Privacy Notice
This is a draft
Mary Astronomy Foundation is being established. This document is under review and is not yet in force. It is published now so you can see exactly what we intend.
Privacy Notice
Status: draft, under review. Not yet in force.
Version 2026-09-draft.
What we collect, and why
| What | Why | Kept for |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Real-name identity and attribution on published images | While your account exists |
| Email address | Signing in, verification, notices about your observations | While your account exists |
| Password | Signing in. Stored only as a hash; we never see or store the plaintext | While your account exists |
| Country | Aggregate reporting only, never displayed against your name | While your account exists |
| Age band | Applying age-appropriate policy. We do not collect a date of birth | While your account exists |
| Intended use | Understanding what the platform is used for | While your account exists |
| Sign-in activity | Showing you your own sessions and spotting account compromise | 12 months |
| Truncated IP prefix | Rate limiting and abuse review. Reduced to a /24 or /48 before storage | 90 days |
| Coarse device description | Showing you which devices are signed in | While the session exists |
| Observation records | Running your observations and telling you what happened | While your account exists |
| Files from your observations | Delivering your images | 30 days, then deleted |
What we deliberately do not collect
- No phone number, and no SMS verification. Neither is required.
- No MAC address. A website cannot obtain one, and any product claiming
otherwise is describing something else.
- **No advertising trackers, no third-party analytics, no cross-site
profiling.**
- No detailed device fingerprinting. Risk signals come from a truncated IP
prefix, the coarse device description above, and behaviour on the platform.
That is the limit.
How we use risk signals
A shared network or a similar device is not treated as proof of abuse. Many
people share a school or library connection. Signals raise a case for a person
to review; they never trigger an automatic permanent ban. Risk records are
restricted to staff who need them and are purged on the schedule above.
Who sees your data
Staff see what their role allows. Support staff can see enough to help you and
cannot change your credentials or sign in as you. An administrator can view your
account as you only through an explicit, audited, time-limited action which is
recorded against their name, not yours, and which blocks every credential
change while it is active.
We do not sell your data. We do not share it with advertisers.
Your rights
You can ask us to show you what we hold, correct it, or delete your account.
Write to info@maryastronomy.com.
Deleting your account removes your personal data. Images you chose to publish to
the gallery are treated separately, because they were published deliberately and
other people may rely on them; see the Image Publication and Licence Policy. We
can remove your name from a published image on request.
Children
This is unresolved and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
The educational purpose of this platform does not remove obligations toward
children's privacy. Depending on where a child lives, laws such as COPPA in the
United States and the UK and EU children's codes may require verifiable parental
consent, restrict what can be collected, and restrict what can be published
under a child's real name.
Until we have a lawful, specific policy for each place we operate in:
- Public registration by people under 13 is not open.
- Real-name publication of work by anyone under 18 is not enabled.
- Groups are held and managed by adults.
We would rather delay this than get it wrong.
Contact
info@maryastronomy.com