FAIMS 
Privacy Policy
Effective 28 October 2026
This policy covers the FAIMS platform and every app that runs on it:
| Product | Who uses it | Where |
|---|---|---|
| FAIMS web platform | Fisheries officers, supervisors, researchers and data managers | faims.co |
| FAIMS (eCAS) | Enumerators collecting catch, frame and research surveys | Android, com.ecas.smartcas |
| eAqUA (Aquaculture) | Officers registering fish farms and filing routine reports | Android, com.ecas.smartcas.aqua |
| PFZ | Fishers on the Tanzanian coast, and the traders who buy from them | Android, net.smartcas.pfz |
| eFisher | Fishers, boat owners and traders on Lake Victoria | Android, org.lvfo.efisher |
| FAIMS website | Anyone | site.faims.co |
1. Who is responsible
FAIMS is built and run by the FAIMS Core Development Team, staff of the public fisheries institutions that use it. The fisheries institution in each country decides what its surveys collect and who on its staff can see the records. The core team runs the servers and the apps for all of them.
Write to [email protected] with any question or request about your data. We pass requests about a country’s survey records to that country’s institution when they need to decide.
2. What we collect
Staff accounts: web platform, FAIMS (eCAS) and eAqUA
Your institution creates your account. It holds your name, username, email address, phone number, gender, institution, role, country, nationality, the district, landing site and water body you work in, your language, and a profile photo if you add one. Your password is stored only as a one-way hash.
When you sign in we record the time, your IP address and your device’s browser or app details, so you can see and close your open sessions. If your institution turns on two-step sign-in, we send the code to your phone by SMS or WhatsApp.
We keep an audit log of changes to records: who changed what, when, the old and new values, and the IP address and device the change came from.
Survey records
The forms record what enumerators observe: catch, species, weights, prices, boats, gear, crew numbers, fishing effort and, for research forms, fish lengths, weights, sex and maturity. Each record carries the date, the landing site, the enumerator who collected it, and the phone’s GPS position when the form was filled in.
Photos you take of fish or gear are uploaded with the record. Fish-length photos are measured by software on our own server and are not sent to anyone else.
Fish farm records in eAqUA
A farm registration records the owner’s full name, gender, year of birth and nationality, contact details, national ID or permit number, the farm’s location and GPS position, its business details such as investment, wages and staff numbers, and the officer who registered it. Routine reports add what the farm stocked, fed, harvested and sold, with the GPS position of the visit.
PFZ app
You sign up with your name, phone number, gender and country, and an email address if you want to give one. We confirm your number with a one-time code sent by SMS.
When you ask for a fishing zone or record a trip, we store the district and landing site, your boat and gear, the boat’s registration number if you enter it, what you caught and sold and for how much, your trip costs, and your feedback on the zone. From these we build your own earnings and expenses history.
The app uses your phone’s location to guide you to a zone and to sort market posts by distance. It does not store your position.
In the market you can post fish for sale with up to four photos, make offers and bid in auctions. We store your notification settings and your phone’s push notification token.
eFisher app
You sign up with your first and last name, phone number, country, language, sex, age and an optional photo. We confirm your number with a one-time code sent by SMS or WhatsApp. Each time you sign in we record your IP address and your phone’s location.
The app stores your boats and their registration numbers, your trips with departure and return times, catches, catch locations and expenses, and the names and phone numbers of the crew you add. It also stores fish you post for sale with their photos and location, the places you save for weather forecasts, and the questions you ask the assistant with your ratings of its answers.
The website
site.faims.co has no accounts or forms and sets no tracking cookies. If you email us, we keep your message to answer it. The pages load fonts from Google Fonts and map tiles from OpenFreeMap, which see your IP address as any website you load from does. The figures on the website are totals and averages. They never contain a person’s name, phone number or exact location.
3. Why we use it
- To run the surveys your institution has asked for, check the records, and produce catch estimates, maps and reports. This is the public task the institutions are responsible for.
- To give you the service you signed up for in PFZ and eFisher: fishing zones, weather, trip accounts and the fish market.
- To sign you in, keep accounts secure and trace changes to records.
- To send reminders to enumerators and their supervisors when data collection stops, and the alerts you choose in the apps.
We do not sell personal data and we do not use it for advertising.
4. Who can see your data
Inside FAIMS, staff see records for their own country, and within it what their role allows. An enumerator sees the sites they are assigned to, a supervisor their district, and a manager the whole country.
When you post fish for sale, your name and phone number appear with the post so buyers can reach you. In eFisher anyone can see them. In the current PFZ app everyone sees your name, and only signed-in users see your phone number. Older versions of the PFZ app show both to anyone. Auction winners’ names are hidden from other bidders. Market prices are shown only as medians across several sellers.
In eFisher, an administrator in your country may share your fish post on the country’s Facebook and Instagram pages. The post includes your name and phone number.
National statistics offices receive survey totals, never individual records.
5. Services that handle data for us
| Service | What it receives | Used by |
|---|---|---|
| Africa’s Talking and BulkSMS | Your phone number and the text of the SMS | All apps |
| WhatsApp Business (Meta) | Your phone number and the message | Web platform, eFisher |
| Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) | Your phone’s push token and the notification | PFZ |
| Google Maps | The map area you view and your IP address | PFZ, web platform |
| Google Geocoding, WeatherAPI.com and AccuWeather | The coordinates of the place you ask about | eFisher |
| Google Gemini | The questions you type to the assistant | eFisher |
| OpenAI | Weather data, to write weather alerts | eFisher |
| Anthropic or OpenAI | Survey totals for a water body and period, to draft reports. No names, phone numbers or individual records. | Web platform |
| Facebook and Instagram (Meta) | Fish posts an administrator chooses to share | eFisher |
| Rollbar | Technical error reports, which can include the account that hit the error | Web platform |
| Cloud storage | Database backups and eFisher photos | All |
Some of these services are outside your country. They process the data only to provide their service to us.
6. How long we keep it
- Survey and farm records are kept as long as the institution needs them. Fisheries statistics are compared across decades, so this is usually indefinitely.
- Sign-in sessions end after 30 days, or after 5 days without use.
- Database backups are kept for up to two years and then deleted.
- The audit log and the log of messages we sent are kept as long as the records they describe.
- If you close a PFZ account we delete your sign-in sessions and release your phone number at once. Your trip and sales records stay linked to your name until you ask us to erase them.
7. Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, and ask us to correct it or erase it. You can also object to how we use it or ask us to stop. Write to [email protected]. We answer within 30 days.
You can close a PFZ account from the app’s profile screen. To close an eFisher account or a staff account, write to us or ask your institution.
We may keep survey records that are part of official statistics after you ask us to erase them. In that case we remove your name and contact details from them.
We handle personal data under the data protection law of the country where it is collected, such as Tanzania’s Personal Data Protection Act, 2022, Kenya’s Data Protection Act, 2019 and Uganda’s Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019. You can complain to your country’s data protection authority.
8. Security
Passwords and one-time codes are stored only as hashes. Staff access is limited by country and role, and sign-in attempts are rate limited. No system is completely secure. If a breach puts your data at risk, we will tell you and the authority the law requires us to tell.
9. Children
The apps are for adults who work in fisheries and aquaculture. We do not knowingly register anyone under 18. If you think a child has an account, write to us and we will delete it.
10. Changes
When we change this policy we update the date at the top. If a change affects how we use data you have already given us, we tell you in the app before it applies.