Mississippi Department of Marine Resources
Enhance Protect Conserve
Effective: May 1st, 2022
The Mississippi Department of Marine Resources – Office of Marine Fisheries operates the Tails n’ Scales mandatory reporting program. This page intends to inform users of the policies observed regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of personally identifiable information when you use the Tails n’ Scales system. Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to, your name, phone number, vessel information, and postal address
To use Tails n’ Scales you must register within the system. When registering, you are required to provide information such as your name, e-mail address, vessel information, and a password for the account. This information is used to validate access upon login and provide a personalized user experience. Access to your location data is not required to use the Tails n’ Scales mobile application. We may use general location data to provide you with Weather services that are relevant to your general location. When you retrieve weather forecasts and conditions using the system’s weather function, you may optionally request the information to be retrieved for your current location. We also collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit Tails n’ Scales. This log data may include information such as your computer’s IP address, browser type, browser version, the pages of our site that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, and other statistics.
The information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:
We continually strive to improve the Tails n’ Scales mandatory reporting program based on information and feedback we receive from you. The email address you provide may be used to send information to you, respond to inquiries, remind you to complete a report for an open trip, contact you requesting input, and respond to other requests or questions. If we have questions about the information you provided on a trip, we may contact you via email or by phone for this purpose. Questions involving specific catch and effort data will be recorded in the system and used for scientific purposes only.
WWe may send push notifications and/or SMS messages related to Tails n’ Scales or mandatory reporting species to your device. You can deactivate these messages at any time by changing the notification settings in the “My Account” tab and in settings on your device
We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you enter, submit, and access your personal information, but remember that no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. All supplied information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into the Tails n’ Scales database to only be accessed by those authorized with special access rights to Tails n’ Scales.
Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your web browser (if you allow) that enables the site’s or service provider’s systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information. We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits and to track the completion status of trip information.
We will not sell your information and we do not share your information unless we need to share it with a third-party vendor to improve the service provided, or we are required to by law.
We may employ third party companies and individuals to maintain or improve Tails n’ Scales or to assist us in analyzing how Tails n’ Scales is used. These third parties have access to your information only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.
Catch and effort data collected from the Tails n’ Scales mandatory reporting program will be made available to the National Marine Fisheries Service, Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission, and other appropriate end-users in a timely manner and in readily usable formats. However, this data will not include personally identifiable information.
Information may be shared if required by law. For example, if we are served with a subpoena or a request from law enforcement, we will share the information with them.
All information that we collect is subject to the Public Records Act (Miss. Code Ann. 25-61-1). This means that any member of the public can request the information and we must release it, unless it falls within one of the law’s narrow exceptions.
The Tails n’ Scales mobile application is in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act); we do not knowingly solicit data from or market to children under the age of 18. The Tails n’ Scales mobile application, products, and services are designed and directed to participants who are at least 18 years old or older. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your child has provided us with Personal Information, please contact us. If we discover that a child under 13 has provided us with Personal Information, we will delete that information from our servers immediately.
We treat information collected through the Tails n’ Scales mandatory reporting program as we do any other internal document. This means that it may be deleted at some point in the future but this is unlikely to occur. If you feel that information is incorrect or would like to have your personal information removed from the system, you may request MDMR do so through the Tails n’ Scales email at snapper@dmr.ms.gov or (228) 325-1585.
This online Privacy Policy applies only to information collected through the Tails n’ Scales mobile application and web portal and not to information collected offline.
Changes to Tails n’ Scales privacy policy may be updated from time to time for any reason and will be posted on the Tails n’ Scales website on the “Privacy Policy” page.
snapper@dmr.ms.gov (228) 325-1585
By registering to use Tails n’ Scales, you certify that you have read and agree to this privacy policy and the terms of use.