Privacy Policy

DroneChecker — Last updated: 10 September 2026

1. Introduction

Welcome to DroneChecker. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and protect your information when you use our application available at dronechecker.co.uk and on the Google Play Store.

By using DroneChecker, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy.

2. Who We Are

DroneChecker is an independent application providing drone flying condition information for users worldwide, with a focus on the United Kingdom.

For any privacy-related queries, please contact us at: bbridgewater.dev@gmail.com

We have assessed our data processing activities and determined that we are not required to register with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at this time. Free users' data is stored only on their own device. Plus and Pro subscriber data (name, email, and related account data) is processed via Google Firebase, Stripe, Resend, and — depending on where you subscribed — Google Play Billing (Android app) or Apple (iPhone and iPad app), all of which are listed as data processors in Section 4. If you believe this assessment is incorrect, please contact us. You may also contact the ICO directly at ico.org.uk.

3. Information We Collect

DroneChecker is designed to collect as little information as possible. The sections below describe what data is used and why.

3.1 Location Data

DroneChecker requests access to your device's location (GPS) to display local weather conditions, calculate golden hour and blue hour times, and provide localised flying condition ratings.

We do not store your location data, unless you switch on Weekly Flying Alerts (Section 3.11). Other than that one optional feature, location is used only in real time and is never transmitted to our servers permanently. To fetch your weather, your coordinates are sent to our own backend (a Firebase Cloud Function), which forwards them server-side to Open-Meteo's commercial weather API using a private API key — this keeps that key out of client-side code, but means Open-Meteo no longer sees your device directly, only our server. Your coordinates are cached server-side for up to 10 minutes to avoid repeat lookups for nearby requests, then expire; they are not logged or stored longer-term. If Open-Meteo is temporarily unreachable, your coordinates are forwarded server-side to Met.no instead, to fetch a backup forecast, in the same way. For other features (such as location search, listed in Section 4), your coordinates or search query may instead be sent directly from your device to the relevant third-party service.

3.2 Search Queries

If you search by UK postcode, your query is sent directly from your device to Postcodes.io solely to retrieve location coordinates. If you search by town or city name, your query instead goes to our own backend (a Firebase Cloud Function), which forwards it server-side to Open-Meteo's commercial geocoding API using a private API key, for the same reason as weather requests (see Section 3.1). If Open-Meteo’s gazetteer holds no match for what you typed — as is the case for landmarks, hills, lakes and other points of interest — or holds only a non-UK match, your query is then forwarded server-side to Photon, an OpenStreetMap-based search service operated by komoot, to find it. We do not store any search queries; a query may be cached server-side for up to 24 hours so an identical search doesn't repeat the lookup.

3.3 Analytics Data

DroneChecker uses Google Analytics 4 to collect anonymous usage data. This helps us understand how the app is used so we can improve it. Google Analytics collects:

Pages and features visited within the app
Session duration and frequency of use
Device type, operating system and browser
Approximate geographic location (city or region level — not precise GPS coordinates)
How you arrived at the app (direct, search, referral)

No personally identifiable information is collected through Google Analytics. Google Analytics 4 anonymises IP addresses by default. Google Analytics sets cookies on your device to distinguish users and sessions (see Section 3.8 for details). Analytics are only enabled if you tick the optional "Allow anonymous usage analytics" checkbox shown when you first open the app — this is separate from the safety disclaimer and is entirely optional. You can withdraw this consent at any time using the "Reset Data" option in the app footer, which clears all stored data including the analytics consent flag. We do not share this data with any third parties beyond Google's own analytics processing. You can learn more about how Google handles this data at policies.google.com/privacy.

3.4 Free Users — No Account Required

Free users are not required to create an account. We do not collect your name or email address. All data is stored locally on your device as described in Section 3.7.

There is one exception, and it is entirely optional and off unless you switch it on: if you enable Weekly Flying Alerts, we store a notification token for your device together with an approximate location, so we can send that one weekly notification. This still involves no account and is not linked to your name or email. See Section 3.11.

