Legal
Last updated: 2026-09-15
docs/privacy-policy.md in the app's source code.
Aurora Tromsø Northern Lights is an app that helps you decide where and when to look for the northern lights around Tromsø, Norway. It is made and operated by Max Roness Hovding, a private individual based in Tromsø. He is the data controller for any personal data described here. Contact: [email protected].
The optional waitlist on tromso-aurora.app is separate from using the app and its analytics choices. If you enter your email and agree to the launch announcement, your browser sends the address directly to Audienceful, our signup and email provider. It also receives the connection information needed to handle that request, such as your IP address, and an empty anti-spam field. Our Fly.io backend does not receive or store this list. The lawful basis is your consent; the purpose is the app's launch announcement, not a regular newsletter or unrelated marketing.
The page makes no Audienceful requests until you submit. It does not load Audienceful's tracking SDK, store its visitor identifiers, or connect your email with app location, usage or analytics data. Audienceful may send a confirmation email according to the form's settings.
You can withdraw using the unsubscribe link in our emails, or request withdrawal/deletion at [email protected] before any email is sent. We keep the waitlist for the launch announcement, then delete its contact records within 30 days after that announcement unless you separately opt into another purpose. If the launch is delayed, we review the list every six months and remove addresses we no longer need. Audienceful processes signup and email records on our behalf; see its privacy information and GDPR information.
The app reads your phone's position in three places, always on the phone, and only if you have given the app location permission:
In all three cases the position is used and then discarded. Nothing about Trip Mode or the map is sent to us. Location is only read while the app is open on screen, never in the background and never while the app is closed. If you refuse location permission, the map still works without your position, Trip Mode cannot rank nearby spots, and nothing else changes.
What it is for. To learn which viewing spots people actually look at, drive to and visit, and when, so that the app can highlight the right spots and so that Tromsø municipality (Tromsø kommune) can see, as summary numbers, which areas get the most visitors.
How you are asked. The first time you open the app, it asks "Help improve Aurora and aurora tourism in Tromsø?" with two buttons, "Share anonymous insights" and "No thanks". No thanks means nothing is counted or sent. You can change your answer at any time under Settings > Privacy & data > Anonymous insights. If you say yes on a phone, the phone then shows its own location permission prompt. If you refuse that, only the usage counts below are shared.
What is sent, and nothing else:
What is never sent: your coordinates, your route or the order of places you visited, any device or account identifier, whether Trip Mode was on, anything while insights is off, and nothing location-based while the app is in the background or closed.
How it is stored. Our server adds each event to a count per spot or cell per hour, for example "spot X viewed 12 times between 20:00 and 21:00", and does not keep the individual event. Counts older than 180 days are deleted. Our server does not store or log IP addresses. Because the counts contain nothing that points to a person, we cannot find or delete "your" part of a count after the fact; switching the toggle off stops all further sending immediately and throws away anything still waiting on the phone.
Legal basis. Your consent (GDPR Article 6(1)(a)). While an individual event is in transit we treat it as personal data; only the aggregated counts are treated as anonymous, and small counts are suppressed before any sharing.
Sharing. Only summary counts, never individual events, may be shared with Tromsø kommune. Whether the location-based counts will be part of that has not been decided; if it is, this policy will say so before any sharing starts.
What it is for. To see how the app is used over time: whether people come back, where they stop in common flows, and which features get used. The anonymous counts above cannot show this because they never distinguish one phone from another.
How you are asked. A separate question at first launch, with "Share personal analytics" and "No thanks". You can change it at any time under Settings > Privacy & data > Personal analytics.
What is sent. A fixed list of events, each tagged with a random identifier created for your installation of the app (not your name, email or any account, the app has none) and a timestamp:
The analytics software also attaches a fixed set of device and app details to each event so that we can tell, for example, which app version or OS version a problem affects: app version and build number, app name and bundle id, operating system and version, device type, manufacturer and model, language, time zone, screen size in pixels, and the version of the analytics software. Nothing beyond this list is ever sent. No location, no advertising identifiers, no session recordings, and no automatic capture of every tap.
