; anything you wrote is read by a person before it appears. Kept until you delete your account. - What you asked to be emailed about, water by water, and, if you set an area for “new waters near me”, the first half of a postcode and a point rounded to about a kilometre. Never the whole postcode. Kept until you change them or delete your account. - A record of which of those emails you have already been sent, so that one change does not reach you twice. Kept for ninety days, then deleted.

We record that you confirmed you are 18 or over and which version of the terms you accepted, with the date. That is the record that says what you actually agreed to.

We keep that record after an account is deleted. It only matters if somebody later disagrees about what was agreed, and by then the account has usually gone — a record that is destroyed at the moment it might be needed is not a record of anything. It holds the date, the version, and a one-way value made from your email address so that we can match a claim you make later without keeping the address. Anyone holding our key could test a guessed address against that value, so we treat it as information about you rather than as anonymous. It is deleted six years after the account closes, which is how long a contract claim can be brought.

Why we are allowed to hold it

The law requires us to say which ground each of these rests on.

• Your email address, verifying it, signing you in, and messages about your own account. We need it to provide the account you asked for. Ground: contract.
• The record of your 18+ confirmation and the terms you accepted. So that we can show what was agreed. Ground: legitimate interests.
• The hashed address. Rate limits, blocking deliberate abuse, and counting a water’s feedback once per person. Ground: legitimate interests.
• Contributions, corrections, photographs and catch reports. Running the public record this site exists to be. Ground: legitimate interests, and contract for the parts tied to an account.
• An email address you choose to give on the report form. So that we can reply about that report. Ground: legitimate interests.
• What was searched for. Deciding which water to add next, and what to improve. Ground: legitimate interests.
• Club claim records, including the note of who confirmed what. Evidence of why a club controls a page. Ground: legitimate interests.
• Trip reports. Running the public record this site exists to be, and crediting the person who told us. Ground: legitimate interests, and contract for the part tied to your account.
• The three optional emails, which waters you asked to hear about, and the area you set. Sending you what you asked for and nothing else. Ground: consent, which you withdraw by unticking a box or by the link at the bottom of any one of them.
• Analytics. Knowing which pages are used. Ground: legitimate interests.
• Error reports. Finding and fixing faults. Ground: legitimate interests.

Where we rely on legitimate interests we have weighed them against your rights, and you can object to any of them — see Your rights.

Nothing has to be given to use this site. An email address is needed only to create an account.

We do not make automated decisions about you.

Deleting your account

There is a button on your account and it does what it says. Erased straight away: your email address, your username, your saved waters, your record of waters fished, your catch reports, your trip reports, what you asked to be emailed about, the area you set, and your sign-in sessions.

The waters, corrections and photographs you contributed stay on the site. They are facts about a river rather than facts about you, and other people are relying on them — so the contribution stays and its credit becomes Anonymous. What stays is no longer linked to your account. That is not the same as being untraceable: a contribution from the last twelve months still carries a hashed address until that expires, and anything you wrote in your own words can identify you by what it says.

Two things outlive the account deliberately. The record of what you agreed to, described above, which goes after six years. And a message already written to be sent to you, which goes after a month.

Copies remain in our encrypted backups until they age out — thirty daily and twelve monthly — and in our email and error providers’ own logs for as long as each of them keeps one.

You can download the information linked to your account, as a file, from the same page: the profile, the three email settings, the area you set, which version of the terms you accepted, your saved lists, the visits you have logged, and what you asked to be emailed about water by water. It does not include anonymous contributions, because they carry no account id and cannot be matched back to you — by us or by anybody else.

IP hashing

We do not store your IP address alongside anything you contribute. Our server combines it with a secret key held only by the server, and a salt held only by the database, and stores the result instead.

We use that hash for these things:

• limiting how many submissions one person can make in an hour
• counting a water’s feedback once per person rather than once per click
• counting how many separate people searched for the same thing
• blocking someone who is deliberately submitting false or abusive information

If you have an account, the sign-in system keeps a note of each session, and that note has a space for an IP address. What it holds is our own server’s address, not yours: every sign-in is made by our server on your behalf, so your address is never sent to it.

What people search for

When you search, we record what you typed, roughly where it was looking, how many results it returned, and a hashed count of how many separate people have asked for the same thing. A search that finds nothing is how we decide which water to add next. A search that works shows us what people come here for, which is how we decide what to improve.

We do not record which results you opened, and nothing is filed under you: a search is stored under the words, next to a count, with no session and no history.

