Privacy policy

Information that stays on your device

Most of what you do in Storm Central never leaves your device, including:

• Your settings and preferences, such as theme, units, layout, widget style and chosen forecast source.
• Your saved places and custom alerts.
• Your Google Weather API key, if you add one. It is stored only on your device and sent only to Google.
• Your location. When you allow it, Storm Central uses your device's location to show local weather, warnings and widgets. It isn't stored on our servers unless you include it in a report you choose to post.

On the Windows app, everything (including any account and reports you create there) is stored on your own PC.

Information sent to weather data services

To show weather, Storm Central requests data from public weather services and loads map, radar and camera images from map and data providers. These requests include the coordinates of the places you view and, like any internet request, your IP address. Storm Central doesn't send your name, account or other personal details with them. Each service handles requests under its own privacy policy. They are:

• Weather data: the U.S. National Weather Service and other NOAA services (Storm Prediction Center, National Hurricane Center, nowCOAST and the National Water Prediction Service), Open-Meteo (forecasts, air quality and place search), the Iowa Environmental Mesonet (radar) and the U.S. Geological Survey (rivers and volcanoes).
• Place names for your location: BigDataCloud.
• Maps: CARTO (the base map), NASA GIBS (satellite imagery), EOX (the cloud-free satellite map), Terrain Tiles on Amazon Web Services (terrain shading), and MapTiler if you add your own MapTiler key.
• Live cameras and streams: public traffic, fire and river cameras from the agencies that run them, and storm chasers' YouTube live streams.

On Android, Storm Central checks for weather warnings in the background so it can notify you and update widgets. These checks run on your phone and contact the same weather services directly; no Storm Central server is involved.

If you choose Google as your forecast source, Storm Central sends the coordinates of the places you view to Google's Weather API using your own key, under Google's privacy policy.

Accounts and the Spotter Network

Creating an account is optional and only needed to post or interact with weather reports. If you create one, we store:

• Your username, display name, email address, and optional bio and profile photo.
• Your password as a secure one-way hash. We never store or see your actual password.
• A sign-in cookie that keeps you signed in. It is used for nothing else.

When you post to the Spotter Network, the following is public and visible to anyone using Storm Central:

• Your report's text, category and photo.
• The location and place name you attach, rounded to about 1 km unless you choose to share a precise position.
• The weather conditions at the time.
• Your comments and confirmations of other reports.
• Your username, display name, bio and profile photo.

Photos have their hidden metadata, such as GPS location and camera details, removed when you upload them. Your email address is never shown publicly; it is used only to sign you in and to send password reset emails you request.

If you choose to also send a report to mPING, the public weather-report project run by NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory and the University of Oklahoma, its report type, time and location are sent there. Your name, account and photo are not.

Blocking, reports and moderation

If you block someone, we store that you blocked them so neither of you sees the other's posts. If you report a post, comment or account, we store your report, including the reason, any details you add and your username, so moderators can review it. The person you report isn't told who reported them. Moderators can hide or remove content and suspend accounts that break the community guidelines.

How we use information

Account information is used only to run the Spotter Network: signing you in, showing your reports and profile, resetting your password and keeping the community safe. It isn't used for advertising, profiling or marketing, and it isn't sold, rented or traded.

Service providers

The Storm Central website is hosted by Vercel and its database by Turso, which store and process data only to run the service. Password reset emails are sent through Google's Gmail. Like most web hosts, the hosting provider may keep basic technical logs, such as IP addresses and request times, for security and reliability.

App updates

The Windows and Android apps check GitHub Releases for new versions, and GitHub sees those requests under its own privacy policy. Copies installed from the Microsoft Store may be updated by the Store instead.

Keeping and deleting your information

Your account and reports are kept until you delete them. You can delete your account at any time in Settings → Account, which permanently removes your profile, reports, photos, comments, blocks, the reports you sent and sign-in sessions from our servers. Information stored on your device stays until you clear it, remove it in Settings or uninstall the app.

Security

Connections to Storm Central use HTTPS, passwords are hashed, and sign-in cookies are restricted to the Storm Central website. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable steps to protect your information.

Children

Storm Central isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we'll delete it.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export or delete your personal information. You can view and edit your profile and delete your account in the app at any time. For anything else, contact us using the details below.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the effective date above will be updated. Significant changes will be noted in the app or on the project's release page.

Contact

Email questions or requests about privacy, including access, correction and deletion requests, to [email protected]. General questions and bug reports can also go on the project's GitHub page, github.com/KingCreeper531/StormCentral/issues, but anything posted there is public, so don't include personal information.