Privacy policy

The short version

Stormbell shows National Weather Service alerts for the places you choose, and for where your phone is if you allow it, and can notify you when one matches your settings.

There is no account, no ads and no tracking. We have added no analytics and no crash-reporting service. If you allow automatic fixes, the update check can carry the text of an error that stopped the app (see “Updating the app itself”).

We, Boilerplate LLC, run one small server for this app. It sends alerts out. It takes nothing from your phone and stores nothing about you. Nothing from the app reaches us unless you open one of our pages on boiler-plate.com, send us feedback or email us.

To find alerts, the app has to say where to look. Six things leave your phone:

• Your locations, to the National Weather Service. Each time the app checks for alerts, it sends the weather service the coordinates of each of your saved places, and of your phone’s current location if you allow it.
• A rough area, to Google’s push service, so alerts can reach you. It holds a code for your phone and the weather zones and area (about 3 miles across) you follow.
• If you allow automatic fixes, a check for a newer version of the app, to Expo, the company that hosts the app’s software updates. It carries the app’s version and a code that is the same on every phone.
• The feedback form, if you open it, hosted by Tally. The form is Tally’s own page, and the app blocks requests to other companies.
• Your phone’s own backup, which may copy the app’s data, including your places and their names, to your own Apple or Google account. The last position the app checked for you is kept out of it.
• A request to our website, boiler-plate.com, if you tap a link to one of our pages.

Everything else stays on your phone, including alert sounds, test notifications and the History page. The rest of this page sets out each of these in full.

Who we are

Stormbell is published by Boilerplate LLC. You can reach us at support@boiler-plate.com.

We run one small server for this app, the alert relay. It reads the National Weather Service and sends alerts to Google’s push service. It receives nothing from phones. Apart from the relay and our own website, boiler-plate.com, which is hosted for us by Epik, everything the app contacts belongs to someone else, and each of them is named below.

Your location, and your saved places

What the app reads. With your permission, the app reads your phone’s location. It does so while you use the app and, if you choose “Always”, while the app is closed, so that it can check alerts for wherever you are. The app asks for your precise location so it can give you the right notifications for where you are. Some warnings cover a small area, and an approximate location can be miles off. If you share only an approximate location, the app still works and tells you that alerts may be for somewhere nearby. If you turn off “Alerts for where you are”, the app stops using your phone’s location for alerts, whatever the phone’s permission says.

Your saved places. You can save places such as Home in two ways:

• with “I’m here now”, which uses your phone’s location at that moment;
• by entering a ZIP code. The app looks the ZIP code up on your phone, in a table built into the app, so the code itself is never put into any request. The point it sends instead is a central point of the Census Bureau’s area for that ZIP code, so the weather service could work out which ZIP code it is. A place set this way is approximate. The table covers the 50 states, Washington, DC, and the five inhabited territories. It does not have ZIP codes used only for PO boxes or by the military.

The ZIP shown for where you are. The app works it out on your phone, from your phone’s exact position and outlines of the Census Bureau’s ZIP areas built into the app. That exact position is not sent anywhere and is not kept.

The names you give your places are never sent to us or to the weather service. Your phone’s own backup can copy them, with the rest of the app’s data, to your own Apple or Google account (see below).

What is sent, and to whom. To look up alerts, the app sends the National Weather Service the latitude and longitude of each place, rounded to three decimal places, which is about 100 meters. It sends them each time it asks for alerts:

• when you open or refresh the app;
• when you open Past Alerts, which shows the last 7 days of alerts for your places;
• in the background, as often as your phone allows. On Android that is no more often than every 15 minutes. On iPhone the system decides when;
• for your current location, also when your phone has moved: on Android after about 1 kilometer, no more often than every 5 minutes; on iPhone when the system reports a significant move.

When you open an alert, the app may also ask the weather service for that alert by its code, and for the outline of a zone it covers. These requests name the alert or the zone rather than your place, but they belong to an alert for one of your places.

