Privacy Policy
Volcano Alert collects no personal information. There is no account, no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking of any kind. The app does fetch data over the internet — that is how it tells you what is happening — so this policy describes exactly what those requests are and what they carry.
What the app does
Volcano Alert shows the Smithsonian volcano catalogue on a map, together with USGS alert levels, volcanic ash advisories, the weekly volcanic activity report, and recent earthquakes. You can watch individual volcanoes and be notified when their status changes.
Location
Location access is optional and is used for one thing: sorting volcanoes by how far they are from you, in the "near me" section and in distance labels. Your position is read on the device, used to calculate those distances, and discarded. It is never stored and never transmitted, and the app is fully usable if you decline location access.
Watchlist, settings and cached data
Your watchlist, your settings, and the data the app has downloaded — volcano records, photographs, alert feeds and earthquake lists — are stored only on your device, in the app's own private container. We cannot see them. Your watchlist and settings are included in your personal iCloud or computer backup if you have backups enabled; the downloaded photo cache is deliberately excluded from backups because it can be re-downloaded. Deleting the app removes all of it.
Network requests the app makes
- interactivewebs.com servers — the volcano catalogue, the merged alert feed, ash advisory bulletins and volcano photographs.
- U.S. Geological Survey (
earthquake.usgs.gov) — earthquake feeds and per-volcano earthquake queries. - Mapbox — map tiles, and the offline map packs the app downloads for you.
These requests carry no personal information beyond what any internet request necessarily includes, such as your IP address, which is used only to deliver the response and appears in ordinary short-term server logs. No request identifies you, and none of them tells our servers which volcanoes you are interested in: the app downloads the feeds whole and does the filtering on your device.
Maps (Mapbox)
Maps are provided by Mapbox. When the app is online, the Mapbox software collects limited pseudonymous usage and diagnostic data — such as which map areas are loaded and how the map performs — to operate and improve its map service. This is not used to identify you and is governed by the Mapbox Privacy Policy rather than this one. You can turn Mapbox telemetry off at any time from the ⓘ button on the map. Once the offline map is on your device, browsing it sends nothing at all.
Notifications
Alert-change notifications are generated locally on your device by comparing the feed against what you are watching. No push notification service is used, no device token is created, and no notification passes through our servers or anyone else's.
This website's support form
The support form on this site is the only way we can receive anything from you, and only if you choose to use it. What you type into it — your message, and the name and email address you optionally supply — is sent to our app support team by email and used only to answer you. It is not added to a mailing list, not used for marketing, and not passed to anyone else. Our web server keeps standard access logs (IP address, request time, user agent) for security and operations; these are rotated and deleted routinely.
Data retention and deletion
We hold no data about you, so there is nothing for us to delete. Everything the app keeps is on your own device and goes when you delete the app; the watchlist can be emptied at any time inside the app, and downloaded offline maps can be removed individually. If you have written to us through the support form and want that correspondence deleted, ask through the same form and we will remove it within 30 days.
Children
Volcano Alert is rated 4+ and is suitable for all ages. It collects no information from anyone, children included.
Changes
If this policy changes, the updated version will be published at this address with a new effective date.
Contact
interactivewebs.com Pty Ltd
Reach us through the support form — it goes straight to our app support team.