Privacy Policy

Last updated September 9, 2026.

CellHive publishes public jail roster information from county sheriffs across Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wisconsin. This policy explains what we collect from you — the person using the site or the Android app — and what we do with it.

Information about people in the rosters

Booking records, charges, and mugshots shown on CellHive are public records published by county sheriffs. We do not create this information and we are not its source. It is a snapshot that may lag behind or differ from the county's own records. Any booking photograph is removed within 10 days of a written request, free of charge (Fla. Stat. § 901.43). Expunged records are deleted within 10 business days of a notice to delete (N.C.G.S. § 15A-152). Juvenile records are never indexed.

All persons listed are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. A booking record is not evidence of a conviction. If a record here has been expunged or sealed, or you believe it should be removed for another reason, submit an Expungement / Removal Request. Removal is always free, on the website and in the app alike, and an administrator reviews every request.

Photo ID sent with a removal request

A removal request may optionally include a photograph of your government identity document, so we can confirm you are the person in the record. It is never required: every request is reviewed by an administrator whether or not an ID is attached, and attaching one is only a way of getting your record hidden sooner.

If you do send one, this is what happens to it:

• It is encrypted while we hold it and is never published, never shown to other users, and never indexed. Only the site administrator can open it, and each time one is opened that is written to our audit log.
• It is deleted the moment your request is decided — approved or denied — and in any case within the retention window shown on the form (14 days by default), whether or not anyone has reviewed it by then.
• The text on the card is read by Anthropic's Claude API. That service reads the document only — the name, date of birth, document type and whether the image looks like a genuine card. It is never sent your booking photo and is never asked to identify you. Anthropic does not train on data sent through its API.
• The photo comparison runs on our own hardware and never leaves our network. The measurement it produces is a single similarity number; the underlying face data is calculated in memory for that one comparison and is never stored.
• We keep the outcome, not the document. After deletion, all that remains is whether the check passed, the similarity score, and the document type. Your name and date of birth as printed on the card are deleted with the image.

If you would rather not send an ID at all, do not attach one. Your request is reviewed either way.

Information we collect from you

• Account details. If you register, we store your username, email address, and a hashed password. Passwords are hashed with Argon2id and are never stored or transmitted in readable form.
• Alert preferences. The counties you have chosen for new-booking alerts, the inmates you follow, any future-inmate watches, and your personal feed settings.
• Sign-in tokens. A long-lived token identifying your browser or your phone. Only a hash of the secret half is stored.
• Profile view counts. We count how many times an inmate profile has been viewed. This is a per-record total. It is not tied to your account, and we do not build a history of what you looked at.
• Server logs. Standard web server logs, including IP address, used to keep the service running and to rate-limit abuse and failed sign-in attempts.

What we do not do

• We do not sell or rent your information.
• We do not run advertising networks or third-party trackers on the site or in the app.
• We do not use your account to build an advertising or behavioural profile.

The Android app

The CellHive Android app talks only to this website's API. In addition to the above:

• Your sign-in token and your settings — default county, widget county, cached roster data and mugshots — are stored on your device. Clearing the cache in Settings, or uninstalling the app, removes the cached copies.
• The app records a profile view once per inmate per install, so re-opening a profile does not repeatedly increase the public counter.
• Service messages. The app downloads announcements we publish (for example, a county whose roster is delayed) and stores them on your device. When one is shown, the app tells us only that it was displayed and whether you asked not to see it again — two counters, with no identifier for you or your device. We cannot tell which phones saw which message.
• If push notifications are enabled in a future release, the app will register a device token with us so alerts can be delivered, and will delete it when you sign out or turn notifications off.
• The app requests no location, contacts, camera, or microphone access.

Email

We email you only for things you asked for: address verification, alerts you subscribed to, and the outcome of a removal request you submitted. Every alert email includes an unsubscribe link, and alerts can be turned off at any time in your profile or in the app's notification settings.

Retention and deletion

Account information is kept while your account exists. Sign-in tokens expire and are deleted. You can delete your account and all of its data at any time — no sign-in required — at cellhive.co/delete-account (we email a confirmation link to the address on the account), or from the Danger Zone of your profile while signed in. Deletion removes the account, alert subscriptions and watches, notification and feed preferences, app sign-in tokens, and push-notification device registrations. If you prefer, you can also email Admin@CellHive.co from your registered address.

Server logs

Our web server keeps standard access logs (IP address, requested page, time, browser) for security and troubleshooting, rotated automatically. Search terms are not written to those logs: for the site's and the app's search endpoints the query string is stripped before the request is logged, so what you search for is processed only to answer the request and is not retained.

Children

CellHive is not directed at children and we do not knowingly create accounts for anyone under 13.

Contact

Questions about this policy: Admin@CellHive.co.