Privacy and personal data
This notice explains in plain language what personal data Aurora Webcam Watch processes, why and how. It serves as our information notice under Turkey's Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698 (KVKK) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Questions: hello@aurorawebcam.watch
In short
- You don't need an account to use the site.
- We use no advertising, tracking or profiling cookies.
- We never sell, rent or share your data for marketing.
- We never send marketing or advertising messages.
- We keep only the minimum needed for the service you ask for, and delete it on request.
What we store
| Data | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | Only if you create an optional account | To sign you in and keep your settings |
| Push subscription | If you enable browser notifications | To deliver alerts to your device. It is a technical endpoint and encryption keys issued by your browser and contains no name. |
| Telegram chat id | If you start our Telegram bot | To send alerts via Telegram |
| Alert location | If you set up an alert | To compute the score for your area. We round it to city level or 0.1° (about 10 km) and never store your precise GPS position. |
| Sighting reports | If you report seeing (or not seeing) aurora | To inform other users and improve the forecast model. A report holds the time, an approximate location and, optionally, a photo. Only the approximate location is shown on the map. |
Preferences such as language, theme or chosen city are kept only in your own browser's local storage and are not sent to us.
When you visit the site, our infrastructure provider Cloudflare briefly processes technical connection data such as IP addresses for security and delivery. We don't use it to identify or track you.
Legal basis and separate consent
- Separate consent for alerts: email, browser and Telegram alerts are services you switch on yourself. We ask for consent per channel and never make use of the site conditional on any consent (KVKK art. 5(1); GDPR art. 6(1)(a)).
- Accounts and sighting reports: necessary to provide the service you request (KVKK art. 5(2)(c); GDPR art. 6(1)(b)).
- Security and abuse prevention: legitimate interest in running the service safely (KVKK art. 5(2)(f); GDPR art. 6(1)(f)).
Alerts contain only aurora and space-weather information. We send no advertising, promotions or commercial messages.
How long we keep it
- Account and email: until you delete your account or ask us to.
- Push subscriptions: deleted when you turn notifications off or when the browser's push service reports the subscription invalid (for example after you revoke permission or clear browser data).
- Telegram chat id: deleted when you stop or block the bot.
- Sighting reports and photos: kept in the sightings archive until you ask us to delete them, which you can do at any time.
- Alert location: deleted when you remove the alert.
Who processes it, and transfers abroad
We do not sell personal data. We use these processors to run the service:
- Cloudflare, Inc.: hosting, database, storage and content delivery. Cloudflare operates servers in many countries, so your data may be processed outside Turkey, for example in the EU and the US.
- Browser push services (such as Apple, Google, Mozilla): push notifications travel through your browser's own push service.
- Telegram: if you choose Telegram alerts, messages are delivered via Telegram.
- Email delivery: account emails (such as sign-in links) are sent through an email delivery service.
Under KVKK art. 9, transfers of personal data abroad are subject to specific conditions. When you create an account or set up an alert, we inform you of the possible risks and ask for your separate explicit consent to the cross-border transfer. You don't have to give it; without it you cannot use accounts or alerts, but the rest of the site (forecasts, map, webcams, guides) remains fully available. You can withdraw consent at any time.
Your rights
Under KVKK art. 11 you may learn whether your data are processed and request information about it; learn the purpose and whether data are used accordingly; know the third parties in Turkey or abroad to whom data are transferred; request correction of incomplete or inaccurate data and erasure or destruction; request that third parties be notified of these steps; object to an adverse outcome arising solely from automated analysis; and claim compensation for damage caused by unlawful processing.
Under the GDPR you also have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, data portability, objection and withdrawal of consent.
Send requests to hello@aurorawebcam.watch. We reply free of charge within 30 days at the latest. If you are not satisfied, you can complain to Turkey's Personal Data Protection Authority or, in the EU, to your national data protection authority.
Changes
If we update this notice we will announce significant changes on the site. If we ever need to process data for a new purpose, we will ask for your consent first.
This text is not legal advice; it is written to explain the project's data practices clearly.