The hashed address attached to a search is deleted after twelve months. The words stay.

Automated removal

Every night an automatic task empties every hashed address older than twelve months, deletes the rows where the hash cannot be separated from the record, removes the email address from any report older than twelve months, and removes the club address from any claim to look after a club’s pages that was settled more than twelve months ago.

Cookies and local storage

We set no tracking or advertising cookies, and our analytics sets none either.

Four things are kept in your own browser. None of them reaches us, and the first three say nothing about you:

• A shape you are part-way through drawing, held in your browser’s session storage so that it survives the step between the map and the form describing it. It is discarded when you close the tab.
• Where you were looking on the map, so that “back to the map” returns you to the view you left rather than to the start. It is read once as the map opens, cleared immediately, and discarded when you close the tab.
• That you asked not to be counted, if you use the switch on the cookie notice. A preference not to be counted has to be remembered to be honoured, so this one stays until you clear your browser data. It says nothing about you beyond that you asked.

• Pages you asked to be saved for reading without a signal, if you use that button on a water or on your saved waters. Whole water pages are stored on your device, along with their photographs and the map tiles that cover them, which is a record of which waters you saved. It is on your device and nowhere else, we cannot read it, each saved page shows the date it was saved, and your offline waters lists what is held, how much room it takes and a button to remove any of it.

The filters you choose are not storage: they go into the address bar, so that a filtered map is a link you can send to somebody. That also means they are in your browser history, like every other page you visit.

Whether you have been here before is not stored on our side at all. Your own device holds only the pages you asked it to save.

Cookies are only set when they are essential: a sign-in session if you have an account, and a moderation key if you sign in to moderate the site. Both are strictly necessary. Every cookie this site sets is named in the cookie notice.

Analytics

We use Umami, a cookieless analytics product. It counts page views and a handful of actions — a report filed, a water submitted, a search that found nothing — with no cookies, no profile of you, and no way to follow you to another site. It is told your IP address, which it uses to work out which country a visit came from and does not keep. UK law allows this without asking you first, provided we say so and make objecting easy: the switch at the foot of the cookie notice stops it for this browser, and a browser sending a do-not-track signal is never sent the script.

The companies involved in showing you this page

• Our host serves every page, so it necessarily handles your IP address in order to send you one, and keeps short-lived server logs. Every website works this way.
• The OpenStreetMap Foundation serves the map imagery, so it sees your IP address and, from which tiles you ask for, roughly where you are looking.
• OpenMapTiles serves the lettering on the map, and sees your IP address for the same reason.
• Umami counts page views and a handful of actions. It is given the page, the action, your browser and your IP address; it works out the country from the address and does not keep the address itself. It sets no cookie.
• Supabase is our database host. Details of waters are stored there, and so is your hashed address. Your IP address itself is not.
• Resend sends our email. It is given the address a message is going to and the words of the message, and nothing else — not your IP address and not anything else we hold. It cannot read anything from our database.
• Sentry, if a page breaks, receives the error: which page, which browser, and where in our code it went wrong. It is configured not to send request bodies, so what you typed into a form is not part of an error report.

Some of these are outside the UK, including in the United States. Where that is so, the transfer relies either on UK rules recognising that country as providing adequate protection, or on the standard contractual clauses with the UK Addendum.

We do not sell data to anyone.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

• tell you what we hold about you, and give you a copy
• correct anything that is wrong
• delete it
• stop using it while a disagreement is sorted out
• give you the information from your account in a portable file, which the button on your account page already does
• stop relying on consent, by unticking any of the three email boxes

You can also object. Nearly everything on this page rests on legitimate interests, and you have the right to tell us to stop. Say what you want stopped and we will either stop or explain why we think we may carry on.

Because we store hashes rather than addresses, and because those hashes expire, we may need you to tell us which submission was yours in order to find it.

Complaining

Email contact@cani.fish with Data protection complaint in the subject. We will acknowledge it within 30 days and tell you what we are doing about it.

If you are not satisfied with the answer, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk. You can go to them directly; you do not have to come to us first.

Children

Anyone can read this site. An account is for over-18s only, and creating one requires confirming it.

We do not knowingly hold account information about anyone under 18. If you think we do, tell us and we will delete it. A photograph in which a child can be identified is not accepted.

Contact

Use Report incorrect information, or write to contact@cani.fish.

Version 2.2 · effective 7 October 2026.