Privacy policy

Location

The app reads your device location only after you tap “Allow location” or turn on Location in Settings; it reads once each time the app opens or returns to the foreground and never tracks continuously.

Location is used to show the weather where you are and determine whether the Hong Kong morning weather tip applies. Within 50 km of Hong Kong, the device sends the coordinates rounded to two decimal places (about 1 km) to our server to pick the nearest Observatory automatic weather station, so the Today page shows that station’s temperature, humidity and wind and names your district next to the place (for example “Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong”); the coordinates are not written to a cookie and the server does not log or store them.

iOS weather widgets keep only the latest confirmed Hong Kong district name, language, confirmation time and coordinates rounded to two decimal places in shared storage on your device, without a location history. Widgets use only locations confirmed within six hours and request nearby station readings in the same way; they do not read GPS in the background. Turning Location off, or the app confirming that you have left Hong Kong, lost permission or cannot obtain a location, clears this snapshot. When the location expires or the district data request fails, widgets return to the Hong Kong display.

More than 50 km from Hong Kong, the device keeps the coordinates (two decimal places, about 1 km), time zone and place name in a cookie, which is sent with each request to our server to render the Current location page; the server then requests the forecast for those coordinates from Open-Meteo. The Aethopia server does not log or store the coordinates. Open-Meteo states that its API request logs may contain geographical coordinates and are retained for 90 days. Turning Location off clears the cookie.

The place name comes from the device’s system geocoder (Apple or Google), which receives the coordinates.

Push notifications

Only after you turn notifications on does the app register with our server the device push token (issued by Apple or Google), the platform, the language, the alert types you chose (tropical cyclone signals, storms within 500 km, new storms forming, morning weather tip) and the hour of registration.

The Hong Kong morning weather tip is off by default and must be turned on in Settings; once on, it is sent when quiet hours end (07:00 Asia/Hong_Kong). You can turn the morning weather tip off in Settings at any time without disabling other alerts. It is skipped without today's Observatory forecast; this version has no UV morning-tip trigger.

The server also stores the morning-tip preference, the device's last report of whether you are more than 50 km from Hong Kong (a boolean, not coordinates), the Hong Kong date of the latest send attempt, and whether the first opt-out notice still needs to be added. These select recipients and prevent another attempt on the same day. The first opt-out notice is marked complete only when the notification is accepted by the push service; this does not prove device receipt. These fields remain with the push registration and are deleted when the registration is removed; disabling only the morning tip keeps the registration needed for other alerts.

To check dispatch outcomes, the server separately retains push records for 90 days, including time, alert kind, title, in-app path, language, platform, outcome and failure reason, with only the first 12 characters of the push endpoint rather than the full token. This includes morning tips; removing a registration by disabling notifications does not immediately erase existing dispatch records, which are cleaned up according to this retention period.

The token is used only to send those alerts. Turning notifications off in Settings, or the system revoking the token, deletes the registration on our server.

While a tropical cyclone warning signal is in force, the app registers a Live Activity update token with our server so that signal updates can be pushed to the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island; the token is deleted when the Live Activity ends or when you turn notifications off.

Errors and technical diagnostics

Crashes, errors and foreground-refresh or navigation problems send stack traces, device model, OS version, app version and relevant technical diagnostics to Sentry for repairs. The project uses European-region ingestion; other processing and subprocessors follow Sentry’s privacy policy. Location cookies, coordinates, push tokens and other sensitive data are removed before sending in the latest app version. Update older app versions to apply these controls. Performance tracing and screen replay are disabled.

Usage measurement

For each page served, the server records the path, language, date and the referring site’s host name; within the app three interactions (tab, timeline, replay) are also recorded. No IP address, browser or device identifier, or cookie is recorded; there is no visitor identifier, so returning visits cannot be recognised.

Third-party services

Our servers run on Cloudflare, which briefly processes connection data (including IP addresses) to deliver content and block attacks; Aethopia keeps none of it. Weather and storm data come from public sources including the Hong Kong Observatory, the Japan Meteorological Agency, the US National Hurricane Center and Open-Meteo (all listed under Sources and limits). When fetching that data the server passes on none of your data, except the coordinates needed for the Current location page (see above); Open-Meteo’s request-log handling follows its privacy terms.

Your choices

Location and notifications can be turned off in Settings at any time and take effect immediately. Deleting the app removes all data on the device; turning notifications off in Settings removes the server push registration, as does the server detecting a token revoked by the system. Existing dispatch records follow the 90-day retention period described under Push notifications.

The app is not directed at children under 13 and shows no targeted advertising.

Contact

For privacy questions, email support@aethopia.com. Changes to this policy are dated on this page.