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.

DOther 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.

EYour 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.