Effective date: October 19, 2026
Version: 1.3
Application: Shutter Scout (the "App")
Provider: Steven Smith, doing business as Shutter Scout ("we," "us," or "our")
Contact: support@shutterscoutapp.com
OUR APPROACH IN ONE PARAGRAPH
Shutter Scout is built to be private by design. There are no user accounts, no logins, no advertising, no analytics or tracking SDKs, and no selling of data — ever. Almost everything the App does — your saved places, your style preferences, your saved briefings and history, all astronomy calculations, and the on-device "Ask Scout" assistant — happens entirely on your device and never leaves it. The App does connect to public science and weather services to fetch conditions — some of them through our own weather relay and forecast-map servers — and — only if you choose to turn on push alerts — it registers with our own alert server. While you run an Aurora Chase on iPhone, it also registers that chase's Live Activity with our server so the numbers stay live, sending no location and no place names. This policy explains exactly what is sent, when, and why.
1. INFORMATION THAT STAYS ON YOUR DEVICE
The following is stored locally on your device only and is not transmitted to us:
- Your preferences and saved places — the locations you add, your photography styles, units, and settings. This includes the destination you pick for an Aurora Chase: its name and coordinates stay on your device.
- Your briefings and field-log history — today's report and archived past reports are saved locally so they survive app restarts.
- All astronomy — sun, moon, twilight, the Milky Way core, planets, and related calculations are computed on your device with no server involved.
- "Ask Scout" conversations and AI briefing text — when the on-device AI model is used, your questions and the App's briefing context are processed locally and are not sent to us. Ask Scout conversations are held in memory only and are not persisted or transmitted.
On iPhone and Android, deleting the App removes this local data with it; on a Mac, preference files may persist until you also clear them.
2. LOCATION INFORMATION
The App uses your device location (with your permission) to do the things it exists to do: fetch the weather, tides, dark-sky, and space-weather conditions for where you are; find nearby photo spots; estimate local aurora odds; order regional suggestions; and — in features that use live GPS such as the Emberlight map and Chase Mode — show conditions around you.
- Your location is used in real time to request data and is generally not stored by us.
- When the App requests conditions from third-party science and weather services (see Section 4), your coordinates are sent to those services as part of the request, because that is how they return local data.
- On Android Auto, the car screen uses your car's own GPS (where the car provides it) or your phone's last location, only while the car screen is open and only after you have accepted these terms on your phone.
- The App requests location "while in use" only. You can change or revoke location permission at any time in your device settings; some features will be limited or unavailable without it.
3. WHAT THE APP SENDS TO OUR SERVERS
The App contacts our own servers for six things: a small pseudonymous consent receipt, weather requests passed through our weather relay, forecast map images, an Aurora Chase's Live Activity registration while a chase is running, map tiles for the Android Auto car screen while it is open, and — only if you enable them — push-alert registration. Nothing else about you is sent to us.
Consent receipt. When you tap "I Agree," the App sends your acceptance to our consent service (and re-attempts on a later launch if it can't reach the server): the legal document versions you accepted, the app version, your platform, and a random installation identifier generated on your device. That identifier stays the same for this installation so we can keep one consent record per install. It is pseudonymous — it identifies this installation, not you: it is not your name, email, phone number, device serial, or advertising ID, and we hold no account or profile to associate it with. We keep this record solely as proof of consent and to know which legal versions you have accepted; it is never used for advertising or profiling and is never sold. You can request deletion of the server-side receipt at any time, as described in Section 8 (Data Retention); your install identifier is shown in Settings so you can include it with the request.
Weather relay. Some forecast requests go through our own weather relay rather than straight to the weather service, so the App keeps working when a provider is slow or down. The relay receives the coordinates of the place being forecast — just as the weather service itself would — forwards the request to Open-Meteo or NOAA, and briefly caches the answer so the next request for the same place is fast. It keeps no record of who asked and receives no identifier for you or your device.
Forecast maps. The Sky Cover forecast layers are drawn from map images served by our forecast-map server. Those requests name only the map area and the forecast hours being shown — usually around where you are looking — and carry no identifier for you or your device.