3.5 Plus / Pro Subscriptions and Accounts

You do not need an account to subscribe. In the iPhone and iPad app you can buy DroneChecker Plus or Pro without registering and without giving us your name or email address. When you do, we create an anonymous account through Firebase Authentication. It holds a randomly generated user ID (UID) and nothing that identifies you. Your subscription is recorded against that UID, and the UID belongs to that installation of the app — we cannot connect it to your name, your email address, or any other device.

Adding an email address afterwards is optional. We offer it once after a purchase, and it stays available in Settings, for one reason only: so you can use your subscription on your other devices and recover it if you reinstall the app. Declining costs you nothing — every paid feature keeps working. An anonymous account receives no email from us at all, including the welcome and win-back emails described at the end of this section.

If you do register — by signing in with Google or Apple, or with an email address and password — we receive your display name and email address (and, from Google, a profile photo URL). Apple may give you a private relay address that forwards to your real one. If you register with email and password, we collect the email address and password you provide (your password is never stored or seen by us — Firebase Authentication stores it securely as a salted hash). Registering on an anonymous account keeps the same UID, so your subscription carries across unchanged.

An account with an email address is required for one thing only: posting community content (Flying Spots, spot reviews and Planned Flights). Those posts are shown to other pilots, are moderated, and can be reported, so they need an author who can be contacted. Reading community content needs no account beyond an active subscription. See Section 3.6.

The following data is stored in Firebase Firestore (Google Cloud, EU region) and used solely to operate your Plus or Pro subscription:

Name and/or email address — received from Google Sign-In or Sign in with Apple, or provided directly at registration; used to identify your account and pre-fill the Stripe checkout form. Absent entirely on an anonymous account, which has none.
Firebase UID — your unique account identifier, used to associate all data below with your account
Subscription status — whether your subscription is active and which tier (Plus or Pro), plus activation and renewal timestamps
Billing provider and subscription identifiers — depending on how you subscribed, either your Stripe customer and subscription IDs, or (Android app subscribers) your Google Play purchase token, product ID and order ID, or (iPhone and iPad app subscribers) your Apple original transaction ID, product ID and whether the purchase was made in Apple's live or test environment — used to manage and verify your billing (see Section 4). If you change tier or billing period, we also keep a history of your previous Google Play purchase tokens, or of your previous Apple transaction IDs, alongside the current one, solely so a refund can still be correctly matched and processed after a plan change.
Cloud-synced flight log entries — dates, location names, drone model, duration, conditions and notes that you choose to record; synced so you can access them across devices
Saved locations — the names and GPS coordinates of flying spots you save as favourites
Push alert settings — the location, time window, and drone profile you configure for fly-window notifications
FCM device token — a push notification token issued by Firebase Cloud Messaging, used to deliver flight-condition alerts to your device
Custom wind thresholds — any drone wind threshold settings you configure beyond the defaults
How you found us — an optional answer to a one-tap question shown once when your subscription begins, used only to understand which channels bring in subscribers. You can skip it, and it is never shown to other users.

You can export or delete your flight log at any time within the app. To delete your whole account and its data, see Delete your account and data — you can do it yourself in the app, or email us and we will delete your Firestore data within 30 days.

If your account has no active subscription and has not been signed into for 90 days, we delete your account and associated Firestore data as part of our data retention practice.

When your Plus or Pro subscription begins, we send you a one-off welcome email; if your subscription lapses, we send a one-off win-back email. Both are sent via Resend, our transactional email provider, which receives your email address and first name (if known) solely to deliver these messages (see Section 4).

