Privacy Policy

Last updated 21 October 2026. Carat International LLC.

The short version

Restless Planet has no accounts and no ads, and it does not track you. Most of what you do stays on your phone. We keep information from you in only two cases, and you choose both: when you turn on an alert, and when you report a post.

What stays on your phone

The hazards you filter, where you move the globe, the posts you read, the accounts you block, and your trial and purchase status. None of this is sent to us.

Alerts

If you follow something and allow notifications, the app sends us:

• the push address Apple gives your copy of the app (a device token);
• the list of things you follow;
• the place each one is about.

If you turn on "The Station passes over me", the app also sends your location, so we can work out when the Space Station passes over you. The app asks for your location when you turn that on. On iPad it also asks if you sort events by distance, and that location stays on your iPad. We use the location you send us for nothing else. Apple's push notification service delivers the alerts.

We keep this while the alert is on. Turning an alert off removes it and its location from our server. If you turn off notifications for Restless Planet, the app removes your device token and everything you follow from our server the next time it opens. If you delete the app, we remove them once Apple tells us the app is gone. If the app has not been opened for a year, we remove its device token and everything it follows. We keep a record of which alerts were sent to each device token, so nobody gets the same alert twice, and we delete that record after 30 days.

Reports

If you report a post, the app sends us:

• the post's link and id;
• the author's handle;
• the first 80 characters of the post;
• the reason you chose;
• a random number made by your copy of the app.

That number is not an account and contains nothing about you or your device. We use it only to count how many different people reported a post, and to stop one copy of the app from sending floods of reports. Deleting and reinstalling the app makes a new one.

Open reports are kept until we decide them. Reports we reject are deleted 90 days after the decision. When we hide a post or block an account, we keep the report and the decision as a record.

Hidden posts and blocked accounts go on a public list that every copy of the app downloads. That list holds post ids and handles, never anything about who reported them.

Purchases

Apple handles the $5.99 unlock, and the app checks it on your phone. The 7 day trial is counted on your phone too. We never receive your Apple ID, payment details or purchase history.

Your IP address

Like any internet request, requests to our server and to the organisations below carry your device's IP address. We do not save it with anything you send us. Cloudflare, which runs our server, keeps short-lived technical logs of the requests it handles, for up to 7 days, and they can include it. To stop floods, Cloudflare also counts the reports and alert registrations sent from each IP address or IPv6 network over one minute, and we never keep those counts.

Companies that handle data for us

Cloudflare runs our server and database. It acts only on our instructions and protects data at least as well as this policy requires.

Apple delivers alerts through its push notification service. Apple also sells the unlock and handles payment and refunds under its own privacy policy.

What your phone fetches directly

Your phone fetches maps, hazards, news and posts straight from the organisations that publish them. Those requests carry no account and no identifier from us. Like opening any website, they show your IP address to that organisation. Each organisation has its own privacy policy.

• Maps and imagery: NASA GIBS, EOX and RainViewer. Borders, country names and cities come from OpenStreetMap contributors, through EOX.
• Hazards: NASA EONET, the United States Geological Survey, NOAA (including the National Hurricane Center and the Space Weather Prediction Center), the US National Weather Service, GDACS, the Japan Meteorological Agency, the US Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center, the World Health Organization and Esri ArcGIS.
• Space: WhereTheISS.at.
• Camera images: ALERTCalifornia.
• News: VOA, UN News, Al Jazeera, DW, France 24, NPR and ReliefWeb.
• Social: Mastodon (mastodon.social), Bluesky and Lemmy (lemmy.world).

Some things come through our server instead: conflict and unrest events, asteroids, solar activity, airport delays and tsunami alerts, wind and ocean currents, and the list of cameras near an event. Opening an event can send us that event's location so we can look for nearby cameras. We do not store it, apart from the short-lived Cloudflare logs described above.

What we do not collect

We do not collect accounts, names, email addresses, contacts, photos, advertising identifiers, analytics or third-party trackers. We do not sell or share personal information, and we have not done so in the past twelve months.

Your choices

• Turn off any alert in the app to remove it and its location from our server.
• Turning off notifications or deleting the app removes your device token, as described above.
• To remove a report you filed, write to us with the post and roughly when you reported it, and we will find it and delete it. A post we have already hidden, or an account we have already blocked, stays hidden or blocked.

Because there is no account, we cannot look you up by name or email.

Children

Restless Planet is meant for people aged 13 and over, not for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from them. If you think a child has turned on a location alert, turning it off or deleting the app removes what we hold. Write to us if you need help.

If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom

Carat International LLC is the controller.

• We use alert data to provide the alerts you ask for.
• We use your location only with the permission you give in iOS. You can withdraw it at any time by turning the alert off.
• We handle reports because we have a legitimate interest in keeping the app safe.

You can ask us for access, correction or deletion, or object to our use of your data. You can also complain to your local data protection authority. Data is processed in the United States.

Changes

We update this policy before any change in what the app collects ships. The date at the top shows the version in force.

Contact

Carat International LLC, support@caratinternational.net