The requests carry no account, no name and no place name. Each one does carry a label that names the app and its version and gives our email address, as the weather service requires of every app that uses it. The label is the same on every phone with that version, so it identifies the app, not you. The requests come from your phone, though, so the weather service also sees your device’s IP address. Requests from the same phone could be linked to each other by that address and by their timing. The National Weather Service is part of the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Its own privacy policy, at weather.gov/privacy, covers its websites.

What the app keeps. These are kept on your phone, and go in your phone’s backup if it backs up app data:

• your settings, including your sound choices for each place;
• your saved places and their names;
• the dates of the privacy policy, terms and disclaimer you agreed to.

These are kept on your phone only, out of the backup:

• the alerts it last fetched, with the time of that fetch and the position it last checked for your current location, so it can show you something when you are offline;
• a record of which alerts it has already told you about, and of the notifications it showed;
• the push topics your phone follows (see below);
• the counts on the History page: checks, pushes, and battery figures from your phone;
• a log of what the app did, which the History page reads.

It does not keep a history of where you have been: each new position replaces the last. The weather service, though, receives your phone’s position each time the app checks, which can be every few minutes while your phone moves, so its own records could show where your phone has been. To limit that, allow location only while using the app, turn off “Alerts for where you are”, or don’t give the app your location and use saved places alone.

Alerts by push

New alerts reach your phone by push, through Google’s push service (Firebase Cloud Messaging), on iPhone and on Android.

• What Google holds: a code for your phone, and the topics it follows. A topic is a weather-service zone, or an area about 3 miles across. The app follows the zones and area of each of your places, and of where your phone is if you allow location.
• Why it matters: together these give a rough location, much coarser than the position sent to the weather service. It stays with Google while the app follows them.
• What our relay does: it reads the weather service and publishes each alert to the topics it covers. It receives nothing from phones, and keeps no list of phones, codes or places: what it stores is the alerts it has sent and the topics it sent them to.
• If push stops: the app still checks the weather service itself, as described above.

Google’s own privacy policy, at policies.google.com/privacy, describes how it handles this.

Updating the app itself

The app can replace its own program code without a visit to an app store, using Expo’s update service, but only if you allow it. The first time you open the app, it asks once whether to allow automatic fixes, and you can change your answer in Settings. If you say no, the app never contacts Expo, and fixes come only through store updates. If you say yes, the app asks Expo whether a newer version exists, and downloads it if so, each time the app starts (which can be in the background, for a push or a check) and when you turn automatic fixes on.

• What the request carries: the platform, the app’s update runtime, which update it is running and which came built in, any updates that failed recently, a code that is the same on every phone, and, if the app’s update software recorded a fatal error, the text of that error.
• What it doesn’t carry: your locations, your places or your settings, unless an error’s text happens to include some of them.
• What Expo also sees: your device’s IP address.

The code is not yours. Expo’s updates normally send a random code for each installation, to count installations. The app sends a fixed code instead, the same on every phone, so Expo cannot tell phones apart. Expo’s own privacy policy, at expo.dev/privacy, describes how it handles requests.

Sending feedback

The feedback form is hosted by Tally, who process what you send on our behalf. The app contacts Tally only if you open the form.

What can travel with it. Before the form opens, the app shows what will be sent, and a box you can tick to include the app’s version, your phone’s model and its system version.

• If you tick the box, those three details travel in the link itself. They reach Tally, and the browser the form opens in, as the page loads, before you have typed anything.
• If you don’t tick it, the link carries none of them.

What Tally always sees. Tally receives your device’s IP address, as any website host must in order to send you the page. It also receives your browser’s own details, such as its version and your phone’s system version, and on Android your phone’s model. Both reach it whether or not you tick the box.

Where the form opens. It opens inside the app. The form is Tally’s own page. The app blocks requests from the page to other companies, such as Tally’s error reports, on iPhone and on Android. Tally itself still receives what you type: treat anything you put on the form as reaching Tally.

Your phone’s own backup

Your phone may back up the app’s data to your own iCloud or Google account, under your phone’s backup settings, so that a new phone can restore it. That data is your settings, your places and their names, and the dates of the documents you agreed to, as listed under “What the app keeps”. Your phone may also copy the same data to a computer you back it up to, or straight to a new phone when you set one up. The rest stays out of all of these.

