Terms and privacy

About the service

Submarine Cable Status (submarinecablestatus.com) is a personal, non-commercial project run by an individual. It publishes information about the status of submarine telecommunications cables, compiled from public sources. “We” on this site means the person who runs it. By using the site or its API you agree to these terms.

Information only

Everything on the site is provided for general information, as is and without warranty. We cite a source for every operational claim, but sources can be wrong, incomplete or out of date, and repair estimates often change. Always check the cited source, and the operator, before relying on anything here.

Cable routes are schematic and approximate. They must not be used for navigation, marine works, anchoring, fishing or any decision where the true position of a cable matters. Contact the cable owner or the relevant charting authority for that.

Credit and copying

The site’s design, code, written text, incident write-ups, and the Submarine Cable Status name and logo are the original work of Submarine Cable Status, © 2026. All rights are reserved, except as set out below.

You may reuse our incident records (the facts, timelines and summaries on incident pages and from the API) under CC BY 4.0, on one condition: credit “Submarine Cable Status” with a link to submarinecablestatus.com or to the incident page. Something like “Source: Submarine Cable Status (submarinecablestatus.com)” is enough. Under that licence, reuse without credit is not permitted and ends your right to reuse.

You may not copy the site itself, its design, code or branding, or republish our work as your own or without credit. If you would like to use something in a way these terms don’t cover, just ask.

Other people’s data

Some of what the site shows is not ours and keeps its own licence: cable routes and details, network data, map geography, ship photos, and excerpts from cited sources, which belong to their publishers. If you reuse any of it, you must follow those licences, listed under Licences and credits.

Acceptable use

Use the public API within its published rate limits, and do not attempt to disrupt the service, get around access controls, or reach the editorial tools without authorisation. Do not present our information in a way that suggests a fault is confirmed when we mark it as suspected or observed.

Do not use the Submarine Cable Status name or logo in a way that suggests we endorse you or your product, or that your site is ours.

Links to other sites

We link to operators, publishers and data providers so you can check our sources. We are not responsible for their content or availability.

Liability

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for any loss arising from use of, or reliance on, the site, its data or the API, or from the site being unavailable. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top shows when they last changed. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated terms.

Contact about these terms

Questions about these terms: [email protected].

Privacy in short

You do not need an account to use the site. We do not run advertising or third-party analytics, and public pages set no cookies. Fonts, map data and scripts are served from our own domain, so browsing the site does not send requests to other companies. The one exception is the satellite map zoomed right in: those close-up images may load directly from Esri, which then sees your IP address like any website you visit.

What we collect

• Request logs. Like any website, our servers record technical details of requests (IP address, browser user agent, page requested, time). We use them to run and secure the service.
• Rate limiting. To prevent abuse, we briefly count requests per IP address for search, reports, alert sign-ups and sign-in. These counters expire automatically within an hour.
• Reports you send. If you submit a report, we keep the text, any link and any contact details you choose to give, plus a salted hash of your IP address to spot abuse. The hash cannot be turned back into your address. Reports are only seen by our editors and are never published.
• Email alerts. If you sign up for alerts, we keep your email address, what you asked for alerts about, and when we last emailed you. We use it only to send those alerts. Alerts are sent through an email delivery service, which handles your address only to deliver them.
• Email. If you email [email protected], we keep the correspondence so we can reply and follow up.
• Editors. Editors who sign in to the admin area get a session cookie that is needed for sign-in, and their actions are recorded in an audit log.

How we use it

Only to operate, secure and improve the service, to check the reports and corrections you send, and to reply to you. We do not sell personal data or use it for advertising.

Retention

Request logs are kept for a limited period for security and troubleshooting, then deleted. Reports and email are kept while they are useful for the incident record they relate to; reports marked as spam are deleted after 30 days and rejected ones after a year. Unsubscribing from alerts (a link in every alert) deletes your address at once, and a sign-up that isn’t confirmed is deleted after 7 days. You can ask us to delete yours at any time.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct or delete personal data we hold about you, or to object to how we use it. Email [email protected] and we will respond.

Changes to this notice

If we change how we handle personal data, we will update this page and the date at the top.