Privacy policy
Our privacy policy
Safety rules
For safeguarding reasons, we only accept participants above 18 years old, children can join if supervised by an adult.
You can withdraw from the study at different stages:
- Before submitting any images: you can withdraw at any point by not submitting the images to Mammalweb
- After you have uploaded the images: we follow the Mammalweb GDPR policy, where you have the right to remove your images from the platform in certain circumstances by contacting the Mammalweb team, however after the 30th of July 2025 the data will be downloaded, personal identifiers will be removed, and it will not be possible to withdraw your data from this project.
- Withdrawing from the online questionnaire: you can withdraw at any point of the questionnaire, by closing your browser or choosing not to click the “Submit” button on the final page of the questionnaire. However, once you submit your answers it will not be possible to withdraw the information provided, as the anonymity of the questionnaire ensures that your answers cannot be linked back to you.
- The images you upload as a part of this survey will be managed by Mammalweb.org. Please see the link for their data policy: MammalWeb. When uploading the images to the platform, you do so under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The photos you upload will be run through artificial intelligence (AI) software that should remove all images of humans and images of vegetation (called ‘blanks’). Blanks will be available to the project team, but not to the general public. However, the AI system can make errors, so if your camera trap captured images that may be considered sensitive- please remove them before uploading to the platform.
Additionally, the platform provides a “Report” button. If you come across a human/ other sensitive images while spotting, please press the button and this image will not be displayed to spotters.
GDPR policy
The potentially sensitive data, such as personal identifiers and locations of the camera trap will only be collected as a part of data upload to the Mammalweb.org. This will adhere to the platform’s GDPR policy. The locations of the camera trap visible to the public will be shared as a rectangle on the map of 0.1×0.1 degree, so around 60- 70km2 in the UK, and account information will be kept at a secure server- AWS (Amazon Web Services) Ireland, click for Mammalweb full policy.
After the data collection for this project is complete, a dataset consisting of data from all camera traps will be downloaded from Mammalweb to a secure data storage and personal identifiers will be permanently removed. The exact locations of the camera traps will be used for the purpose of remote sensing and statistical analysis and will be kept on a secure data storage. This data will not be shared with public. After the study, the data without personal identifiers and exact locations will be made available via data repository for 10 years.
The data from the questionnaire will be fully anonymous, so personal identification will not be possible. The anonymised data will be analysed by the research project team at Nottingham Trent University and will form a part of a PhD thesis. The anonymised data may also be used in scientific publications and made available in research data repositories.
If you sign up for the optional newsletter of the project, we will also store information on your email address for the purpose of sending the newsletter. Your email address will be stored on a password- protected data storage for the maximum of 10 years for us to be able to contact you if the project is continued in the following years. You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time and your email address will be permanently removed from the data storage.
With
any questions, please contact me via email: paulina.pawlikowska@ntu.ac.uk
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