We cannot see any of these copies. You can turn backups off in your phone’s settings. Deleting the app removes its data from your phone, but not from a backup that already holds it.

Links out of the app

The app links to:

• our privacy policy, terms, disclaimer and help pages, on boiler-plate.com;
• the feedback form.

There are no other links. Web addresses inside an alert’s own text cannot be tapped.

Tapping a link to one of our pages opens it in your phone’s browser, and our website receives a request from your device, like any other site you visit. The request carries your device’s IP address, the page asked for and your browser’s details. Our website is hosted for us by Epik, which may keep a record of the request under its own terms. Our pages set no cookies. “Contact support” in the app opens the feedback form, as Send feedback does.

Where your information goes

The National Weather Service and Expo are in the United States. Apple and Google, which keep your phone’s backup and, for Google, the push service, are based there too. Tally, which hosts the feedback form, is in Belgium, in the European Union, so anything sent to the form, including when it opens, leaves the United States. The company that hosts our website, Epik, is in the United States. Each of these organizations may process what it receives in its own country and in others, under its own terms. Contact us if you would like to know more. Stormbell is offered only in the United States and its territories.

What we hold, and your rights

There is no account and no login. You never tell us who you are, and nothing you do in the app is filed under a name.

What we hold ourselves:

• Feedback: what you write and, if you ticked the box, the app version, phone model and system version. Tally keeps it on our behalf.
• Email you send us, in our inbox.

• Messages sent through the contact form on our support page, which Tally keeps on our behalf. They carry what you type, tagged with the app’s name and the page they came from.

We keep these for as long as we need them to answer and act on what you sent, and for no longer than 36 months, unless the law requires us to keep them longer. These are the records we can look up, correct or delete for you. Contact us and tell us enough about what you sent for us to find it. We have no identifier to search on.

What others keep, under their own policies and for their own periods:

• request logs, which the National Weather Service and Tally may keep;
• the push code and the topics your phone follows, by Google;
• update-check records, by Expo;
• your phone’s backup, by Apple or Google;
• records of visits to our website, which Epik, our website’s host, may keep.

We cannot delete those records for you.

Your rights. Subject to the law that applies to you, you may ask us:

• to tell you what we hold about you;
• to correct it or delete it;
• to object to or restrict how we use it;
• to withdraw a consent you have given.

To do any of these, contact us using the details below.

For residents of US states with privacy laws. We do not sell personal information, we do not share it for advertising, and the app has no advertising at all. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16.

How to make a request. Email us. We will confirm we received it within 10 business days, and answer within 45 days, or tell you within that time if we need up to 45 more. If we decline, you may appeal by replying with “Appeal” in the subject line, and we will respond within 60 days. If you are not satisfied, you may contact your state’s attorney general.

Children

Stormbell is not directed at people under 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe someone under 18 has sent us feedback, contact us and we will delete it.

Security

Our one server, the relay, takes nothing from phones. What the app sends goes directly to the organizations named on this page, and to our website when you open one of its pages.

• On the phone: what the app stores is protected by your phone’s own encryption while the phone is off, or has not been unlocked since it restarted.
• In transit: every connection the app makes is encrypted, to the National Weather Service, to Google, to Expo, to Tally and to our website.

No transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be secure.

If there is a data breach

If records we hold are exposed through a security incident, we will investigate. We will notify the people affected, and the authorities, where the law requires it. Because we hold no contact details for people who have not written to us, we would notify by email where we have an address, and otherwise by a notice on our website. A breach at the National Weather Service, Expo, Tally, Apple, Google or our website’s host is theirs to report, under their own obligations.

Changes to this policy

We may change this policy. When we do, we change the “Last updated” date at the top of this page. The app carries that date too, and when the policy has changed since you last agreed to it, the app asks you to agree again. The new date reaches the app with an app update, so the app asks after it next updates, which can be days or longer after this page changes. Until you agree, the app keeps checking for alerts and notifying you under the version you agreed to before.

Contacting us

support@boiler-plate.com https://boiler-plate.com/contact

© Boilerplate LLC. All rights reserved.