Glimmr privacy policy

Last updated 4 October 2026. Glimmr is published by vaki.chat.

Glimmr shows aurora chances and road safety for Iceland from public data. It has no accounts, no ads and no analytics, and it does not track you.

What you share, and only when you choose to

If you tap "I saw it!", Glimmr sends the time, how strong the aurora was, and your position rounded to about 1 km (your chosen place, or your exact spot if you tap "use my exact spot"). Everyone using Glimmr can see these sightings on the map for 12 hours. They are deleted from our server after 48 hours. They are not linked to your name, phone or any account.

What the server keeps to stop abuse

To stop one person flooding the map, the server keeps a scrambled code made from your internet address, plus a count and the time of your last report. The internet address itself is never stored. This is deleted after 48 hours.

Your location

Your location is read on your phone only when you tap "use my exact spot" and allow it. The place you pick (and, if you ask for it, your exact spot) is sent to our server to fetch the cloud forecast for that spot. It is used for that request and not stored. Your chosen place is also saved on your own phone so the app remembers it.

Other services that see your internet address

Glimmr runs on Cloudflare, which keeps ordinary server logs. The map pictures come from OpenStreetMap, fonts from Google Fonts, and some app code from jsDelivr and cdnjs. Like any website, these can see your internet address when your phone loads them. Glimmr gets its data from NOAA, the Icelandic Met Office, the Icelandic Road Administration and Open-Meteo, through our server, so those sources do not see you.

Glimmr Plus (optional, paid)

Plus is a monthly subscription sold on the website by Paddle, who is the seller of record and handles your payment details, tax and receipts. We never see your card. We link your subscription to a random code stored on your phone, and keep only a scrambled copy of that code with your subscription status and paid-until date. No name or email is kept by Glimmr.

If you switch on aurora alerts, your phone gives our server a private notification address (from Google, Mozilla, Microsoft or Apple's push service) and the place you picked, rounded to about 1 km. We use it only to check the forecast for that place and send you an alert. Turn alerts off and it is deleted at once; if you stop paying it is deleted within about a month.

On a good night the app may show a link to an aurora tour company. It is an affiliate link: if you book, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. The company, not Glimmr, handles your booking.

What we do not do

• No accounts, names or email addresses are collected by Glimmr.
• No advertising, no selling or sharing of data, no analytics or tracking.
• No data from children is knowingly collected; Glimmr asks for nothing personal.

Deleting your data

Sightings and abuse codes delete themselves after 48 hours. To ask us to remove something sooner, contact us through the Glimmr page on Google Play.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be on this page with a new date.