We take privacy seriously. Not in the “click through 47 pages of legalese” way, but in the “we actually thought about this” way.
When you report a sighting, we store your photos, the location you provide, and any optional details like descriptions or height estimates. We also store your email address for authentication. That's it. We're here for the trees, not your browsing habits.
The location you submit is stored securely and visible only to you and our moderation team. The public map displays an approximate position: enough to show the neighbourhood, not enough to find the front door. Street names are never shown publicly.
Many monkey puzzle trees live in front gardens, on private property. We celebrate these trees; we don't want to cause their owners any bother. A magnificent Araucaria deserves admiration, not a stream of uninvited visitors peering over the hedge.
Uploaded photos are stored securely. During processing, we strip EXIF metadata (GPS coordinates are only retained with your consent for location tagging). We ask submitters to focus on the tree and avoid capturing identifiable faces, house numbers, or car registrations. All photos are reviewed by our moderation team before publication.
You keep the copyright to everything you upload. By submitting a sighting, you grant Monkey Puzzle Watch a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to use, display, reproduce, and distribute your content in connection with operating and promoting the service and contributing to conservation research and biodiversity databases. This licence is transferable (meaning it carries over if the service changes hands) and sublicensable (meaning our hosting providers can serve your photos, and recognised biodiversity platforms can include your sighting data, without asking you individually). You can withdraw this licence at any time by deleting your content.
Photos containing identifiable children will always be rejected during moderation. We cannot verify the parental consent required by UK law for under-13s, and we'd rather err on the side of caution. The tree is the star, so please keep it that way.
Under UK data protection law, you have the right to access, correct, or delete your data. You can download your data or delete individual sightings from your account. Need help? Contact us.
You have three options for managing your account from the account settings page:
Deletion requests include a 30-day grace period. You can cancel at any time during this window by logging in.
We use httpOnly cookies for authentication only, the secure, sensible kind that keep you logged in. No tracking cookies. No analytics cookies. No third-party cookies. No cookie banners asking you to accept things you shouldn't have to accept.
We don't sell your personal data to advertisers or third parties. We may share sighting data, including locations, dates, species details, and photos, with recognised conservation bodies and biodiversity databases (such as GBIF) to support scientific research and species conservation. When we do, your personal information (email address, username, account details) is never included. Sighting records are shared anonymously or, where photos are included, attributed to “Monkey Puzzle Watch contributor” unless you have opted in to named attribution.
Your individual sightings always remain under your control. If you delete a sighting, we will make reasonable efforts to request its removal from any databases we have shared it with, though we cannot guarantee that third parties will act on that request.
Last updated: 28 February 2026. We may update this page from time to time. The date above shows when it was last revised.
