The short version
You don’t need an account, and an account holds very little
River Flood Watch works fully without an account. Your gauges and alerts can stay on your own device, and nothing about you is kept on our side beyond what alerts need to reach you.
If you choose to sign in, the only extra thing we keep is your choices: which gauges you watch, the catchment you last looked at, and your alert levels. That lets them follow you to another phone or computer. Your email address and name are held by Clerk, the company that runs the sign-in, and not by us.
- An account is optional
- Every height, every gauge, the map, the report and alerts all work without one.
- We keep your choices, not your identity
- Our database stores your gauges, catchment and alert levels against a random ID. There is no name, email address or phone number in it.
- No advertising, no selling
- Nothing about you is sold, shared for marketing, or used to show you ads. We send no newsletters and no marketing email.
- Delete it yourself
- Deleting your account removes everything it holds, from Clerk and from us, without having to ask. How to do it is below.
Without an account
What the site keeps if you never sign in
- On your device: the gauges you chose, the catchment you last looked at, and your alert levels, in your browser’s own storage. These are never sent to us. The cookie policy lists each one by name.
- On our side, only if you turn alerts on: the address your browser gave us for delivering notifications, two encryption keys, and which gauges you want alerts for. There is no name or email attached. The cookie policy explains each part.
- If you use the contact form: your message, name and email address go straight to our mailbox so we can reply. They are not stored on this site; the only thing recorded is a count of messages per day.
- Your IP address, for a few seconds and in memory only, when you save alert settings or send a message, so a script can’t flood the site. It is a counter that expires, not a record of who visited.
The site also uses Google Analytics to count visits. The cookie policy says exactly what it sets, what it sees and how to switch it off.
With an account
What signing in adds
You can sign in with your email address or with your Google account. Signing in is run by Clerk, a company that provides sign-in for websites.
What Clerk holds
Clerk holds what it needs to know it’s you: your email address, and, if you sign in with Google, the name and profile picture Google shares. Clerk also records when you signed in and from what kind of device, to keep your account safe.
Clerk sends the emails involved in signing in, such as a sign-in code. Those are the only emails you will receive because of your account.
Signing in with Google does not give us or Clerk access to your Gmail, your contacts, your files or anything else in your Google account. Google will know that you signed in to this site, under its own privacy policy.
What we hold
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Clerk’s ID for your account |
A random string such as user_2abc…, so we know which saved
choices are yours. It does not contain your name or email address.
|
| Your gauges and catchment | So a second device can start with the same river list. |
| Your alert levels | So changing a level on one device changes it on every device you’re signed in on. |
| Which of your devices have alerts on | A link between your account and each device’s alert subscription, up to 10 devices, so your alert levels reach all of them. |
We use these for one thing only: showing you your own choices and sending you the alerts you asked for. We don’t look at individual accounts, and nobody else sees them.
Cookies, once you sign in
Signing in adds Clerk’s own cookies, which keep you signed in between visits. They are only set once you press Sign in, and signing out ends the session they keep. If you never sign in, the site doesn’t load Clerk at all.
Other companies
Who else handles any of this
| Company | What for | When |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | Runs the site and its database, and the check on the contact form | Every visit |
| Google Analytics | Counting visits, as the cookie policy describes | Every visit, unless you opt out |
| Clerk | Signing in, and holding your email address and name | Only if you sign in |
| Confirming who you are, if you sign in with Google | Only if you choose Google sign-in | |
| Your browser’s notification service | Delivering alerts (Google, Mozilla, Apple or Microsoft, depending on your browser). The alert is encrypted so only your device can read it. | Only if you turn alerts on |
| Resend | Delivering your contact form message to our mailbox | Only if you send a message |
| Mapbox | Drawing the full map | Only if you open it |
Where it is kept
Our own database is in Cloudflare’s Oceania region. Clerk, Google, Resend and the notification services are overseas companies, mostly in the United States, and hold what they receive under their own privacy policies, linked above.
Deleting your data
How to delete your account and everything it holds
- Open the site and sign in.
- Press Account at the top of the river page, then Manage account.
- Choose Delete account and confirm.
That deletes, straight away and without anyone at our end having to act:
- your account at Clerk, including your email address, name and picture;
- your saved gauges, catchment and alert levels from our database;
- the link between your account and your devices.
Deleting your account doesn’t stop flood alerts on a phone that has them turned on, because a flood warning is not something we want to switch off by surprise. To stop them, open Alerts on that device and turn alerts off, which deletes that device’s alert details from our side too.
Without an account, there is nothing of yours on our side to delete except alert details, and turning alerts off removes those. The gauges on your device are removed by clearing this site’s data in your browser.
If you signed in with Google, you can also remove this site from Third-party apps & services in your Google account. That stops Google sharing anything further with us; to delete what Clerk and we hold, delete your account as above.
If you can’t sign in to delete your account, ask us on the contact form and we will delete it for you.
Changes and questions
If this ever changes
If we ever start keeping something new, this page changes the same day and says what changed. It is dated below for that reason. There will be no advertising on a flood site, and nothing about which gauges you watch will be sold or handed to anybody.
Questions about your data go to the contact form. The mailbox behind it is not monitored during an emergency, and a reply may take several days.
The cookie policy lists every cookie and every item of device storage by name. About us is the short version, and the full disclaimer says how much to trust a height.