Privacy Policy
Effective date: [set on publication]
The short version
StormSouth uses your location to show your weather and to warn you about severe weather. That's all we use it for.
- No account. We never ask for your name, email or phone number.
- Rounded locations. What we keep is rounded to about 1 km (0.6 miles), and only your latest one. We don't keep a history of where you've been.
- No selling, no tracking. We don't sell your data or share it for targeted ads, and we don't track you across other companies' apps or websites.
- Ads are about the place, not you. Ads are picked by your area and the screen you're on, never by a profile of you.
- Easy to delete. Settings → Privacy → Delete my data from StormSouth, or turning off Severe Weather Alerts, deletes your phone's record from our servers straight away. If you stop using the app, we delete it after 90 days.
- Your rights, wherever you live in the US. Ask us what we hold, or to correct or delete it, at privacy@stormsouth.app.
Who we are and what this covers
StormSouth is made by StormSouth Media, LLC, a Georgia company ("we", "us"). This policy covers the StormSouth app for iPhone and Android, its home-screen widget, and the website stormsouth.app.
It doesn't cover websites you open from the app, such as a sponsor's site or the National Weather Service. Those have their own policies.
What we collect and why
We collect only what the app needs to show your weather, send your alerts and keep working. We never use it to build a profile of you.
| What | When | Why | What we keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your location, rounded to about 100 m (330 ft) | Each time the app or widget loads weather | To show the forecast, radar and alerts for where you are | Nothing. It's used to answer that request, apart from short-lived caches of weather for that rounded spot. |
| Your latest location, rounded to about 1 km (0.6 mi) | When you open the app with Severe Weather Alerts on, even if Follow Me is off | To send alerts for where you are now | Only the latest one. Each new one replaces the last. |
| Your latest location in the background, rounded to about 1 km | Only with Follow Me on and location set to Always: when you've moved about 3 km (2 mi), and every few hours when you haven't | So alerts follow you while the app is closed | Only the latest one, replaced each time |
| Saved places you turn alerts on for | When you save or change them | To send alerts for those places | Each place's name (Home shows its city) and its location, rounded to about 1 km. Up to 20. |
| A push token | When you allow notifications | To deliver alerts to your phone. It's a random code from Apple or Google, not your name or phone number, and it's how our server tells phones apart. | Kept while alerts are on |
| Your alert settings | When you change them | To send only the alerts you want, at the right local time | Which alerts you want, your time zone, iPhone or Android, and whether Critical Alerts and Follow Me are on |
| Place names you search for | When you search | To find the place | The search text, without anything that identifies you, for up to 7 days |
| Your favorite teams | When the sports card loads | To show their schedules and game-day weather | Nothing. Your favorites stay on your phone. |
| Crash and performance reports | When something goes wrong, and on a sample of app starts | To find and fix bugs | Phone model, system and app version, a random ID for this installation, and what went wrong. No location and no IP address. |
| Ad counts | When an ad is shown or tapped | To report to sponsors how often their ad ran | Which ad, which screen, the county, the app version and the time. Never linked to your phone. |
We don't collect your name, email, phone number, contacts, photos, health data or payment details. The app has no accounts.
Two things your phone's own software does: iOS or Android turns your location into a city name for the app, and Apple or Google delivers our alerts. Their privacy policies cover that.
What stays on your phone
Some things the app saves only on your phone, and they never reach us:
- Your full saved places list, your favorite lake and your display settings. Your favorite teams are saved here too; the app only sends them to us to look up schedules.
- The last forecasts you viewed, so the app works offline. These are deleted after 24 hours.
- What the home-screen widget shows.
Deleting the app deletes all of it.
Who receives data
We don't sell your personal information, and we don't share it for targeted (cross-context behavioral) advertising. We use the companies below to run the app. Each one may use the data only to provide its service to us.
| Company | What it does for us | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Render | Hosts our servers and database | Everything our servers receive, as described above |
| Expo, Apple and Google | Deliver notifications | Your push token and the alert's text |
| Expo | Delivers app updates | Your app and system version, your IP address, and a random ID created when you install the app (it resets if you delete the app) |
| Sentry | Crash and performance reports | The reports described above, and a random ID for this installation |
| Mapbox | Draws the maps | The map area you're viewing, your IP address, and a random ID created when you install the app, which Mapbox uses to count users (it resets if you delete the app). Its usage reporting is off unless you turn it on in the map's ⓘ menu. |
| Cloudflare | Delivers radar and lightning map images | The map area you're viewing and your IP address |
| Shows ads (see Advertising) | Your IP address, a device code that only works inside our app, and the ads you see and tap | |
| Open-Meteo | Weather data and place search | Rounded locations and place names you search, sent from our servers, never with anything that identifies you |
| National Weather Service (NOAA) | Forecasts and alerts | Rounded locations, sent from our servers, never with anything that identifies you |
| Google Pollen | Pollen forecasts | A rounded location, sent from our servers, never with anything that identifies you |
| ESPN | Team logos on the sports card | Your phone's IP address when team logos load (until the logos are built into the app) |
We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect people's safety, or as part of a sale or merger of our business. If that last one happens, this policy keeps applying to the data we already hold.