Who processes it. PostHog, on its EU cloud in Frankfurt, Germany, under a data processing agreement with us. PostHog processes the data only on our instructions. Its servers see your phone's IP address when events arrive, as any internet service does; we have turned off location lookup from IP addresses and set the project to discard IP addresses so they are not stored with your events.
How long. 24 months, then deleted by PostHog.
Turning it off and deleting. Switching the toggle off stops sending immediately and sends PostHog a request to delete the data tied to your installation's identifier. Deletion takes some time to work through PostHog's systems; we cannot promise an exact number of days, only that the request is made the moment you switch it off. You can also ask us to access or delete this data by email; we will do it through PostHog for you.
Legal basis. Your consent (GDPR Article 6(1)(a)). It is never used for advertising. Using it for anything beyond product improvement would require a new question in the app and an update to this policy first.
Where a version of the app includes alerts, you can ask to be notified on nights that look good, under Settings > Aurora alerts, choosing between "any decent chance" and "only great nights". Versions without the feature say so in Settings, and none of the following happens. The web version has no alerts.
Alerts are delivered by Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging and, on iPhone, by Apple's push service. When you turn alerts on, your phone first asks its own notification permission. Then Google's software in the app subscribes your phone to one of two named topics matching your choice. Our server sends at most one message per night to a topic name; Google delivers it to every subscribed phone. Google creates and holds a push token and a Firebase installation id for your phone for this purpose. We never receive them, never see a subscriber list and cannot address a single phone. A notification contains only the spot's name, its score and tonight's best window, the same public forecast shown in the app.
Google is our processor for delivery under Google's Firebase data processing terms. Google keeps the installation id until it is deleted by an API call, and then removes it within 180 days. Turning alerts off unsubscribes your phone; turning off notifications for the app in your phone's settings stops delivery regardless; uninstalling removes the token. We hold nothing about you for this feature.
Any server your phone contacts sees your phone's IP address and a standard description of the device and software for the duration of the request. That is how the internet works. We add nothing to those requests. The operators and their own privacy policies:
project-aurora.fly.dev, hosted by Fly.io in Stockholm): the app normally gets its forecast from here. Our server fetches the weather from MET Norway and the space-weather data from NOAA and serves the combined forecast; your phone does not contact those two directly unless our server cannot be reached.api.met.no): weather forecasts and sunrise and sunset times, fetched by your phone only if our server is unreachable, and always in the web version.services.swpc.noaa.gov, USA): the Kp index and solar wind data, same rule as MET Norway.weather.cs.uit.no, spaceweather2.uit.no): the live sky cameras and the aurora nowcast images.tromso-aurora.app. It serves files; we add no tracking to it.Tapping Navigate hands a spot's coordinates to your phone's maps app or opens Google Maps in the browser. That is an ordinary link you choose to follow.
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Anonymous insights counts (per spot or cell, per hour) | 180 days, then deleted |
| Personal analytics events at PostHog | 24 months, then deleted |
| Aurora alerts | Nothing on our side; Google holds the push token until you turn alerts off or uninstall |
| Trip Mode stops, map position | Phone memory only, gone when you end Trip Mode or close the app |
| Your consent answers and settings | On your phone only, until you change them or uninstall |
Under the GDPR you can ask for access to, correction of, or deletion of personal data we hold about you, withdraw consent at any time, and complain to the Norwegian Data Protection Authority (Datatilsynet). Write to [email protected].
What that means here:
Our processors are PostHog, Google (Firebase) and Fly.io. Each acts only on our instructions under a data processing agreement. We never sell personal data and never share it with anyone else, including Tromsø kommune, which only ever receives summary counts.
The app is not aimed at children and collects nothing unless you opt in, so it has no age check.
We will update this page when the app changes. The date at the top shows the latest version. If a change would collect something new, the app asks you before it starts.
This policy is published in English only for now. The app itself is available in English, German, French, Spanish and Chinese.