Your information
Privacy notice
Last updated 26 July 2026
The short version: Howff asks for contact details only when you send something to us. A report's display name and contribution are public; its email address is private. We do not sell personal information, send marketing email or use advertising trackers.
We keep identifiable information for defined periods and run an automatic daily deletion process.
Who is responsible
Howff is a free, independent project run by Robert Smith. Privacy enquiries: robert@howffmap.co.uk.
- Service
- Howff, howffmap.co.uk
- Location
- Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
What we collect and why
Community reports
When you add a note, facilities check or photo, we collect the public display name you provide, your private email address, an optional visit date, the report content, and the submission time. Photo reports also contain the image and optional caption.
Notes and facilities checks appear on the map straight away. Photographs are held for review first and are not shown publicly until we publish them.
Your display name, visit or submission date, report text, facilities answers, image and caption are published immediately. Your email address is visible only to the Howff administrator and is used to verify the contribution, follow up, moderate abuse, or resolve a dispute. Initials or an alias are fine. Images are re-encoded to remove embedded metadata before publication.
Missing-bothy submissions
We collect the proposed shelter details, location, notes, source material, your optional name, your email address, and the submission time. We use these details to assess the proposal and contact you if something needs checking. If approved, the shelter information may be published; your contact details are not added to the public shelter record.
Contact messages
We collect your email address, optional name, message and submission time so we can read and reply to your enquiry. Replies pass through our email provider.
Basic traffic, search and visit records
Our web server records ordinary security and diagnostic information, including IP address, requested path, time, referrer and browser user-agent. Within Howff, we also record page paths, referring host, campaign tags, settled search terms and result counts. When someone records a bothy visit, we retain the bothy and date for the public aggregate count.
The application does not put raw IP addresses in its analytics tables. It creates a secret-keyed pseudonymous identifier for short-term deduplication. Pseudonymous information is still treated as personal information until that identifier is deleted.
How long we keep it
| Information | Identifiable retention |
|---|---|
| Active community report and public display name | Up to 3 years, or until it is removed sooner |
| Report email address | 12 months |
| Removed report | Hidden immediately and permanently deleted within 30 days |
| Photo waiting for review | Not shown publicly; deleted within 90 days if it is never published |
| Pending bothy submission | Until approved or rejected, with a maximum of 12 months |
| Contact message | 12 months |
| Application page-view and search records | 90 days |
| Visit deduplication identifier | 2 days; the non-identifying bothy/date count may remain |
| Form rate-limit identifier | Used during the one-hour rate-limit window, in process memory only; stale entries clear on later traffic or worker restart |
| Web-server access logs | 14 days |
If a contributed photograph is selected as a main bothy image, that separate published copy and its chosen credit may remain while the image is in use. You can ask us to remove it at any time.
Our lawful basis
We rely on legitimate interests to operate and improve a useful, trustworthy bothy map; review and publish contributions; respond to people; prevent abuse; and diagnose faults. We limit the information collected, separate private contact details from public contributions, use short retention periods, and do not use this information for direct marketing.
Who receives information
Private submissions are available only to the Howff administrator and to suppliers needed to operate the service. The site is hosted in the UK by PebbleHost, and email is provided by IONOS. We may disclose information where the law requires it or where necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
Some pages or optional features contact external services directly from your browser:
- Google Fonts supplies web fonts;
- OpenStreetMap supplies the map tiles on the bothy-submission page;
- Esri supplies the optional satellite layer;
- Open-Meteo supplies forecasts; and
- Apple Maps or Google Maps opens only if you choose the relevant directions link.
Those services receive the IP address and technical request information needed to return their content and may process it under their own privacy terms, including outside the UK. Howff does not receive advertising profiles from them.
Information kept on your device
Howff uses browser storage and the Cache API to remember your private bagged-bothy list, that you have seen the Bothy Code, short-lived forecast data, and map files needed for offline use. This information stays on your device and can be removed by clearing Howff's site data. If you use “find near me”, the browser-provided location is used on your device to position the map and is not sent to Howff.
Howff does not use advertising cookies or third-party analytics cookies. A secure session cookie is used only after an administrator signs in.
Your rights
Depending on the circumstances, you can ask for a copy of your information, have it corrected, have it deleted, restrict its use, or object to its use. These rights are not always absolute. To make a request, email robert@howffmap.co.uk. We may ask for proportionate information to confirm that the request relates to you.
If you are unhappy with how a request or concern is handled, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK data-protection regulator.
Changes to this notice
We will update this page when Howff changes what it collects, why it uses it, who receives it, or how long it is kept. The date at the top shows the latest revision.