Advertising
Ads keep StormSouth free. Every ad is chosen by where and what, never by who you are.
- Local sponsors. We sell some spots directly to local businesses. Our own ad server picks them by your county and the screen you're on. It never receives your push token or your exact location.
- Google ads. Other spots show non-personalized Google ads, with Google's Restricted Data Processing on for everyone. Google uses your general area (from your IP address) and the app screen to pick an ad, and it may not use the data to build a profile of you. Google's policy covers how Google handles it.
- No tracking. We don't track you across other companies' apps or websites. On iPhone, the app never reads your advertising identifier (IDFA), which is why it never asks to "allow tracking". On Android, Google's ad software may read your advertising ID only to limit how often an ad repeats and to stop ad fraud; you can reset or delete that ID in Android's settings.
- Never on severe alerts. Severe weather alert screens never carry ads.
If we ever want to show personalized ads, we'll update this policy first and ask for your permission in the app.
How long we keep it
We keep data only as long as the app needs it, then delete it automatically.
| Data | How long |
|---|---|
| Your phone's record: push token, latest location, saved places for alerts, alert settings | Until you delete it (Settings → Privacy → Delete my data from StormSouth) or turn off Severe Weather Alerts, or 90 days after your phone last contacted us |
| Records of which alerts we sent to your phone | Up to 30 days |
| Place names you search for | Up to 7 days |
| Crash and performance reports | Up to 90 days |
| Server logs (never your location; on rare errors, a scrambled fragment of your push token that can't be turned back into it) | Up to 14 days |
| Database backups | Up to 30 days. Deleted data disappears from backups when they expire. |
| Ad counts (never linked to your phone) | 25 months, for sponsor reports |
Your choices and rights
You control most of this from the app, and anyone in the US can use the rights below, whatever state you live in.
In the app
- Follow Me off: stops background location. iOS or Android settings can also limit location to While Using, or turn it off.
- Settings → Privacy → Delete my data from StormSouth: deletes your phone's record (push token, location, saved places, alert settings and the records of alerts we sent) from our servers straight away, and turns off Severe Weather Alerts and Follow Me so nothing is sent again. Alerts stay off until you turn them back on. If you're offline, alerts are off at once and the app finishes the deletion the next time it connects.
- Severe Weather Alerts off: deletes the same record from our servers straight away.
- Map usage reporting: tap ⓘ on any map to turn Mapbox's reporting on or off.
- Delete the app: removes everything stored on your phone. If you didn't turn alerts off first, our copy is deleted 90 days later.
By request
You can ask us to:
- tell you what personal information we hold about your phone, and give you a copy;
- correct it;
- delete it;
- confirm that we don't sell it or share it for targeted ads (we don't, so there's nothing to opt out of; we still honor Global Privacy Control signals).
To make a request, use Settings → Privacy → Make a privacy request. It opens an email to privacy@stormsouth.app with a code that lets us find your phone's record and nothing else. Without an account, that code is how we confirm the request comes from your phone. If Severe Weather Alerts aren't on, our servers hold nothing for your phone, and the app says so instead of showing a code. Someone you authorize can make a request for you.
If we delete your phone's record at your request while Severe Weather Alerts are still on in the app, the app sends your alert settings and saved places again the next time it opens, so your alerts keep working. To stop that too, use Delete my data from StormSouth in the app, or turn alerts off.
A deletion, however it's made, doesn't reach crash reports, server logs or database backups. Those expire on their own schedule: crash reports within 90 days, server logs within 14 days and backups within 30 days (see How long we keep it).
We'll answer within 45 days. If we turn a request down, we'll say why, and you can appeal by replying to that email; we'll answer the appeal within 60 days. Using your rights never changes the app you get.
Children
StormSouth is a general-audience weather app, not directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them. We don't sell or share anyone's data, including anyone under 16. If you think a child has given us information, email us and we'll delete it.
Security
All data travels encrypted between the app and our servers. Access to our servers and database is limited to the people who run StormSouth, with two-step sign-in. No system is perfectly secure, so we keep as little as we can.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we'll post the new version here with a new effective date. If a change matters, such as a new use of your location, we'll tell you in the app before it takes effect.
Contact us
Email privacy@stormsouth.app with any question or request about your privacy.
StormSouth Media, LLC, Georgia, USA