Privacy Policy

Who we are

Honig Enterprises B.V. publishes AuroraChaser and is the data controller for the personal data in this policy.

Our approach

There is nothing to sign up for, and we never ask for your e-mail address, a password or your phone number. The first time you use the app, it registers with our server under a randomly generated device ID. This pseudonymous ID is the only identity the app has. What we store about you from the app is linked to that ID only, not to your name, e-mail address or any other real-world identity. Most of what the app does happens on your device.

We never sell your data, and the app contains no third-party advertising or tracking SDKs. The only sponsored content in the app is the clearly marked partner promotions that we serve ourselves (see "Partner promotions").

What stays on your device

These stay on your device and are never sent to us:

• Your location, if you allow it. The app uses it to show where you are on the map, how far away the viewing spots are and whether you are near one. A sighting names only a viewing spot or a region (see "Community features").
• Your app settings and cached forecasts, until you clear them or uninstall the app. Your alert preferences, region, viewing spot, display name, avatar and stamps are the exceptions (see "Data you send to our servers").
• Your spot visits. The app logs a visit only when you report a sighting with a photo near a viewing spot. The list stays on your device until you clear it or uninstall the app. The sighting itself is shared as described under "Community features".

Data you send to our servers

Some features need our server. For those, the app sends only what the feature needs.

• Device registration. The app sends your platform (iOS or Android), its version and language, and the push service it uses, so we can serve the right data and support the app. We note when the app registered and when it last connected, and keep a hash of the credential it signs its requests with. If you make a recovery key or a transfer code under Settings > Account, we store only a hash of it, so that the code can bring your account back or move it to a new phone.
• Spot list. The app asks our server for the current list of viewing spots. It sends your device ID and credential with that request, so that we can try a change to a spot on our own phones first. The server records nothing about the request.
• Map. From version 1.1.0, the app loads the map tiles from our own server. Each request shows the server your IP address and the part of the map you are viewing. The server keeps no record of these requests (see "Abuse prevention").
• Push token. If you allow notifications, we store a push token with your device registration. We use it only to deliver the alerts you turn on, and share it with Google only to route them (see "Data sources and recipients"). If you do not allow notifications, no push token is created.
• Alert preferences. We store your selected region and viewing spot, synced when the app starts so that alerts are worked out for the place you chose. We also store which alert types are on or off, your minimum score for alerts, your quiet hours, your phone's time zone (so the 18:00 forecast and quiet hours follow your own clock) and the users you have blocked.
• Alert log. We keep a log of the alerts we send you (alert type, spot, date and the score the alert showed), so we never send you the same alert twice.
• Chase group notices. When you join a chase group, the other members get a notice with your display name and the group's name. Each member can turn these notices off under "Group activity". For these notices the alert log records the group and the member who joined instead of a spot, so leaving and rejoining a group does not announce you twice. When you delete your device data, these records go too.
• Community features (all optional). If you report an aurora sighting, upload or like a photo, report a post, join or post in a chase group, collect stamps or appear on a leaderboard, we store what you submit. A sighting never contains your coordinates. It names the viewing spot you were at or near, or only the region if you were not close to any spot, and says which of these it is (at a spot, near a spot or in the region). That is an approximate location, and the app shows you how a sighting will be shared before you send it. Location data in a photo (EXIF/GPS) is removed on your device before upload, and again on our server before anything is stored. If the photo was taken earlier, the sighting carries the time it was taken, which the app reads on your device first. New posts can be held back until a moderator has reviewed them.
• Who sees your posts. Approved sightings with their photos, display names, avatars and leaderboard entries are public. Older versions of the app also let you add a short note to a sighting: we keep it for moderation and show it to no one. Other app users see them in the app, and our server gives them to anyone who asks for them. A photo shows how many likes it has, but not who liked it. Our Terms also let us show approved sightings and photos on our website, on the page of the spot or region where they were taken. The website shows none today. Please do not put anything in a photo or post that you would not want other people to see.
• Photo fingerprints. For each photo you upload we keep two SHA-256 fingerprints, one of the uploaded file and one of the original photo it was made from (with its location data already removed). A fingerprint cannot be turned back into a picture. We use it only to refuse the same photo when someone sends it again, from any device. If we remove a photo in moderation, we keep its fingerprints for 365 days, without any link to you or your device, so the same photo is refused if it is sent again.
• Display name. A display name is optional and does not have to be your real name. Other users see it only if you set one.
• Mascot avatar. The mascot and accessories you pick in the app are stored with your device registration and shown next to your entries in the community features. They come from a fixed catalogue in the app and contain no personal information.
• Stamps. From app version 1.1.0, the app sends our server the stamps you collect and the mascot accessories that come with them. For each stamp it sends when you earned it and what it rests on, for example which of your sightings, how many days in a row you opened the app, or your trip dates. Our server checks each stamp against your own sightings and the rest of your stamps, and refuses stamps that cannot be right. We use the list to count your stamps in the leaderboards, so that the XP in the app and your ranking are the same number, and to stop cheating. A stamp our server refuses is removed from the app. The list is linked to your device.
• Partner promotion events. The app tells our server when a partner promotion appeared on screen and when it was tapped, with the region and viewing spot of the screen it was on. These events are linked to your device.
• Score views. The app records which aurora scores its Home screen showed you, at most one per viewing spot and hour. It records the spot, the hour, the score, whether it was the live score or tonight's forecast, and technical details of how it was computed. It sends them to our server in batches, with your device's credential. Our server stores them only while we have this measurement switched on, and otherwise discards them unread. Score views are linked to your device, so that we can measure how well the score predicts sightings (also by comparing them with sightings reported from the same device) and filter out abuse.
• Anonymous statistics, only when we switch them on. The app can then send two kinds. Usage counts say that onboarding was finished, which tabs were opened, and that a notification was tapped (with its type). They also count when a sighting was reported, a photo shared, a webcam opened, a chase group joined or a spot selected (only its region is counted), and when the app refused a score-model update. Error reports say what kind of error the app ran into and where in the app's own code it happened, with a short error text from which web addresses, e-mail addresses, file paths, identifiers, numbers and quoted values are removed. Neither contains your name, your location, your photos or a device identifier. Our server adds them up into daily totals without recording which device sent them.
• All of these events and statistics go only to our own server. We never share them with a third party or let one enrich them.

