Revision 2026-09-26

Privacy Policy

Who is responsible

Blika is published by an independent developer based in Germany, acting as the data controller in a personal capacity. There is no separate registered company.

For privacy questions, or to exercise any GDPR right — access, correction, deletion, export, objection, or withdrawal of consent — email support@blika.app. This is the primary contact channel for data-protection matters; a postal address can be provided on request.

Location, and where it goes

Blika asks for location only while you are using the app, at kilometre accuracy — the coarsest iOS setting that still identifies which patch of sky you are under. It is used for five things:

• To look up the aurora probability at your 1°×1° grid cell.
• To ask for the cloud cover above you.
• To compute the sun's elevation and the moon's phase where you are standing.
• To show the name of the place you are in, under tonight's verdict.
• When cloud is what rules out the aurora, to look for clear sky nearby.

Three of those five leave the device. They are:

• The cloud forecast. Your coordinates are sent to Open-Meteo, rounded to four decimal places, along with nothing else — no identifier, no account, no device information.
• The place name. Blika asks iOS to turn your coordinates into a place name, and iOS does that by sending them to Apple's geocoding service. This happens on every location fix. It is an Apple system service, so the request is made by iOS rather than by us, and we never see the result of it leaving — only the name that comes back.
• Clear sky nearby. Only when cloud is what decides the verdict, and at most once an hour for a place: Blika sends Open-Meteo the coordinates of 32 points on rings 25 to 140 km around you, rounded to three decimal places, in the same kind of request as the cloud forecast. For the clearest three it then asks Apple, through iOS, to name the place and to work out the drive there from where you are. Directions open in Apple Maps only when you tap for them.

The aurora data does not carry your location. NOAA's OVATION file is the entire global grid, and Blika downloads all of it and finds your cell on the device. NOAA is never told where you are. The same is true of the Kp index and the solar wind readings, which are global figures with no location in the request at all.

Sun elevation and moon illumination are computed on your iPhone from your coordinates and the clock, with no network request. Tonight's window and the three-night outlook are computed on the device too, but from the Open-Meteo cloud forecast described above — the arithmetic is local, the data behind it is not.

As with any request over the internet, the services above also see the IP address your connection comes from, which is itself personal data and gives a rough idea of where you are. We cannot prevent that; nobody can. It is the floor for any app that fetches anything.

Declining location is supported, not broken: Blika will say “Location off” and point you at Settings. It cannot produce a verdict without knowing where you are, so the app will wait rather than guess.

What stays on your device

• Which dashboard cards you have enabled, and the order you put them in.
• Whether you have seen the introduction.
• Whether you have bought the unlock.
• The system's ordinary network cache, which iOS keeps for recent responses. That includes the cloud-forecast request, and that request has your coordinates in its address.

The first three live in the app's own preferences on the iPhone. Deleting the app deletes all of it, cache included. There is nothing for us to delete on our side, because there is nowhere for it to be.

What Blika does not do

• No account, no sign-in, no email address collected — ever, for anything.
• No crash reporting, no advertising identifier, and no analytics you cannot switch off. Blika has two third-party SDKs: RevenueCat, which checks whether you bought the unlock, and Mixpanel, which counts what the app does — never where you are.
• No advertising, no advertising identifier, no tracking across apps or websites. Nothing in Blika requires App Tracking Transparency permission, because there is nothing to ask about.
• No profiling, no automated decision-making about you, and no data sold or shared with anyone.
• No push notifications and no push token. Blika's alerts are local: iOS wakes the app, the app checks the sky itself, and the notification is written on your iPhone.
• No location history. Blika keeps the current fix in memory and does not write a trail of where you have been.

Usage

Blika counts what it does so its maker can tell which parts earn their place — which verdict was shown, which of the eight cards you keep, whether the paywall was opened. It is sent to Mixpanel, on their European servers, with no account behind it. Each installation is counted under two random identifiers, one made by the app and one by Mixpanel's library, and the app's carries a small profile: the app version and platform, plus the device model, screen size, iOS version and whether it is on Wi-Fi, which the library adds. Neither identifier is tied to who you are, because Blika has never asked, and both are replaced when you turn analytics off or delete the app.

