PRIVACY AND COOKIES

AReports you send in

The report form asks for your name, email address, age, where and when you saw it, and what happened. You can also mark the place on a map and attach up to three photos.

• Every report is checked before it goes on the site. Spam and reports we don’t publish are deleted.
• A published report shows what you wrote, exactly as you wrote it, with the place, date and a map of the area.
• Your email address is never published. It is only used to contact you about your report.
• Your name is shown as you chose on the form. Anyone under 18 is shown by first name only. For reports sent before 2026, part of the surname is blacked out.
• Photos are re-saved before they are stored, which removes the location and camera details inside them.
• Published reports are also shown on our sister site UFO Maps and on sites that show our latest reports. They get the same details the report page shows, never your email address.
• Published reports stay on the site as part of the archive. If you want yours changed or taken down, contact us.

BStopping spam

To limit how often a form can be used, the site keeps a scrambled (hashed) version of your internet address for a day. The address itself is not stored.

CCookies

• ufowatch: set only when you use the report form, or arrive from a site that shows our reports. It keeps the form secure and remembers which site you came from. It is deleted when you close your browser.
• Advertising: the site shows Google ads. Google may use cookies to choose and measure ads. In the UK and EU you are asked for consent first, and you can change your choice at any time from the link Google shows.
• Visitor statistics: we count visits with Google Analytics, run through Cloudflare, to see which pages people use.

DTests of the site’s design

Now and then we show visitors one of two versions of part of a page, to see which works better. So that you keep seeing the same version, your browser keeps a random id in a cookie called xp_id for a year, with xp_v (30 minutes) and xp_s (a year), which note the versions you’ve seen. They hold nothing about you, and we don’t use your IP address for this. We count which version you saw and whether you clicked or signed up, in our own statistics, not Google’s.

You can opt out. You’ll then always see the usual version, and nothing is counted. Your choice is kept in a cookie called xp_optout for a year, on this browser.

EError and speed reports

To find and fix problems, a small script reports when a page breaks or loads slowly. As you leave a page it sends:

• which page it was, without anything after a “?” in the address;
• your browser (Chrome, Safari and so on) and whether you’re on a phone;
• any error messages, and where in our code they happened;
• how long the page took to load.

It sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device. Your IP address is never kept: it is replaced as soon as it arrives by a scrambled code that can’t be turned back into it. Reports are deleted after 32 days.

FOther services the site uses

• Cloudflare delivers and protects the site, so it handles every request, including your internet address.
• OpenStreetMap: the map on the report form, and its place search, load from OpenStreetMap, which receives your internet address and anything you search for. Maps on report pages are made on our server, so they don’t.
• freecontactus.com runs our contact form, which emails your message to us.
• Google provides the ads and statistics above. See how Google uses information from sites that use its services.

GYour rights

You can ask to see the information we hold about you, or ask us to correct or delete it. Contact us and say which report it is about. If you are unhappy with how we handle it, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.