Privacy

Last updated 13 October 2026.

The website

Your location never leaves your browser. When you choose a place on the map, the coordinates stay in the page and in the bookmarkable part of the address after the #, which browsers do not send to the server. Address search runs against Mapbox from your browser. No account, no login, no advertising and no cross-site tracking.

The app, with alerts turned off

Nearby searches send an approximate location to bushfiresmoke.au, rounded to about a kilometre before it leaves the app. The service uses it to answer the request, without keeping a location record linked to your device.

The application server does not write request logs, and the proxy has access logging switched off. Unexpected errors can record the request address for diagnosis; nearby request addresses contain rounded coordinates.

Saved-place names and detailed coordinates stay on your device. Optional place searches use Apple Maps: the search text is sent to Apple, not bushfiresmoke.au. Maps in the app also use Apple Maps services.

The app, with alerts turned on

This is different, and it is the only part of the service that is. To tell you about smoke or a new fire near you when the app is closed, the server has to know roughly where "near you" is. When you turn alerts on, the app sends:

• an approximate location, rounded to about a kilometre before it is stored;
• the settings you chose: the distance, the threshold, whether planned burns count, alert mode, quiet hours and device timezone;
• a notification token issued by Apple or Google for your device, and an identifier this service creates. Neither is your name, your email or your phone number, and we ask for none of those.

The service derives a general city or area name from the rounded location for notification messages. It does not use the detailed saved-place name from your phone. Older app versions may send that name; the service ignores it.

Subscription coordinates are sent in the body of a request, never in a web address, so they do not appear in access logs, proxy caches or browsing history. The rounded coordinate the app sends when asking which monitors are nearby is a separate thing, and is described above.

When app-icon badges are enabled, the server also keeps a notification count and the last notification sequence acknowledged when you opened the app. This clears the badge without deleting alert history. It does not keep a timeline of app openings. Badge notification records have the same 90-day limit as other notification records; the current badge preference and acknowledgement are removed with the device.

How long it is kept

A subscription whose app has not checked in for 180 days is deleted automatically, along with the device it belongs to. Records of notifications sent are deleted after 90 days; delivery-attempt diagnostics are deleted after 21 days. Cleanup runs on the scheduled alerts job, including when notification delivery is disabled. Turning all alerts off or deleting the app ends subscription check-ins. Use the deletion action below to remove retained data sooner.

Deleting it now

In Settings, choose Delete all alert data. The app clears local alert data immediately and asks the service to remove its copy. If the request cannot finish, the app shows online deletion as pending and retries when it can connect. See data deletion.

What is never collected

No accounts, no advertising identifiers, no analytics profiles, no background location, and no location history: only the current approximate location of the places you asked to be told about.

Questions: contact@bushfiresmoke.au.