It is never told your coordinates, the name of a place you saved, or which language you read the app in, and Mixpanel's IP-based location lookup is switched off. Nothing is shared with an advertiser or a data broker, so no App Tracking Transparency prompt is owed. Settings → Analytics turns it off, and turning it off stops the queue, discards it and deletes this installation's profile from Mixpanel.

The purchase

The one-time unlock is bought through the App Store. Apple handles the payment, and Blika never sees a card number, a name or an email address.

Whether you own it is checked through RevenueCat, the one third-party SDK in the app. It creates a random identifier for your installation, keeps it on your device, and sends it to RevenueCat together with the App Store receipt and your app and iOS version. It is never given your coordinates, your name or an email address, that identifier is not tied to who you are, and none of it is used for advertising or tracking. Ownership is also remembered on the device, so the app opens unlocked without a network.

Who processes data

Who	What for	Policy
Open-Meteo	Hourly cloud cover. Receives your coordinates, rounded to four decimal places — and, when cloud rules out the aurora, the coordinates of points around you to find clear sky nearby — and nothing else: no identifier, no account, no device information	Open-Meteo privacy policy (opens Open-Meteo's own site)
Apple	Three things: the place name shown under tonight's verdict, which iOS resolves by sending your coordinates to Apple; for clear sky nearby, the names of spots around you and the drive to them from where you are; and the one-time purchase, where Blika never sees a payment detail	Apple privacy policy (opens Apple's own site)
RevenueCat	Checks whether you own the one-time unlock. Receives a random identifier for your installation, the App Store receipt, and your app and iOS version — never your coordinates, your name or an email address	RevenueCat privacy policy (opens RevenueCat's own site)
Mixpanel	Anonymous product analytics on the app's European servers: which verdict was shown, which cards you keep, whether you bought, counted under a random install identifier with a small profile (app version, platform, device model, iOS version). Receives no coordinates, no place name and no identifier you could be found by, and IP-based geolocation is switched off. Turn it off in Settings	Mixpanel privacy policy (opens Mixpanel's own site)
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center	Aurora probability, Kp index and solar wind. Receives no location at all: the global grid is downloaded whole and read on your iPhone	NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center privacy policy (opens NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center's own site)

That is the complete list. It is short because the app is.

Where the data goes

NOAA is a United States federal agency and Open-Meteo is operated from Germany; Apple processes geocoding requests on infrastructure that includes the United States. So some of the transfers described above leave the European Economic Area.

For the NOAA feeds this carries no personal data at all — nothing about you is in those requests beyond the unavoidable IP address. For the place-name lookup, Apple's own international transfer safeguards apply, and they are described in its policy linked above. We have no contract with NOAA or Open-Meteo, because we are simply a client of two public endpoints, in the way any web browser is.

Legal basis and retention

Under the GDPR, location is processed on the basis of your consent, given through the iOS permission prompt and withdrawable at any moment in Settings without giving a reason. Withdrawing it stops both transfers described above immediately; the app keeps working and simply stops being able to answer.

Blika retains nothing, because Blika receives nothing: there is no server, no database and no log under our control. Requests are made when you open or refresh the app, and the answer is used and discarded.

Your rights

You have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict and object to the processing of your personal data, the right to data portability, and the right to withdraw consent at any time — which for this app is the Location Services switch in iOS Settings. Withdrawal does not affect anything already done while consent was in place.

In practice there is very little for us to act on, because we hold nothing about you: the honest answer to an access request is a copy of this page. Deleting the app removes everything stored on the device. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority in the country where you live or work.

Children

Blika is not directed at children and collects nothing that would identify anyone of any age. Where local law sets an age below which a parent must consent to online services — 16 in Germany, and between 13 and 16 elsewhere in the EU — a user under that age should have a parent's agreement before granting location access.

Changes

If Blika ever starts doing something this page does not describe — push alerts and saved locations are both on the roadmap — this page changes first, and the revision date at the top changes with it.

Questions: support@blika.app.