Privacy and security

MinFangst is a personal fishing journal. The starting point is that your data is yours, and that you decide what you share. The app shows no adverts, and we never sell information about you.

All the choices on this page are under Profile → Privacy and sharing.

What is private by default

• Exact GPS points are never shared with others, not with friends, in the public feed or on the scoreboard. They are only visible to you. See Exact GPS point.
• Your journal is yours. Fishing sessions, catches, spots and notes are only visible to you. None of your content is shared with others unless you choose it on the individual entry. Fishing sessions are never shared.
• The public feed is something you choose yourself. No catch ends up there unless you post it, one at a time, and only catches with a photo can be posted. The exact point, the note, the bait, the time of day and the weather are never included, and you can remove the post whenever you like. See Public feed.
• Your photos do not reveal where you were. When you add a photo, the app removes the hidden information in the image file, including the GPS position the camera saved.
• Private profile is a choice you make yourself. New users start with Private profile off, meaning that anyone who knows your username can open your profile page. If you want to keep your profile page to yourself and your friends, turn on Private profile, either in the choices right after signing up or later.

Who can see the entry?

On every catch, observation and fishing session you choose under Who can see this? who gets to see it:

• Friends: your friends see the species, weight, photo and which water. This is the default choice.
• No place: your friends see everything, but not which water.
• Private: only you. The entry is not shared with anyone.

If you set a whole fishing session to No place or Private, everything you have entered on it follows along, both the species you counted and the catches and observations attached to the session.

Private profile

Under Profile → Privacy and sharing you control whether your profile is private:

• On: Your profile page and profile photo are hidden from everyone except your friends.
• Off (default): Anyone who knows your username can open your profile page and see your profile photo, the month you joined, the number of sessions, catches and species, the text you have written about yourself and the catches you have posted publicly yourself, but never your exact spots.

Your species list and achievements are not shown on the profile others see. They are calculated from your whole journal, and a profile should not tell anything about you that you have not decided it should tell. A friend sees the same as everyone else on the profile page.

The numbers follow the visibility choice you made on each entry. If you mark a catch Private, it does not count in the number of sessions, catches and species, or on the scoreboard. On your own profile you see your whole journal as before. The only exception is the species fishing scoreboard, which you have to join yourself.

The setting only applies to the profile page. Whatever you choose, you can be found by your exact username, so that someone can add you as a friend.

Turning off the social features

If you do not want the social side at all, turn off Friends and public feed under Profile → Privacy and sharing. MinFangst is then a purely private fishing log: there is no Feed tab, no sharing and no friend requests. Your username gives no results in the friend search, your profile page and profile photo cannot be opened by others, and your public posts disappear for everyone else.

Your friendships are kept, so everything comes back as it was if you turn the social features back on. See also When the social features are off.

Blocking a user

If you do not want anything to do with a particular user, you can block them from the three dots on their profile. You then disappear from each other's feed and search, any friendship is ended, and neither of you can send the other a friend request. The person you block is not told about it.

The people you have blocked are listed under Blocked users on Profile → Privacy and sharing, and there you can lift the block again.

Shared species data

The switch is called Help map the fish species, and the text under it is the same everywhere in the app:

You help show where the fish species are found. From every entry the species, the water, the time and the size are shared, anonymously and with no link to you. Exact points are rounded off to about 50 meters, and everyone sees the result on the map, free of charge.

Your catches and observations are therefore saved anonymously in a shared database of where the fish species occur, with no link to you. Your exact point never ends up there: if the entry has a point, it is rounded off to a grid of about 50 meters on the server before the row is saved, and in a river the rounded point is pulled onto the river channel itself.

This is on by default for new users, because it is the sum of many anglers that makes the figures useful for both researchers and other anglers. You see the choice right after signing up and can turn it off there with a single tap, or later under Profile → Privacy and sharing. If you turn it off, new collection stops, but what you have already shared stays anonymously.

If you turn it on after having had it off for a while, what you have logged before is also sent in. It goes through exactly the same rules as a new entry: everything you have marked No place or Private is kept out, and exact points are coarsened to about 50 meters first. That way the shared species data does not depend on when you found the switch.