3.6 Community Content (Flying Spots & Planned Flights)

Plus and Pro subscribers can optionally submit Flying Spots, visible to other Plus and Pro subscribers. Pro subscribers can additionally submit Planned Flights, visible only to other Pro subscribers:

Flying Spots — a location write-up (title, conditions, access and legal notes) and up to 3 photos, describing a place you'd recommend for flying. Photos are stored in Firebase Storage. Submissions are reviewed by us before becoming visible to other subscribers. You can also leave a star rating and short comment (a "review") on spots submitted by others.
Planned Flights — an approximate flying area (a circle on the map), a time window, and optionally your drone type and a note, shared so other nearby pilots can see when and where you plan to fly. These are published immediately without review and are automatically deleted approximately 24 hours after the flight's end time. You can cancel your own Planned Flight at any time.

When you submit a Flying Spot, review, or Planned Flight, other subscribers who can see that content see your first name only alongside it — we never display your full name, email address, or account ID to other users. Your submissions are associated with your Firebase UID on our servers for moderation purposes.

If you use the drive-time feature on a Flying Spot, your current GPS coordinates and the spot's coordinates are sent directly from your device to the OSRM routing service (see Section 4) to calculate an estimated driving time. This happens only when you choose to view drive time for a spot.

By default, Flying Spots and reviews are not deleted if you delete your account, since they remain visible and useful to other users — contact us at bbridgewater.dev@gmail.com if you would like a specific submission removed. Alternatively, the account deletion screen in the app offers an optional checkbox to have all of your Flying Spots, reviews and photos permanently deleted immediately as part of that process. Planned Flights are not optional: they are always automatically deleted as part of account deletion, in addition to expiring on their own roughly 24 hours after the flight's end time as described above.

3.7 Device Preferences and Local Data

To improve your experience, the following data is saved locally on your device using browser local storage. None of this data is transmitted to us or any third party:

Drone profile — your selected drone model, used to personalise wind limit thresholds.
Operator ID / Flyer ID renewal dates — the CAA registration expiry dates and reminder lead time you enter, used to show renewal reminders in the app. For Plus and Pro subscribers this is also synced to Firestore (see Section 3.5), which lets us additionally send a push reminder.
Unit preference — whether you have selected metric (km/h, °C) or imperial (mph, °F) units.
Pre-flight checklist state — which checklist items you have ticked, so your progress is preserved between sessions.
Disclaimer acceptance — a flag confirming you have read and accepted the advisory disclaimer, so it is not shown on every visit.
Onboarding state — a flag confirming you have completed the introductory onboarding screens.
App preferences — your chosen display theme (dark or light mode), wind speed unit (km/h, mph, m/s or knots) and temperature unit preference. These are stored locally so your preferences are remembered between sessions.
Favourite locations — location names and GPS coordinates for any flying spots you have saved as favourites. On the free tier this remains on your device only; Plus and Pro subscribers have it synced to their account so it follows them across devices (see Section 3.5).
Flight log entries — if you use the flight logger, your entries (including dates, location names, GPS coordinates, drone model, flight duration, conditions and any notes you add) are stored locally on your device. On the free tier they are never transmitted to us; Plus and Pro subscribers have them synced to their account for backup and cross-device access (see Section 3.5). You can delete them at any time within the app.
Cached weather data — the most recently loaded weather conditions, stored with a timestamp to allow the app to display last known data when offline. This contains weather readings only and no personal information.
KP index cache — the most recently fetched geomagnetic KP index value and 3-day forecast from NOAA, stored with a timestamp to allow accurate fly ratings on next load without waiting for a fresh NOAA data fetch. Contains no personal information and expires after 1 hour.
Last used location — the name and coordinates of the last location you searched for or selected, so the app can reload it on your next visit.
Local alert settings — the location, time window and drone profile you configure for fly-window alerts. For Plus and Pro subscribers this is also a local fallback cache of the alert settings stored in Firestore (see Section 3.5).

You can clear all locally stored data at any time by clearing your browser or app cache, or by using the "Reset Data" option in the app footer, or by uninstalling the app.

