Privacy
This is a practical description of how a family museum, Register and signed-in Research Room handle what visitors and members send. Please do not photograph people, children, addresses, labels containing personal information, or private papers.
What we collect
- Bear details, a pseudonym or first-name-only owner label, story and photos when you send a registration.
- Your contact-form name, email and message when you choose to write to us. Contact messages are private.
- Research Room contribution text, its moderation status, your automatically generated public alias, safety-screening decision data and any member report you make.
- A one-way rate-limit hash derived from your network address. It is used to protect the service and is retained for seven days.
Research Room identity and sign-in
The Research Room uses the existing essential Manus OAuth sign-in provider and a secure application session. We need the provider identity to operate the account, prevent abuse and enforce suspensions, but we do not show your account name, email address or OpenID to other members. Instead, the application creates a random public alias. Research Room discussions are available only to signed-in accepted members and are not indexed for public search.
Browser draft storage
While you write a Research Room topic or reply, this browser may keep the unfinished text in session storage for the current browser session. Drafts are separated by your random public alias, are not sent until you submit them, and are cleared when you log out. They are intended to expire when the tab’s browser session ends.
AI safety processing and publication
Before a new Research Room topic or reply can be visible to signed-in members, its text is processed temporarily by a managed AI safety service. Members explicitly agree to this processing and to possible member-only publication when they join and post. The service helps screen for safety; it does not verify historical facts, authenticate a bear, confirm provenance or ownership, or provide a valuation. Contributions that are pending, rejected or hidden are not visible to ordinary members.
Photos and TeddyAi
Before upload, the browser decodes supported JPEG, PNG and WebP images and creates a normalised JPEG, removing EXIF metadata. With your explicit AI consent, photos sent for identification are processed temporarily by a Manus AI provider to suggest visible clues. The report may be wrong and is not authentication, a valuation, proof of ownership or proof of provenance. Identification photos and report information are not kept as a public record unless you then submit a registration; the server applies its own validation.
Moderation and public display
A registration starts private and pending. If it is approved, the submitted bear details, story, pseudonym owner label and photos become publicly visible in the Register and on its public record page. Research Room text is not public web content: only safe published text is visible to other signed-in members. Keepers can read reports and may approve, hide, delete or suspend participation. Do not submit anything you would not want other signed-in members or keepers to read.
Storage and deletion
Current records and uploaded image data are held in the Manus-managed database behind the museum’s access checks. A private removal link is provided after registration. Using it deletes the record and its uploaded image data from our application database. Published Research Room contributions remain until the author or keeper removes them. Pending, rejected and hidden Research Room content, along with member reports, is retained for 90 days and then removed during ordinary request cleanup. Deleting a topic removes its replies and associated saves, helpful marks and reports. Copies made by visitors before removal, provider-managed backups, and a provider’s security or operational logs cannot be recalled by this site.
Contact messages
Contact messages are stored privately for up to 90 days. A new message notifies the keeper and can be archived in the private Keepers’ Desk while it is being handled. The same ordinary request cleanup timing applies, so an inactive site’s cleanup may occur on its next visit.
Cookies and external services
Owner and Research Room sign-in use essential secure session and one-time login cookies. Your text-size and theme preferences are stored in your browser. Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which receives the technical information needed to deliver them. The hosting, OAuth and AI providers may retain their own technical or security logs under their policies.
Your choices and questions
You may skip TeddyAi and enter bear details yourself. You may choose not to register after identification. You may remove your own Research Room contribution; removing a topic also removes its dependent contributions and reactions. For a privacy, removal, correction or other rights inquiry, use the private contact form; please include only the minimum details needed for us to locate the matter.
Important: The Bear Register is an independent family museum and community register. It does not authenticate bears, confirm makers or dates, establish ownership or provenance, or provide financial advice or valuations.