Partner promotions

The app may show a few promotions from partners, for example a local tour operator. We serve them from our own server and always mark them clearly as "Advertisement" (in Norwegian "Annonse", and the same word in every app language). No advertising network is involved, so nobody else chooses what you see or learns that you saw it.

We count how often each promotion appears on screen and is tapped, with the partner promotion events described above. That is a simple count, and we build no advertising profile. To choose relevant promotions, the app's request names your selected region and spot and your language. We do not store that request.

The same partner promotions can appear on the region forecast pages of our website. How we count them there is described under "This website".

Abuse prevention

To keep the community features usable, our server limits how many requests it accepts and checks for abuse. For this it keeps recent IP addresses in its working memory only and does not write them to disk. It forgets each address at most 10 minutes after your last request. Our servers keep no access logs. If a request causes a server error, the error log can record its IP address (see "How long we keep it").

When the app sends something with your device's credential, such as a sighting, our server stores only salted cryptographic hashes of your IP address and of its network. These hashes show us when one account is used from many places at once, and let us block a network after abuse.

When a new device registers, the server stores a salted hash of its network, so that one network cannot register endless new devices.

If a device breaks our rules, we can block the networks it posted from. A block also stores only a salted hash. The table under "How long we keep it" gives how long we keep each of these hashes.

Where your data is stored

We run the AuroraChaser server ourselves, on infrastructure from Gigahost AS in Sandefjord, Norway, inside the European Economic Area (EEA). What the app sends us is stored there and stays in the EEA. If you e-mail us, our e-mail provider mailbox.org (Heinlein Hosting GmbH, Germany) stores your message, also inside the EEA.