3.8 Cookies

DroneChecker itself does not set any first-party cookies. However, Google Analytics 4 — loaded only if you opt in via the optional "Allow anonymous usage analytics" checkbox (see Section 3.3) — sets the following cookies on your device:

_ga — distinguishes unique users. Expires after 2 years.
_ga_<container-id> — used to persist session state. Expires after 2 years.

These are analytics cookies only. We do not use them for retargeting or ad profiling, and no advertising, tracking, or profiling cookies are used at all. You can prevent these cookies from being set by using the "Reset Data" option in the app footer (which withdraws your consent and reloads the app), by using your browser's built-in cookie controls, or by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

3.9 Feedback Submissions

DroneChecker includes an optional in-app feedback form (available to all users, free or paid) for reporting bugs or suggestions. If you choose to send feedback, we store the following in Firebase Firestore (Google Cloud, EU region):

Your message and category (for example, bug report or suggestion)
App version, platform (iOS, Android or Web) and unit preference — to help us reproduce issues
Your current location name and selected drone model, as displayed in the app at the time — to help us understand the context of your report
Your Firebase UID, if you are signed in as a Plus or Pro subscriber. Free users are not required to sign in, so no identifier is attached to their feedback.

Feedback is never shown to other users. To request deletion of your feedback submissions, contact us at bbridgewater.dev@gmail.com, or, if you are deleting your account, tick the relevant checkbox on the account deletion screen to remove them immediately as part of that process.

3.10 Country Detection

When you open the subscription screen, the app makes a request to our own backend (a Firebase Cloud Function) which derives an approximate country from your IP address. This is used only to decide whether to default the subscription screen to Pro or Plus, since Pro's extra features (live NOTAMs and Planned Flights) are UK-specific. Your IP address is not stored or logged by this function, and no data beyond a country code is returned to the app.

3.11 Weekly Flying Alerts (Optional, No Account)

Free users can opt in to a single weekly notification, sent on Friday, naming the best flying window across the coming weekend for their area. This is off by default, and for someone who has never subscribed it is the only feature that stores anything about them on our servers. It requires no account. (A subscriber who bought without registering does have a server-side record, holding only an anonymous user ID and their subscription state — see Section 3.5.)

If you turn it on, we store the following in Firebase Firestore (Google Cloud, europe-west2 / London region):

A push notification token — issued by Firebase Cloud Messaging, identifying your device (not you) so the notification can be delivered
An approximate location — your coordinates rounded to two decimal places, around 1.1 km of precision, which is enough to produce a local forecast but deliberately less precise than your actual position
Your time zone offset and selected drone model — so the alert arrives at a sensible local hour and the flying window is scored against the right wind limits
Timestamps — when the device registered and when it was last sent an alert, used to avoid sending twice

This record is not linked to a name, email address or account, and we do not combine it with anything else. It is used solely to send that one weekly notification.

Turning the feature off deletes the record. Uninstalling the app or disabling notifications also ends it: once a device's token is no longer valid, our weekly job deletes the stored record automatically the next time it tries to send.

3.12 Content Reports and Blocking

Community content in the app — Flying Spots, reviews and Planned Flights — carries a Report option, and you can also block another pilot so their content is hidden from you. Both store data in Firebase Firestore (Google Cloud, EU region).

When you report something, we store:

What was reported — the type of content, its identifier, and the identifier of the account that posted it
The reason you selected, and your optional note
Your Firebase UID, so we can follow up with you if we need to and so the report tool cannot be used anonymously to harass other users
App version and the time of the report

Reports are visible only to us. We do not tell the reported user who reported them. We keep a report after acting on it — including after the content itself is deleted — as a record of what was reviewed and what we decided.

When you block a pilot, we store their account identifier and the display name shown to you at the time against your own account, so the block applies on every device you sign in on. Blocking is one-directional and private: the person you block is not told, and nothing about the block is shown to them. Unblocking, from Settings → Blocked pilots, deletes that entry.

