Last Updated Aug 24, 2020
We don't really want your personal data, but an email address and password are required to provide a degree of security and a way to reach you for service-related issues. We are not going to sell it, rent it, or otherwise disclose it. MyFlightbook is hosted in a secure environment and adheres to common security best practices. We do need an email to contact you about account related stuff and for things like password reminders.
We do NOT send solicitations via email. We will not spam you.
In addition to email and password, you may also optionally provide to us:
By default, your flights are private. If someone tries to access a flight that is not theirs and which is not explicitly marked as public, they will see a route of the flight but no information beyond that (date, aircraft, pilot, etc.). You can, however, mark a flight as public ("shared"). If you do this, many details of the flight will be visible to others, including the date, the aircraft, your name, the route of flight, any remarks about the flight, and any images/videos. This is particularly useful for sharing on social media (see below)
We do not share either the personal information described above or your logbook data (i.e., your flights, airplanes you fly, etc.) with anybody, except with your explicit consent or an appropriate legal process. Of course, in tracking problems on the site, doing data curation on shared data (such as aircraft or model definitions), or otherwise providing you support, we may need to use admin tools to impersonate your account or dive into the database, and that means that we will see your data. As explained above, we dont' want (nor do we request) a lot of personal information about you, so this data cannot be tied to a person beyond your email address.
MyFlightbook uses cookies; by using the service, you must consent to their use.
Some of the functionality that requires cookies includes:
The above list is not exhaustive.
You can tweet your flights on Twitter or post them on Facebook. If the flight is not public, not a lot will be shared (just a link to a map of the route - no date, no aircraft, nothing that identifies you), but if you make the flight public, it will expose more detail (as described above).
You can post to Facebook/Twitter by clicking on a link to do so. MyFlightbook does NOT pull any information from these sources, nor does it directly write to them.
You can download your data, either to your own computer or to a cloud storage provider such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive. We, of course, can't control what you (or they) do with it then. But, if you enable storage to a cloud provider, you should be aware that:
You can revoke the permission granted to MyFlightbook to write data to your cloud storage provider whenever you like.
Images, videos, and documents on MyFlightbook are stored using Amazon Web Services. You can review their privacy policy here.
Aircraft are shared on MyFlightbook, and thus ALL aircraft images are shared among users who have those aircraft in their accounts. So if you upload a naked selfie for an aircraft you fly, it will be visible to other pilots. We recommend not doing that.
We like showing images on maps. If you upload an image that is geotagged, then the geotag is preserved; anybody who views the image can determine where it was taken.
Note that at this time, MyFlightbook does NOT provide access control to images and videos, so they are generally visible to anybody who has the correct (hard, but not impossible, to guess) URL for them. This is done because there are a variety of scenarios where authentication in real time is not possible, or where direct access to Amazon's web services is required. So again, we recommend against anything too sensitive.
With your permission, MyFlightbook can read images/videos from your Google Photos account to help you add them to your flights. As with Cloud Storage (above), you must explicitly sign in to Google Photos and explicitly grant MyFlightbook permission to read the photos/images therein. (Again, this uses OAuth2). You can revoke this permission at any time.
Once set up, you can pull images/videos from Google Photos for a flight on a specific date; MyFlightbook will read only the photos/images from that date, and only at your explicit direction (i.e., it will never do this automatically or behind-the-scenes). You add any of the fetched photos/videos to your flight. When you do this, a copy of the data is made and its privacy is maintained as described above; MyFlightbook does not retain any connection to the original source. The copy of the data includes all meta-tag information with the exception of location.
MyFlightbook does not write any data to Google Photos.
If you set up a relationship with an instructor using MyFlightbook, that instructor will have the ability to issue digital endorsements to you and to view (but not edit/delete) those endorsements.
You may also optionally grant permission for the instructor to view your logbook. If you do this, they may view your logbook information, though their ability to make changes is limited to signing unsigned entries or re-signing signed entries that have been edited since being signed.
You can revoke the ability of an instructor to view your logbook at any time. You can also delete the relationship; doing so will prevent them from accessing your account in any way, but will preserve any signatures or endorsements that they provided during the tenure of the relationship. You can, of course, also re-establish the relationship at any time.
Your passwords, are stored in the database using a one-way hash. (When you authenticate, we hash the password you provide and compare that with the saved hashed password). We cannot recover a password for you, nor can we see your password in the database. Ditto the answer to your secret question. (We obviously can't one-way hash the question itself, since we need to be able to show it to you to recover your password.)
If you use one of the mobile apps, these apps may collect GPS position data. On some platforms, you can choose whether to grant permission for this; on others, it is a condition of using the application.
This position information is used for the following functions:
This location information is not stored other than as described above, nor is it shared other than as above. Note that if you share a flight ("Public", as above), then visitors to MyFlightbook will be able to see the geo-tagged image and/or the recorded flight path. But if you don't share it, they won't be able to see it.
There is now a Facebook group for MyFlightbook, and MyFlightbook may include Facebook widgets on the site, and these widgets may use Facebook cookies to determine things like your status as a fan and such. If you are a member of Facebook, Facebook may be able to deduce that you use MyFlightbook. Please see the Facebook Privacy Policy for more information about their privacy policy. MyFlightbook never, however, explicitly shares any information with Facebook.
MyFlightbook uses Google Ads on the site, and they use cookies. In fact, they are now doing "interest based" advertising, which means that they will probably figure out that this is an aviation-oriented web site, and may conclude that you are interested in aviation. Here is some slightly more legalese detailed information:
If you are within the European Economic Area, you will not see personalized ads. However, you still must accept the use of cookies to use the site.
Of course, we hate to see you go, but if you want to delete your account, just contact us and we will take care of it or you can do this yourself in the account area of the website.
You will receive an emailed copy of your logbook data (just in case), but we delete all of your other information, with two exceptions: