Privacy Policy

Who we are

Forage & Wild ("we", "us") is a private, invite-only foraging and wild camping journal. We operate at foragewild.co.uk. The service is operated by Rob Wasley as an individual, not through a registered company or other legal entity. If you have questions about this policy, contact us at [email protected].

What we collect

Data	Why
Username, full name, email, password	Account creation and identity
Age attestation (16+)	Legal compliance
Pin locations (lat/lng), type, category, notes	Core feature — your foraging/wild camp journal
Photos you upload	Attached to your pins
Comments you post	Community interaction
Tags you apply	Organisation
Basic server logs (IP, timestamp, user agent)	Security and debugging

What we do not do

• We do not sell, rent, or share your personal data with third parties.
• We do not use advertising or tracking pixels.
• We do not use third-party analytics.
• We do not collect data from anyone who does not create an account.
• We do not use your location data for any purpose other than displaying it on the map.

Location data

Pin locations are the core of the service. We treat them as sensitive:

• Private pins (default) are only visible to you within the application.
• Public pins are visible to all registered users.
• Share links allow unauthenticated access to a single public pin via an unguessable URL token.
• You can delete any pin at any time, which removes its location data.
• As the operator, I have physical access to the server and database. I do not access user data unless necessary for maintenance or support, and I am bound by this policy in the same way as the service itself.

Photos & camera

Photos you upload or capture are stored on our server and are only accessible to you (or to other users if you share the pin). We do not process, analyse, or use your photos for any other purpose.

The Camera button requests access to your device's rear camera so you can take a photo directly. This uses your browser's native camera prompt — we do not access the camera without your explicit permission, and no video or audio is recorded. If you decline the camera prompt, the button simply does nothing and you can use the Upload button instead.

Security measures

• Passwords are hashed using PBKDF2-SHA256 with a per-password random salt. Plaintext passwords are never stored.
• Transport — all traffic is encrypted in transit via TLS (enforced by Cloudflare).
• Sessions use HTTP-only, Secure, SameSite=Lax cookies with a 72-hour lifetime.
• Access control — private pins are only served to their owner by the application. API endpoints enforce authentication and ownership checks.
• Rate limiting — login and registration endpoints are rate-limited to mitigate brute-force attacks.
• Backups — daily backups of the database and photos are encrypted with AES-256-CBC (PBKDF2, 100,000 iterations) before being written to disk. The encryption key is stored separately from the backups with restricted file permissions (owner-only).
• Server — the service runs on a single server in the UK with no public-facing database. Only the web application port is exposed, behind Cloudflare.

Third-party services

Service	Purpose	Data shared
Cloudflare	Reverse proxy, TLS termination, DDoS protection	IP address, request URL path, headers. Request bodies (including pin coordinates) are not logged or retained by Cloudflare.
OpenStreetMap	Map tiles (loaded directly from your browser)	Your IP address and the tile coordinates (general map viewport). Your pin coordinates are not sent to OSM.

International transfers: Cloudflare is a US-incorporated company. Your traffic transits their infrastructure (which includes UK data centres) on its way to our UK server. No user data is stored by Cloudflare beyond transient request metadata. OpenStreetMap tile servers are distributed globally; tile requests from your browser may be served from any region. Your pin coordinates, account data, and photos are stored exclusively on our UK server and are not transferred to any third party.

We do not control these services' own privacy practices. See their respective policies.

Data storage

• All data is stored on a single server in the UK.
• Database: SQLite (single file).
• Photos: stored on disk, bound-mounted to a persistent volume.
• Backups: encrypted (AES-256-CBC), stored on the same server, retained for 7 days.
• We do not use cloud storage or external databases.

Data breach

If we become aware of a security breach that affects your personal data (including location information), we will:

1. Contain the breach and assess its scope.
2. Notify affected users directly by email, explaining what happened, what data was involved, and what we are doing about it.
3. Report to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) within 72 hours where required under UK GDPR.
4. Document the incident and the actions taken.

You will be notified without undue delay if a breach is likely to result in a high risk to your rights and freedoms.

Your rights (UK GDPR)

You have the right to:

• Access — request a copy of all data we hold about you.
• Rectify — correct inaccurate data.
• Erase — request deletion of your account and all associated data (pins, photos, comments).
• Portability — download a copy of all your data (pins, photos, comments, likes) as a self-contained archive: a readable HTML report plus the full JSON and your photos. This is available at any time via your account settings.
• Object — object to any processing we're doing.
• Withdraw consent — at any time, where processing is based on consent.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at [email protected].

Data retention

• Data is retained for as long as your account exists. There is no automatic deletion for inactive accounts.
• You may delete your account at any time from your account settings, or by contacting us. Once deletion is confirmed, your personal data, pins, photos, and comments are removed from the live database immediately and from backups within 7 days (the backup retention period).
• Server logs are retained for 90 days for security purposes.

Service discontinuation

If Forage & Wild is ever discontinued, we will:

• Provide at least 30 days' notice to all registered users by email.
• Keep the data export feature available throughout the notice period so you can download all your data (pins, photos, comments, likes) as an archive.
• Delete all user data after the notice period has ended.

Children

The service is intended for users aged 16 and over. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 16. If you believe a child under 16 has created an account, please contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the service evolves. Material changes will be communicated to registered users by email.

Contact

[email protected]