Android Auto car screen. While the Shutter Scout screen is open on your car's display through Android Auto — and only then — the App requests: map tiles from our own map server (hosted on Cloudflare) for the car map, each request naming only the map area being viewed, as standard map-tile coordinates (a zoom level and a tile column and row), plus the map's style and fonts. The car map never asks for a tile smaller than about 40 square kilometres. Because the map usually shows the area around you or the place you chose, those coordinates reveal roughly where the map is looking, and nothing more. It also requests point forecasts of cloud cover for the approximate points the car screen shows (your position or the place you chose, and up to ten of your saved places). Before they leave your phone, the points are snapped to a grid of about 5 km (0.05°), so each one names an area of at least 3 square kilometres, never your exact position. They go to Open-Meteo, directly or through our weather relay. The App also requests forecast map images for the map area being viewed; light-pollution map tiles from NASA for your saved places; and live aurora data from NOAA SWPC, which is a download only. No account, name, email, advertising ID, device identifier, or install identifier is attached to any of these requests. Like any internet request they carry your IP address, and the only record of them is our hosting provider's standard request logs; we keep no other record of them and build no profile. They are never sold. When the car screen is closed or another app covers it, the App cancels the requests still in progress and starts no new ones. Nothing is requested from the car screen until you have accepted these terms on your phone. When you navigate to a spot from the car screen, your car's navigation app receives only its coordinates; the spot's name stays on your phone.
Where our servers run. Our servers are hosted on Cloudflare. Like any internet request, Cloudflare receives your IP address to deliver the response and to protect the service from abuse (for example, rate limiting), and its short-term operational logs can include the IP address and the address of the request for a few days. We do not use this to identify you, track you, or build a profile.
Aurora Chase (iPhone). Starting an Aurora Chase in Chase Mode puts an "Aurora Chase" Live Activity on your Lock Screen (and on the CarPlay Dashboard on iOS 26). To deliver live numbers to it while the App is in the background, the App sends our own server (hosted on Cloudflare) the following, and nothing else:
- The Live Activity's push token, issued by Apple for that one Live Activity so our server can update it. It is not your name, email, phone number, or account.
- A random activity identifier for that Live Activity.
- The chase's start and end times.
- Whether you allow frequent updates for Shutter Scout's Live Activities (an iPhone setting), so we send no more updates than you allow.
- A random key made on your device for that one chase, so only your phone can change or end it. Our server keeps only a one-way hash of this key.
No location, coordinates, or place names are sent — the destination you pick stays on your device. The server uses this information only to send aurora numbers (Kp, Bz, solar wind, hemispheric power) to that Live Activity, and it is deleted when the chase ends: when you tap End chase, leave Chase Mode, or swipe the Live Activity away, and in any case no more than about 3 hours 15 minutes after the chase started, even if the App can't reach the server. It is never shared or sold, and it is not used for advertising or profiling. This registration is part of the chase itself, so it happens whether or not push alerts are on; if Live Activities are turned off for Shutter Scout in your iPhone settings, a chase sends none of it.
Push alerts. Push alerts (for example, aurora / geomagnetic activity, sunset-color "Emberlight" alerts, and rainbow alerts) are off by default. They require sending information to our alert server so it can notify you when your chosen conditions occur. This only happens if you turn alerts on.
If — and only if — you enable one or more alerts, the App sends the following to our alert server:
- A push notification token issued by Apple (APNs) or Google (FCM) for your device. This token lets the operating system deliver a notification to your device; it is not your name, email, phone number, or account.
- Your approximate location, rounded to the nearest whole degree of latitude and longitude. This is deliberately coarse — roughly a 40–70 mile grid — and is used only to check whether your chosen conditions are occurring in your general area.
- If you turn on lightning alerts: your location rounded to roughly seven miles (0.1°) plus your chosen alert radius. Lightning proximity genuinely needs a finer center than the whole-degree grid above — a 50-mile radius is meaningless with a ±40-mile center. It is still your most recent location from when the app was open (never continuous tracking), and the server zeroes it whenever lightning alerts are off.
- The alert settings you configured — which alerts are on and their thresholds (for example, a Kp level, a solar-wind value, a sunset-color score, a rainbow likelihood, or a lightning radius).
- If you turn on sunset-color ("Emberlight") alerts: the names and coordinates of the saved spots you want scored (up to six), so the server can evaluate each one for the next sunrise/sunset and name it in the alert. The server keeps them only while Emberlight alerts are on.
This information is stored in a database (Cloudflare D1) associated only with the device token, solely to deliver the alerts you asked for. Our alert server keeps an aggregate operational log that deliberately excludes your device token and your location. We do not use this information for advertising or profiling, and we do not sell it.
Turning all alerts off instructs our server to delete your registration, and the App retries automatically (including on later launches) until the deletion is confirmed. If you delete the App while alerts are still on, Apple/Google invalidate the push token so no notifications can be delivered, and you can contact us to have the stale registration deleted.
4. THIRD-PARTY DATA SERVICES
To provide conditions and forecasts, the App requests data in real time from public and third-party services. When it does, your coordinates (and standard technical request information such as your IP address, which those services receive as part of any internet request) are shared with the applicable service. These include:
- NOAA / U.S. National Weather Service — weather and space-weather data.
- NOAA CO-OPS — tide predictions and water temperature.
- NOAA SWPC — geomagnetic, solar-wind, and aurora data.
- NASA and NASA JPL — imagery and comet position data.