To request deletion of reports you have submitted, contact us at bbridgewater.dev@gmail.com.

3.13 Marketing Page Traffic Sources (Cookie-Free)

Our marketing pages — the homepage, the Drone Guides, Flying Guides and Features pages, the FAQ, and our standalone tools (Checklist, Wind Converter, Drone ID Checker) — are separate from the app itself and are not covered by the Google Analytics described in Section 3.3, since that only runs if you have opted in from inside the app. To understand which channels (for example, search, social media or a direct link) bring visitors to these pages, each one sends a single, anonymous, cookie-free notification to our own backend (a Firebase Cloud Function) when it loads, containing only:

The page path — which page was viewed
The referring website, if your browser supplied one — for example, a search engine or social media platform
A campaign tag (a "utm_source" value), if the link you followed included one

No cookie or other device identifier is set for this, and your IP address is never read or stored by this function. The data is aggregated into a same-day count of visits per source and per page, and individual page loads are not retained or linked to one another. This is used solely to understand which channels bring visitors to the site.

4. Third-Party Services

DroneChecker uses the following third-party services to function. Each has its own privacy policy governing how they handle data. When you use features such as weather, map display or location search, your coordinates or search query may be sent to the relevant service. No personal identifying information is included in these requests.

Service	Purpose	Data shared (Plus/Pro only where noted)	Privacy Policy
Open-Meteo	Live weather, forecast data and town/city geocoding, via our commercial (paid) subscription. Requests are proxied through our own Firebase Cloud Function rather than sent directly from your device, so our API key stays server-side	Your GPS coordinates or search query (passed through our backend, cached there for up to 10 minutes/24 hours respectively, not stored longer-term)	View
Met.no (MET Norway)	Backup weather forecast, used only when Open-Meteo is temporarily unreachable. Requests are proxied through our own Firebase Cloud Function rather than sent directly from your device.	Your GPS coordinates (passed through our backend, not stored)	View
Postcodes.io	UK postcode lookup	Your postcode search query	View
Photon (komoot)	Place and landmark search, used when Open-Meteo’s town and city gazetteer has no match for your query or no UK match. Requests are proxied through our own Firebase Cloud Function rather than sent directly from your device. Photon is built on OpenStreetMap data	Your search query (passed through our backend, cached there for up to 24 hours, not stored longer-term)	View
OpenStreetMap Nominatim	Reverse geocoding (place names from coordinates). Normally called directly from your device; if that call times out, our own backend retries it, forwarding your coordinates to Nominatim server-side instead	Your GPS coordinates	View
OpenFreeMap	Map tile rendering for the Restrictions map and the Wind Detail, Golden Hour, Flying Spots and Planned Flight maps	Map tile requests (no personal data)	View
Rainbow.ai	Plus/Pro only — rain radar map overlay for the Wind Detail tab. Requests are proxied through our own Firebase Cloud Function rather than sent directly from your device	Map tile coordinates only (no personal data; your device never contacts Rainbow.ai directly)	View
NOAA Space Weather	KP geomagnetic index data	No personal data	View
Google Analytics 4	Anonymous usage analytics (only if you opt in)	Anonymous usage data — no personal identifiers	View
Firebase Authentication (anonymous, Google Sign-In, Sign in with Apple, or email/password)	Plus/Pro only — subscription identity, and account identity if you choose to register	For an anonymous account, a randomly generated user ID and nothing else — no name, no email address. If you register: your display name and email address from Google or Apple, a profile photo URL from Google, or the email address and password you register with	View
Firebase Firestore (Google Cloud, EU region)	Plus/Pro subscribers — cloud storage of subscription status, flight log, saved locations, alert settings, and community content (Flying Spots and reviews for Plus/Pro; Planned Flights for Pro only). All users — optional feedback submissions (Section 3.9)	Name, email, UID, subscription metadata, flight log entries, saved locations, push token, alert settings, Flying Spot and Planned Flight submissions; feedback message and app/device context if you choose to submit feedback	View
Firebase Storage (Google Cloud)	Plus/Pro only — stores photos you choose to upload when submitting a Flying Spot	The photo files you upload	View
OSRM (router.project-osrm.org)	Plus/Pro only — calculates estimated driving time to a Flying Spot, only when you tap to view it	Your current GPS coordinates and the spot's coordinates, sent directly from your device	View (community-run public routing service; no dedicated privacy policy is published)
Firebase Cloud Messaging	Plus/Pro only — delivers flight-condition alert and daily conditions summary push notifications to your device	Your FCM device token	View
Stripe	Plus/Pro only — payment processing for DroneChecker Plus and Pro subscriptions on the website	Your email address (pre-filled at checkout); payment data is entered directly on Stripe's servers and never passes through DroneChecker	View
Google Play Billing	Plus/Pro only, Android app subscribers — payment processing for DroneChecker Plus or Pro when subscribed via the Google Play Store app	Your Google account's purchase token; payment data is handled entirely by Google Play and never passes through DroneChecker	View
Apple (App Store & Sign in with Apple)	iPhone and iPad app — payment processing for DroneChecker Plus or Pro when subscribed in the iOS app, and optional Sign in with Apple at registration	Your Apple transaction identifiers, which we verify with Apple's servers to confirm your subscription is genuine and still active; payment data is handled entirely by Apple and never passes through DroneChecker. If you use Sign in with Apple, we receive your name and an email address, which may be a private relay address that forwards to your real one	View
Resend	Plus/Pro only — sends the one-off welcome email when your subscription begins and the win-back email if it lapses (see Section 3.5)	Your email address and first name (if known)	View
Firebase Hosting (Google Cloud)	App hosting and delivery	Standard web server logs (IP address, browser type)	View