If you take part, it says under each level in Who can see this? whether the entry is sent in. Only Friends sends it in. If you choose No place or Private, the entry is kept out, and the water is never published in the shared species data. The place means the same in both directions: if you leave it out for your friends, it is not shared with everyone else either.

If you delete a catch, a species on a session or an observation, the matching anonymous row is removed too.

The weather and conditions on your trip

When you save a session or a catch, the app fetches the weather, water temperature, tide and water flow for the place and time. If you have set an exact point, it is rounded off to about one kilometer before the app asks for the weather, so the weather services never find out exactly where you stood. The sources we fetch the figures from also never learn your username or see your journal.

Species fishing

Species fishing has its own scoreboard, and it is off by default. You join with the Show me on the species fishing scoreboard switch under Profile → Privacy and sharing, and you can leave whenever you like. The switch is only shown when the social features are on.

If you join, other users see your username, your profile picture and how many species you have confirmed. They do not see which species they are, the photos or where you have fished. All your catches with a time, place, species and photo count, including the ones you have marked Private.

To prevent cheating, we may look at the photo, species, date and place name of the catches that count, including the private ones. This only applies while you are on the scoreboard. The app then sends the name of the place for those catches so that we can judge whether a catch is credible, and if you leave, we delete the place names straight away.

If you turn off the social features, you disappear from the scoreboard for everyone else. Your choice is remembered, so if you turn them back on, you are on it as before.

Moderation of what you share

Anyone can report a post they think is inappropriate, and we handle such reports within a day. To assess a case, we can open the post and see the species, weight, text and photo.

We never see which water it is about, and never the position: location details are not sent to the moderation tool at all.

We can also open a post without anyone having reported it, but only when we have a specific reason to, for example a new account posting the same post many times. The reason is written down before the post is opened, and it is saved together with the lookup.

Everything we open is logged with who at our end opened it, when, and on what grounds. The log is deleted automatically after twelve months. If you want to know whether we have looked at anything of yours, ask us at kontakt@minfangst.no, and we will answer based on the log.

The public feed and profile photos are the exception. A post you have published publicly is seen by everyone who uses MinFangst, and your profile photo appears next to your username everywhere in the app. We see both in the same way as everyone else, and we go through them to catch anything that does not belong here. Such lookups require no justification and are not recorded in the log, because there is nothing private to give insight into. Everything you enter without posting it publicly follows the rules above as before.

Entries you have marked Private are completely outside this. They are not shared with anyone, they cannot be reported, and they cannot be opened by us. The only exception is when you have joined the species fishing scoreboard yourself.

In species fishing, we can decide that a catch does not count, for example when the photo shows a different species from the one logged. The catch itself is not changed. If you have another catch of the same species that meets the requirements, the species still counts. For repeated cheating, we can remove you from the scoreboard.

If a post is hidden, it disappears from your friends' overview, but it remains in your own journal.

We can also correct information that is obviously wrong, for example a trout entered at 500 kg or a catch filed under the wrong species. Figures like these go into the scoreboard, the statistics and the shared species data, and there they cause harm for everyone. We can change the species, weight and length, and remove a note or a photo. We never write new text in your post: a note can be removed, not reworded. We do not touch the place or position. A copy of the original is kept, so the post can be restored.

We can also remove a profile photo or the text about yourself if it does not belong in the app. Both follow your username, and therefore reach more people than a single post does. We never rewrite your text: it either stands as you wrote it, or it is removed. You receive a notification with our reason and can appeal as usual, and you can add a new photo or a new text straight away.

You are always told. If we hide, correct or remove something, you get a notification on your phone, and the case is listed under Profile → Privacy and sharing → Decisions about your content in the app, with our reason. That part of the page only appears once we have actually done something with something of yours: if that has never happened, it is not there, because we do not read through what you enter. That is where you appeal if you disagree. We review the case again and reply to you in the same place. If your appeal is upheld, the decision is reversed straight away, and a corrected field is restored to what you wrote.

Your rights

• You can export your journal (Premium).
• You can delete your account at any time under Profile → Settings. Your data on the server is then deleted too.

You can find the full privacy policy in the app under Profile → Privacy and sharing → Privacy policy, and at minfangst.no/en/privacy.

NOTE

This page is a summary to make things easy to understand. For questions about privacy, the official privacy policy is what applies.