Privacy policy
Last updated · covers the app and this website
Overview
Meteor Shower is a meteor-shower forecasting service available as a mobile app (“Meteor Shower: Alerts” on iPhone and Android) and as this website. It is built to need as little personal data as possible: the app has no login and never asks for your name or email, and the website has no accounts at all.
The mobile app
No account. The app works without an account. To keep your saved places and alert settings, it generates a random, anonymous device identifier (through Firebase Anonymous Authentication). It is not linked to your name, email, or any social profile.
Location. Meteor-shower visibility depends on where you are. With your permission, the app uses your device's approximate location to compute the forecast for your spot. If you turn on peak-night alerts for a place, the coordinates of that place are stored on our backend (Google Firestore), associated only with the anonymous device identifier above and never with your identity, so we can compute the forecast and check cloud cover before each alert is sent. Location is never sold or used for advertising.
Weather. To show cloud cover, the app (from your device) and our servers request forecasts from Open-Meteo for the coordinates of the place being forecast. Open-Meteo receives those coordinates and, for requests from your device, your IP address, as any web service does. It receives no identifier.
Notifications. If you enable alerts, the app registers a push token with Apple (APNs) or Google (FCM) so we can deliver them.
Diagnostics and analytics. We use Firebase Crashlytics to receive crash reports and Firebase Analytics to understand aggregate, non-identifying usage (such as which screens are opened) so we can fix bugs and improve the app. We do not use an advertising identifier (the Android advertising ID is explicitly disabled) and we do not show ads.
Purchases. Premium is sold and processed by the Apple App Store or Google Play, with subscription management by Adapty. We receive your subscription status (whether Premium is active) and non-identifying purchase events; we never receive or store your payment-card details.
This website
The website needs no account and uses no advertising or tracking cookies. The “your sky tonight” panel on the home page guesses a city from your browser's time zone, which needs no permission and sends nothing anywhere. If you choose Use my location, your browser asks for permission and the astronomy is computed on your device.
To show cloud cover, the page sends the chosen place's coordinates, rounded to about a kilometer, to Open-Meteo. Your chosen place, sky type and night-vision setting are saved in your browser's local storage so the page remembers them; they never leave your device. The site is served by Cloudflare, which processes standard request data (such as IP address, requested page and browser type) to deliver pages and protect against abuse. Any traffic statistics we look at are aggregate and cookieless.
Service providers
- Google Firebase: Analytics, Crashlytics, Firestore (the anonymized alert data), Authentication (the anonymous identifier) and Cloud Messaging (push delivery).
- Adapty: subscription and entitlement management.
- Apple App Store and Google Play: process all payments under their own privacy policies; your payment details stay with them.
- Open-Meteo: weather forecasts, as described above.
- Cloudflare: website hosting and delivery.
Your rights
Where GDPR or similar law applies, our legal basis is your consent (location, notifications) and our legitimate interest in keeping the service reliable (diagnostics). You can withdraw consent at any time by turning off location or notifications in your device settings, and you may ask us to delete the anonymized alert data tied to your device. You have the right to access, correct, export or delete the personal data we hold; email us and we will act promptly, generally within 30 days.
Retention
Alert data is kept while you have alerts enabled and is removed when you delete the alert or the app, or on request. Diagnostic and analytics data follow our providers' standard retention windows. Payment records are held by the app stores.
Children
Meteor Shower is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age required in your country), and we don't knowingly collect their personal data.
Changes to this policy
We update the date above whenever this policy changes and, for material changes, make that clear in the app or on the site.
Contact
Questions or data requests: support@ilsur.me. Responsible for the service: Ilsur Gabdulkhakov. See also the terms of service.