Three things can involve countries outside the EEA:

• Push notifications. Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) routes them, and may process what it receives for this (listed under "Data sources and recipients") outside the EEA, including in the United States. For these transfers Google relies on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, and on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses where that framework does not apply (section 10 of the Firebase Data Processing and Security Terms). On an iPhone, Apple delivers the alerts. Apple's transfers of personal data out of the EEA are governed by Standard Contractual Clauses (Apple's privacy policy).
• Map tiles. From version 1.1.0, the app loads them from our own server in Norway. It loads them directly from CARTO, a US company that processes personal data in the United States, when our server cannot deliver a tile or we switch the app back to CARTO for a while. Earlier versions of the app always load them from CARTO. For transfers from the EEA, CARTO relies on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, and on Standard Contractual Clauses where that framework does not apply (CARTO's privacy policy).
• Direct data requests. If the app falls back to fetching data directly from NOAA or NASA (US government services), their servers see your device's IP address for that request and nothing else about you.

Data sources and recipients

AuroraChaser uses open scientific data and a few outside services, listed below. Normally our own server fetches the data, so the data providers see only our server. If our server cannot be reached, the app fetches the data directly from the provider. The provider then sees your device's IP address, as with any internet request, and nothing else about you.

• NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (swpc.noaa.gov) provides the aurora nowcast (OVATION model), the Kp index, solar wind data and geomagnetic forecasts.
• MET Norway (met.no) provides cloud and weather forecasts. Our requests contain only the coordinates of our own viewing spots and regions.
• Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) (space.fmi.fi) provides real-time magnetometer measurements from the IMAGE network, which we use for the local aurora activity indicator.
• NASA DONKI / CCMC (ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov) provides warnings of coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
• Kjell Henriksen Observatory (KHO) / UNIS (kho.unis.no) runs the Svalbard aurora webcams we link to. Neither the app nor our server loads or shows their images. Tapping such a webcam opens KHO's own website.
• Statens vegvesen, the Norwegian Public Roads Administration (vegvesen.no), provides the road camera images from Northern Norway, as open data under the NLOD 2.0 licence. We normally serve them through our own server.
• CARTO (carto.com) provides the map tiles in versions of the app before 1.1.0. Later versions load a tile from CARTO only when our own server cannot deliver it, or while we have switched the app back to CARTO. Your device then loads the tile directly, so CARTO receives your IP address and the map area you are viewing, subject to CARTO's privacy policy.
• Other webcams (PANOMAX, yr.no, Kystnor, SkylineWebcams, harbour authorities, resorts and other providers) are link-only. The app never loads their images. Tapping such a webcam opens the provider's own website.
• Entur (entur.org), Norway's national public transport planner, provides the planned bus times for the viewing spots you can reach by bus (open data under NLOD 2.0). Our server asks Entur, so Entur sees only our server. For this the app sends our server only the spot's ID. "Plan by bus" opens Entur's own app or website, where Entur's privacy policy applies.
• Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) delivers push notifications if you turn on alerts. The app registers with it only if you allow notifications. If you do not, nothing about your device reaches Google. If you do, Google receives an installation identifier for your copy of the app, the push token, on iPhone the Apple push token, and your device's IP address. The text of each alert also passes through Google on its way to you. It names the spot or region you chose and its score, and a chase group notice names the member who joined (their display name) and the group. We use Google for delivery only, subject to Google's privacy policy. On an iPhone, Google hands each alert to the Apple Push Notification service, which delivers it, subject to Apple's privacy policy.

Legal basis (GDPR)

Where the GDPR applies, we rely on Article 6(1)(b) GDPR, performance of a service you ask for. That covers registering your device, delivering the alerts you turn on, and the community features you choose to use.

For the rest we rely on Article 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interests in:

• keeping the service secure and preventing abuse;
• running the app and this website reliably, including the request data and error log described under "Abuse prevention" and "This website";
• checking how well the aurora score works, with the score views described above and the sightings reported in the app;
• counting the page views of this website, and how often partner promotions are shown and tapped.

We do not ask for consent for advertising or tracking cookies, because we use neither.