- Open-Meteo — weather, marine, and air-quality forecasts (directly, or through our weather relay described in Section 3).
- OpenWeather — real-time lightning-strike data for the Lightning layer.
- RainViewer and Iowa State University (IEM) — weather radar images for the map area you view.
- ADSB.lol and adsb.fi — live aircraft positions for Aircraft Transits; they receive the coordinates of the area being watched.
- Amazon Web Services (open terrain data) — elevation tiles for horizon and terrain features, for the area being calculated.
- CelesTrak, wheretheiss.at, and the TLE API — Space Station orbit data. These are downloads only; no location is sent.
- Esri (Android) — satellite map imagery for the map area you view.
- COBS — comet brightness observations.
- OpenStreetMap contributors and map/geocoding providers — nearby place discovery and place names.
- Apple and/or Google platform services — push-notification delivery, location, and maps.
- Hugging Face — download of the optional on-device AI model files. This is a download only; your questions and data are not uploaded to Hugging Face.
These services are operated by third parties under their own privacy policies and terms, which we do not control. We share only what is necessary to make each request.
5. OPTIONAL THIRD-PARTY AI SERVICE
The App's AI features are designed to run on your device. If a future or optional configuration lets you connect your own third-party AI provider (for example, by supplying your own API key), then the text you send to that feature would be transmitted to that provider under their privacy policy and terms. This is optional, off unless you configure it, and clearly separate from the on-device experience.
6. PHOTOS
If you export a Card or Field Guide image, the App saves that image to your device's photo library with your permission. The App uses add-only photo access — it never reads, browses, or accesses your existing photos or library.
7. WHAT WE DO NOT DO
- We do not require or offer accounts or logins.
- We do not use analytics, advertising, tracking, or attribution SDKs.
- We do not track you across apps or websites.
- We do not sell, rent, or trade your information.
- We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13, and the App is not directed to children.
8. DATA RETENTION
Consent receipts. The consent record described in Section 3 (install identifier + accepted legal versions, app version, platform) is retained on our server until you request its deletion. To request deletion, email us (address above) and include the install identifier shown in the App under Settings; we will delete the receipt associated with it.
- On-device data remains until you delete it in the App or remove the App (on a Mac, preference files may persist until you also clear them).
- Aurora Chase registration data (the Live Activity push token, activity identifier, start and end times, frequent-updates setting, and the hash of the chase's key) is deleted when the chase ends — End chase, leaving Chase Mode, or swiping the Live Activity away — and in any case no more than about 3 hours 15 minutes after the chase started, by our server on its own if the App can't reach it.
- Alert-server registration data (device token, coarse location — plus the finer lightning-alert location while that alert is on — and alert settings) is retained only while you have alerts enabled. When you disable all alerts the App instructs the server to delete it and retries until confirmed (including on later launches); you can also request deletion at any time; if you delete the App with alerts still on, the push token is invalidated so no notifications can be delivered, and the stale record can be removed on request.
9. SECURITY
We use reasonable technical measures to protect information transmitted to and stored on our alert server, including encrypted network connections. However, no method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
10. YOUR CHOICES AND RIGHTS
- Location: grant, limit, or revoke in your device settings.
- Alerts: turn any alert on or off in the App at any time; turning all alerts off triggers deletion of your server registration, retried automatically until confirmed.
- Aurora Chase: ending a chase deletes its registration. If you turn off Live Activities for Shutter Scout in your iPhone settings, Chase Mode still works on the phone and sends nothing to our server.
- Notifications: manage or disable notifications in your device settings.
- Access and deletion: because we do not maintain accounts and our records are keyed only to a device token or a random install identifier, we cannot identify you from a name or email. Disabling all alerts triggers deletion of your alert registration (retried until confirmed); your consent receipt is deletable on request using the install identifier shown in Settings. Contact us at support@shutterscoutapp.com with questions or deletion requests.
Depending on where you live (for example, the EU/UK or California), you may have additional rights regarding personal information. Given the App's minimal, largely on-device design, we hold little or no information that identifies you; we will honor applicable rights to the extent the limited data we process allows.
11. INTERNATIONAL USERS
The App and our alert server may process requests through infrastructure located in the United States and other countries. By using the App, you understand that data necessary to provide the service may be processed in those locations.
12. CHILDREN'S PRIVACY
The App is intended for a general audience of photographers and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided information to us, contact us and we will address it.
13. CHANGES TO THIS POLICY
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the "Effective date" above and, where appropriate, present the updated policy in the App. Your continued use after an update takes effect constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.
14. CONTACT
Questions or requests regarding this Privacy Policy:
Steven Smith d/b/a Shutter Scout
Email: support@shutterscoutapp.com
Shutter Scout is designed to give you the sky's conditions without taking your privacy in return.