5. Local Storage and Offline Mode

DroneChecker uses your device's local storage in two ways:

Service worker cache — app files (HTML, CSS, scripts) are cached locally so the app loads quickly and works offline.
User preferences and data — your drone profile, unit preference, checklist state, favourite locations, flight log entries, and the most recent weather data are stored locally to improve your experience and enable offline use (see Section 3.7).

No personal data is transmitted to DroneChecker's servers. All stored data remains on your device.

6. Children's Privacy

DroneChecker is not directed at children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us at bbridgewater.dev@gmail.com.

7. Your Rights (UK GDPR)

Under UK GDPR, you have the following rights regarding any personal data we hold:

Right of access — to request a copy of any personal data we hold about you.
Right to rectification — to request correction of inaccurate or incomplete personal data.
Right to erasure — to request deletion of your personal data ("right to be forgotten"). See Delete your account and data for how.
Right to restriction of processing — to request that we limit how we use your data in certain circumstances.
Right to data portability — to receive your personal data in a structured, machine-readable format and transfer it to another controller where technically feasible.
Right to object — to object to processing of your personal data where we rely on legitimate interests as our legal basis.
Right to withdraw consent — where processing is based on consent (such as analytics), you may withdraw consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing. Use the "Reset Data" option in the app footer to do this.
Right to lodge a complaint — with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

As DroneChecker does not collect or store personal data on our own servers, most of these rights are satisfied by the nature of the app itself. For analytics data processed by Google, you may also opt out using the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. Any locally stored preferences and flight log data can be cleared using the "Reset Data" option in the app footer, or by clearing your browser or app cache.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at bbridgewater.dev@gmail.com. We will respond within 30 days.

8. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time and will indicate the date of revision at the top of this page. For material changes that affect how your data is processed, we will take reasonable steps to bring these to your attention (for example by displaying a notice within the app). Where such changes require fresh consent, we will seek that consent before the new processing begins. Continued use of the app after non-material changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

9. Contact Us

Email: bbridgewater.dev@gmail.com
Website: dronechecker.co.uk