How long we keep it

If you delete your device data, everything linked to your device goes from our live database and photo storage at once, without waiting for the periods in the table. Only the rows marked "also after you delete your device data" stay for the time they give.

Our server is backed up every night to a separate backup disk, and we copy its database before each update. We keep these backups for at most 14 days and use them only to recover the service after a failure. Something you delete, even a whole device registration, can therefore stay in a backup for up to 14 days.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to access, correct or erase your personal data, to restrict or object to its processing, and to data portability.

To erase everything, use Delete account under Settings in the app. It permanently removes your device registration and everything linked to it from our live database at once, and from our backups within 14 days. If you no longer have the app, Delete account explains your other options. For anything else, e-mail us at hello@aurorachaser.app. We answer within one month.

You can also complain to a supervisory authority, such as the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens in the Netherlands or Datatilsynet in Norway.

Children's privacy

You must be 13 or older to use AuroraChaser (see our Terms), and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone younger. If you think a child has given us data, contact us and we will delete it. A parent or guardian can also make the requests under "Your rights" for a child under 16. We build no profiles and show no targeted advertising, to anyone.

This website

This site sets no cookies and has no third-party advertising or analytics trackers. The web server uses standard request data (your IP address, the page requested, your browser's user agent and the page that linked to ours) to deliver the page. It keeps no access logs, so this data is not stored after the page has been served. To keep a program that opens many pages within a few minutes out of the visit totals below, our server holds your IP address in its working memory only, never on disk, and forgets it at most 10 minutes after the last page you opened. Server errors go to the error log described under "Abuse prevention".

To see which pages are used, our server keeps daily totals and nothing more:

• Page views and referrals. It counts the views of each page of this site, split by language and by the domain of the site that linked to it (for example google.com; the full address is not kept).
• Links from AI assistants. An AI assistant such as ChatGPT often sends no such domain. A view from its link is then counted under the assistant's name, taken from the link's utm_source tag, which our server reads only when it names one of a fixed list of assistants.
• Store links and QR codes. It counts taps on our App Store and Google Play buttons and scans of our QR codes and short links, which all pass through aurorachaser.app/get/..., split by platform (iPhone or iPad, Android, other).
• Partner promotions. The region forecast pages may show a clearly marked partner promotion. Our server counts how often each one is shown and clicked. A promotion's link first passes through our server (aurorachaser.app/go/...), which adds one to its click total and then sends you on to the partner's website. That website has its own privacy policy.
• Crawlers. Known crawlers, link-preview bots and pages a browser only loads in advance (prefetching) are left out of these totals. Visits by a fixed list of search engines and AI assistant crawlers (such as Googlebot, Bingbot and the crawlers of OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic) are counted separately, as one daily total per crawler name and kind of page (home, region, spot or partner page).
• No identifiers. The totals hold no IP addresses, user agents, cookies or identifiers (a crawler is kept only as its name), so they cannot be linked to you or to each other.
• Your language choice. If you choose a language on this site, your choice is stored only in your own browser.

Businesses we write to

This part is for the tourism businesses we write to, in Northern Norway and elsewhere (such as tour operators that sell trips there), and for the people who work there: what we hold about you, where it comes from and how to make us stop. Honig Enterprises B.V. (see "Who we are" above) is responsible for it.

Why we wrote. We would like your guests to know when and where to look for the northern lights, so we made a free aurora page for your location, or for the places you sell trips to, and wrote to tell you about it. We write by post; we e-mail only businesses on Svalbard, at an address they publish for enquiries (on their own website or in a public tourism listing such as visitnorway.com), and people who have written to us first. Our legal basis is our legitimate interest in introducing AuroraChaser to tourism businesses (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR). We weighed it against yours: we write only to businesses, about their business, at a business address (never to a sole proprietor at a home address), with details that they or a public register publish, and one word from you ends it.

You can tell us to stop at any time, without giving a reason (Article 21 GDPR). Send "stop" (or "stopp") to hei@aurorachaser.app or hello@aurorachaser.app, or by post to the address under "Who we are"; asking us to remove your page counts as a stop too. We then take your page down and delete what we hold about you, keeping only a short note so that we never write to you again by mistake. When each step happens is under "How long we keep it" below. If you do not answer, we will not write again this winter.

