Privacy Policy

Why this policy is short

Most privacy policies are long because most sites collect a great deal. This one is a set of static pages about fishing charters. It has no database, no login and no shopping basket, and the only thing you can send it is the contact form, and only if you choose to. A longer policy here would mean describing data handling that does not happen, which would be misleading in the direction that makes the site look more substantial than it is.

No accounts, and one form

You cannot create an account on Fishing Charters Gulf Shores, because there is no account system. There are no comment boxes, quote requests, review submissions or mailing-list sign-ups anywhere on the site. There is one form, and it is optional.

The contact form, on the contact page. It asks for your name, your email address, an optional topic and your message. What you type is sent to the customer system used to answer it, and to nothing else. There is no hidden field, no tracking pixel and no newsletter checkbox. Not filling it in costs you nothing: the email address beside it reaches the same inbox.

It is not connected yet. The plumbing behind it is unfinished, so a submission today is not delivered anywhere at all. The form says so when that happens and gives you the email address instead — it does not thank you for a message that went nowhere. This paragraph goes when the delivery is real.

If you email the address on the contact page, that email obviously arrives in an inbox and is kept for as long as it is useful to keep it. It is used to reply to you and to fix whatever you wrote in about. It is not added to a list, not sold, and not shared.

Cookies

The site itself does not use analytics or advertising cookies. The third-party chat widget may set cookies or use similar browser storage to operate the conversation and remember its state.

Your browser may also store ordinary cache files for pages and images, which is your browser's own behaviour and is cleared however you normally clear it.

No analytics

There is no analytics on this site: no Google Analytics, no tag manager, no pixel, no heatmap, no session recording, no advertising network.

The local scripts support the gear listings, trip planner and contact form. Those features are not connected to an analytics vendor. The separate chat widget is provided by LeadConnector.

The first notices when somebody clicks a gear link, and records which product was clicked and which site it points at. The second steps you through the questions on the trip planner. The third is a shared helper the planner calls when something happens in it. The fourth submits the contact form.

The contact form sends information only when you submit it. The chatbot loads from its provider whenever a page loads, even if you do not open it.

The trip planner does not ask for your email. It was built with an optional email step and that step is switched off, which means the form is not hidden on the page — it is not built into the page at all. There is nothing in what your browser downloads for it to fill in or submit. If that ever changes, this page changes in the same commit.

The chat widget

A LeadConnector chat widget loads on every page. Because it comes from the provider's servers, the provider receives ordinary request information such as your IP address, browser details, the page requested and the time of the request. It may set cookies or use similar storage to operate the widget.

If you open the widget, anything you type into it is sent to the provider and the customer system used to answer you. Do not send payment details, passwords, health information or other sensitive information through the chat. If the widget asks for a phone number or permission to send text messages, supplying a number does not by itself authorize marketing texts; any consent request shown in the widget controls that communication.

The map on one page loads from someone else’s servers

The map on the nearby areas page is drawn with Leaflet, a mapping library, and that library is loaded from a public code network (cdnjs) rather than served from here. Loading a file from another server means your browser makes a request to it, and any server receiving a request can see the IP address it came from.

There are two separate third parties involved, not one. The library comes from cdnjs. The map imagery itself — every square tile that makes up the map — is fetched from OpenStreetMap’s tile servers, and a fresh request goes to them each time you pan or zoom. Both see the IP address the request came from.

Nothing is sent about who you are or what you looked at, and the map sets no cookie. It was not disclosed when the map was added, which was an oversight rather than a decision, and this section is the correction.

The fonts are served from here

They did not used to be. Until recently the typefaces on this site were loaded from Google’s font service, which meant your browser made a request to Google — carrying your IP address, your browser’s user-agent string and the address of the page you were reading — on every single page, before you had done anything at all.

That was never disclosed here, because it was not noticed. The font files are now stored on this site and served from this domain, so Google receives nothing. It is stated rather than quietly fixed, because the period when it was happening was real.

Server logs

Like essentially every website, the server that delivers these pages keeps standard access logs. Those typically record an IP address, the page requested, a timestamp, and the browser's user-agent string. They exist so the host can run and secure the server, and they are not used to build a profile of you or connected to anything else.

The host is Replit, which serves these pages and keeps the access logs described above.

What this page will not tell you is how long those logs are kept. A specific retention period is not something we set, and stating one we have not confirmed would be exactly the kind of reassuring invention the rest of this policy avoids. If you need that answer, it is a question for the host rather than for us, and we would rather say so than guess.

Links to other websites

This site links out to charter operators, booking platforms and official Alabama and federal resources. Once you follow one of those links you are on someone else's website, under their privacy policy, and this site has no visibility of or control over what they collect. That is worth knowing before you book anything: the operator's booking system, not this guide, is where your name, contact details and payment information go.

Affiliate links

The Book buttons on the operator cards, and the “Check live availability” links in the trip planner, go to the operator’s booking page on FareHarbor rather than to the operator’s own website. They are affiliate links: a booking made through one earns this site a commission, which is disclosed on the terms page and in the footer of every page.

This site sets no cookie and attaches no identifier to you for this. The tracking is a tag in the link itself, the same for every visitor. FareHarbor works out the commission on its side and reports bookings made through these links to this site’s affiliate account so the commission can be paid. Those reports are used for that and nothing else: not to contact you, and not to add you to any list.

Once you follow one of those links you are on FareHarbor’s booking page for that operator, under its privacy policy and the operator’s. Booking a trip means giving them your name, contact details and payment information — that has always been true of booking a charter, and it is stated here because the link now earns this site money, which is a reason to be more explicit rather than less.

Children

This site is aimed at adults planning a fishing trip. Children should not submit personal information through the contact form or chatbot.

Changes to this policy

Any change is dated at the top of this page. Because the policy describes what the site technically does rather than what it reserves the right to do, the honest way to change it is to change the site first and the page in the same breath.

Questions

Anything about this policy can go to info@fishingchartersgulfshores.com, or via the contact page.