Yes — the exact location you provide (GPS or what3words) is kept private. The Live Data Map shows a general area, not the precise square. Your exact location is visible only to you in your MyHydroscape account, to Hydroscape internally for verification, and to regulators if the record is used in an anonymised aggregated form.
In your personal view (MyHydroscape)
- Exact location — you see the what3words address and the specific map pin you submitted
- Only you can see this. No other user of Hydroscape has access to your personal map.
On the public Live Data Map
- General area only — the pin snaps to a reduced-precision location (postcode district, or a slightly offset point within the area)
- No what3words displayed publicly
- No submitter identity — the record is anonymous
So if you record a sighting at filled.count.soap (a specific 3m × 3m square near a river), the public map shows a pin somewhere in that general area, not the exact square. Someone using the public map can see "a cormorant was seen near this village on this date" — they cannot see "a cormorant was seen at this specific fishing peg."
In shared regulatory data
When we share data with Rivers Trusts, Wildlife Trusts, water companies, IFCAs, catchment partnerships, or Environment Agency teams, locations are:
- Aggregated — usually to catchment, postcode area, or grid square level
- Anonymised — no submitter details
- Granted only with your permission (either platform-wide consent at signup or explicit consent for specific research)
Individual what3words addresses are not passed through in these aggregated views.
When we work with a club or fishery
If you submit a record on a water affiliated with a Hydroscape-adopted fishery club, that club's management dashboard sees the record with member-level detail. This is a paid tier that clubs adopt explicitly, and you're told when a water is affiliated. It's the only context where your exact location plus identity is seen by a third party — and it's a fishery manager looking at their own water, not a stranger.
The value of the dataset comes from granularity. A cormorant "seen somewhere in Nottinghamshire" is useless. A cormorant seen at filled.count.soap on a specific date and time is evidence — for a licence application, for a fishery's management, for a catchment study.
We ask for precise data and then protect it. That's the trade-off.
For some species — rare nesting birds, vulnerable reptiles and amphibians, species targeted by wildlife crime — we reduce location detail even further on the public Map, regardless of your personal settings. This applies platform-wide, not per-submission. It protects the species, not your data specifically.
If you're worried your record might expose a sensitive site, you can:
- Note it in the submission's notes field (we'll flag it)
- Email info@hydroscape-group.co.uk after submission asking for the record's public visibility to be restricted
- In severe cases (for example, an active nest of a Schedule 1 bird), skip the public tool entirely and email us directly with the record
When you capture GPS through the app:
- Your phone's location services are used briefly to capture coordinates
- We don't continually track location — only at the moment you tap the crosshair to capture
- Your browser may prompt for location permission the first time. You can revoke this in browser settings.
If you prefer, you can type the what3words address manually without using GPS. The app works either way.
When you upload a photo:
- EXIF metadata (including any GPS coordinates embedded by your camera) is stripped on upload
- We use the location you provided in the form, not what your camera recorded
- This protects you from accidentally leaking the location of past photos taken elsewhere