Privacy Policy

Overview

Roots Weather Project (“we”, “our”, “the site”) is an open-source tool for generating timelapse videos from publicly available NOAA GOES satellite imagery. This policy describes what data we collect, why, and how it is used.

We do not sell your data. We do not run advertising. We do not share your information with third parties except as described below.

Data We Collect

Account information (optional)

If you sign in using GitHub or Google OAuth, we receive and store your name, email address, and OAuth account identifiers. Sign-in is optional — the site can be used without an account with reduced limits.

Job history

When you create a timelapse video, we store the job parameters (satellite, region, time window, resolution) and status. This is used to serve your video and enforce per-account usage limits. Videos are stored temporarily and expire automatically.

IP address

IP addresses are used for anonymous rate limiting (unauthenticated users) and for deduplicating page view counts. They are not logged persistently or linked to identities.

Page views

We count page views per path to understand which features are being used. No cookies are used for this. No cross-site tracking occurs. Counts are aggregated and anonymous.

What We Do Not Collect

• We do not use advertising cookies or third-party trackers
• We do not store OAuth tokens or passwords
• We do not collect payment information
• We do not build behavioral profiles or sell data

Third-Party Services

• GitHub / Google OAuth — used only for authentication. We receive basic profile data (name, email) as permitted by the OAuth scope. Their privacy policies apply to the sign-in flow.
• NOAA/NESDIS — satellite imagery is fetched from NOAA's public CDN. No user data is transmitted to NOAA.
• Cloudflare — used for DNS, TLS termination, and DDoS protection. Cloudflare may log request metadata per their own privacy policy.

Data Retention & Deletion

Account data is retained for as long as your account is active. You may permanently delete your account and all associated data at any time from your account settings. Generated videos expire automatically after a short period.

Contact

If you have questions about this policy or your data, contact us at [email protected].

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy as the service evolves. Material changes will be noted by updating the date above. Continued use of the site after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.