What we hold and where it comes from. Your business's name, type, town and postal address, which we take from a public business register, from your business's own website, or from both. In Norway the register is Enhetsregisteret (Brønnøysund Register Centre); abroad it is your country's company register, such as Companies House in the UK or the Handelsregister of the KVK in the Netherlands. The letter or e-mail you received names the source we used for you. For a registered business, also its organisation or company number, legal form and status from the register. Other contact details your website publishes, such as a booking e-mail address, and a contact person's name where the website gives one. Where your website prints no e-mail address, we may take the one your business publishes in a public tourism listing, such as visitnorway.com. Our own notes: which letter we sent and when, why we think the page suits you, and a rough rating we use only to decide in which week we write. If you reply, your messages and our answers. We buy no address lists.

Your page. We publish it shortly before posting the letter, so that the letter can show it. It shows the aurora forecast for your address or town, or for the places you sell trips to, and says that AuroraChaser made it and that you do not run it. It is unlisted: hidden from search engines and linked from nowhere on our site. It sets no cookies. Our server only counts, per day, how many times the page and its widget are opened, how many times your own aurorachaser.app/get/ link is opened or its QR code scanned, and how many times the store buttons are tapped. It does not record who did any of this. If you ask us to publish it, it becomes an ordinary public page.

Who handles it. Only we at AuroraChaser work with these details, and we never sell them. Three providers process them for us under data processing agreements, all inside the EEA: Postbode.nu (Postbode B.V., the Netherlands) prints and posts our letters, which PostNL and the postal service of your country deliver; mailbox.org (Heinlein Hosting GmbH, Germany) handles our e-mail; and Gigahost AS (Norway) provides the server that shows your page and keeps its counts. To place your page and work out drive times, we also look up your address or town in Kartverket's address and place-name services (Geonorge) and send its coordinates to the OSRM routing service (router.project-osrm.org). These are public services that we query. We send them only the address or coordinates to look up. Our contact list stays on our own computers and systems.

Your other rights. You can ask what we hold about you, and ask us to correct it, delete it or limit its use. We answer within one month. You can also complain to the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens in the Netherlands, where we are based, or to the data protection authority of the country where you live or work, in the EU, the EEA or the UK, such as Datatilsynet in Norway or the Information Commissioner's Office in the UK.

How long we keep it. Everything is tied to this aurora season, which ends on 30 April 2027:

• If you do not take part (no reply, or no request to keep the page): the page comes down on 30 April 2027, and by 31 May 2027 we delete what we hold about you, our correspondence and the page's counts. Facts only about a limited company (its name, organisation or company number and business address) are not personal data; we may keep those to write once more next winter.
• If you take part: your page, your details and our correspondence stay for this season. In March we ask whether you would like to continue next winter: if yes, everything stays for that season and we ask again the next spring; if not, the page comes down on 30 April 2027 and the rest goes by 31 May 2027.
• If you tell us to stop: the page comes down within one working day and the rest goes within 14 days. The note we keep holds only the date and, in a scrambled form that only lets us recognise you if you turn up on a list again, your organisation or company number where there is one, your business's name with its postcode and town, and every e-mail address we held for you or that you wrote to us from. We keep it for as long as we write to businesses, and use it for nothing else.
• Copies and backups: Postbode.nu deletes each letter's file within 7 days of posting, also after a stop. Our server's nightly backups expire within 14 days, our e-mail provider's within 7 days, and the website's own backups are kept at most 14 days. Our contact list also lives in our own version history and backups, on our own hardware: copies there are removed at the latest with our yearly clean-up on 31 May (after a stop, your details leave our working files within 14 days, and the history follows with that clean-up).

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app changes. We update the date at the top whenever we change it. Before an important change takes effect, we tell you in the app.

Contact

Questions about your privacy? E-mail us at hello@aurorachaser.app. Our full details are under "Who we are" at the top.