We get this question every couple of weeks, usually phrased as some variant of: "wouldn't you get more reports if people could file anonymously?" Yes, we would. We choose not to. The reasoning isn't about identifying witnesses — it's about preserving the parts of the report that make it useful months after the fact.
What anonymous submission would actually mean
To be specific: when people ask for "anonymous" reporting, they usually mean one of three things, and the three things have very different implications.
- Public-facing anonymity. The reporter has an account, but their name doesn't appear on the report. We already do this — toggle the "Submit anonymously" checkbox during reporting and the public surface attributes the report to "Witness — verified observer" with no further identification.
- Pseudonymous accounts. The handle on the account is a pseudonym, the email is on a forwarder, and the reporter would prefer we never knew their legal name. We're fine with this. The handle is what we need, not the name.
- True anonymity. No account at all. Submit, vanish. This is the version we don't allow, and it's worth being clear about why.
The real reason: phase 2 and 3 of every report
A typical Sighted report goes through three phases, and only the first one ends at submission.
- Phase 1 — Initial filing. What the witness saw, when, where, with whatever media they had. Usually within hours of the event.
- Phase 2 — Corroboration window. The first 24 to 72 hours after publication, when other people who saw the same thing find the report and file alongside it.
- Phase 3 — Investigator follow-up. Days to weeks later, when a verified investigator picks the report up and runs their own checks.
Phases 2 and 3 both depend on being able to reach the original witness. If a second observer corroborates with a detail the first witness didn't mention, we want to be able to ask the first witness whether they remember it. If an investigator's flight-data check shows a contradiction with the witness's altitude estimate, we want to be able to ask the witness how they derived that estimate.
None of that is possible with a true-anonymous submission. The report becomes a static artefact — useful for the headline, useless for the follow-up. Which means the report gets worse over time, not better.
What we actually do with the account behind a report
Worth being explicit so nobody has to guess:
- The account email is visible only to you and the moderation team.
- The only time we'd contact you about a specific report is to ask a follow-up question relevant to that report.
- We don't share your email with investigators, with other users, or with third-party services. The handle they see is your public handle.
- We never use the address for marketing. Sighted doesn't run a marketing list. The weekly digest is opt-in, separate, and unsubscribe is a single click.
- Account deletion wipes the email. The report stays attached to a tombstone account labelled "Deleted reporter."
The full text of the policy is on the privacy page, but the short version is: a pseudonymous handle is enough. The mailbox behind it can be a Gmail you'll delete next year, a forwarder, or a privacy-relay address. We need a way to reach you. We don't need to know who you are.
