Privacy notice
Plain-language, because that's how it should be.
Your location
- Sharing your device location is optional. The area name is always enough.
- If you do share it, the coordinates we receive are accurate to roughly a metre. We need that to put your outage on the right street rather than the middle of your neighbourhood.
- What the public sees is rounded to about 11 metres — the right block, but never an identifiable house. That applies to the map, the public API, shared links and data exports alike.
- If you search for a street, that text is sent to our server and on to our geocoding provider (currently Mapbox) to look it up, and is held in a short-lived cache for about 10 minutes so a repeat search doesn't need another lookup. It is never saved to your report and never published — only the map coordinate it resolved to is kept.
- You never have to search. Picking your area from the built-in list, or using your device location, involves no third party at all.
- Area-level clusters, which is what most of the map shows, are coarser still.
What we store
- Your report: issue type, island, area, optional description and photo, timestamps.
- An anonymous session identifier (a random ID in a cookie, or your WhatsApp number for WhatsApp reports) — used to prevent spam and to count distinct reporters for verification.
- No account, name, or email is required to report.
Photos and evidence
- Only upload photos you're comfortable making public.
- Damage-claim evidence (receipts, estimates) is treated as private and is not shown on the public map.
- Moderators may hide any photo that reveals personal information.
Abuse prevention
- Submission rates are limited per session and per phone number.
- Duplicate and suspicious reports may be flagged, merged, or hidden by moderators.
- Verification counts distinct people — repeat submissions don't inflate clusters.
Who sees the data
- The public sees rounded, de-identified reports and aggregated statistics only.
- Moderators can see exact coordinates and session identifiers, solely for verification and abuse handling.
- We do not sell personal data.
LightWatch242 is a community reporting platform and is not affiliated with Bahamas Power and Light or any official utility provider. For electrical emergencies call BPL (302-1800) or 919.