Orbital Traffic is a satellite and near-Earth-object tracker. This page explains what data the app uses, what it doesn't, and where anything that does get sent leaves your device.
The app first asks for your device location when you tap the locate button (the arrow on the globe), Your sky, or When can I see it? on a Starlink train's or the International Space Station's card. It never shows that request on its own. Once you've allowed it, and while the app is remembering a location (below), it also refreshes that location quietly when you open the app or come back to it, so the marker on the globe and the times the train or the station will pass over follow you when you travel. It never reads your location in the background, while the app isn't on your screen. Your coordinates are used entirely on your own device, to mark where you are on the globe, to work out which tracked objects are above your local horizon, or when the train or the station will be visible from where you are — the calculation runs in the app itself, not on a server. Your location is never transmitted to us or to anyone else.
The app remembers the last location it read, so it can mark where you are on the globe the next time you open it, and so it can show, worked out on your device from that location, which good pass of the space station you missed while you were away. It keeps one location only, rounded to about a kilometre, together with the time it was read; each new reading replaces it. It is stored only on your own device, in this app's local storage, and is never transmitted anywhere. You can see it and delete it at any time in Settings → Privacy & Permissions (Forget my location). Once forgotten, the app stops refreshing it and waits until you next tap one of the features above. Clearing the app's data, or deleting the app, also removes it.
If you decline the permission, the app remembers that you declined, so it doesn't prompt you repeatedly. You can clear that in Settings → Privacy & Permissions.
When the app remembers a location, it can let you know shortly before the International Space Station or a Starlink train goes over you: about ten minutes before a good pass, and for a train also about two hours before. The passes are worked out on your device from the location it remembers (above) and handed to iOS as notifications scheduled on the phone itself. No server is involved, and nothing about you or your location is sent anywhere.
The first alerts arrive quietly, in Notification Center only, using iOS's own provisional permission. Each one has iOS's Keep and Turn Off buttons. The app asks iOS to let alerts make a sound only when you tap a bell on a pass or Turn on sound alerts. You can switch pass alerts off in the app's Settings → Display (Pass alerts), and change or stop all of its notifications at any time in your iPhone's Settings → Notifications → Orbital Traffic. Forgetting your location also cancels any alerts waiting to go off. The website version doesn't send notifications.
If you save an object to your favourites or your watchlist, those lists are stored only on your own device, in this app's local storage. They are never transmitted anywhere — not to us, not to anyone else — and there is no account or sync behind them, so they exist nowhere but on your device. Clearing the app's data, or deleting the app, removes them.
So the search box can offer them again, the app remembers the last few objects you opened from search — their catalogue numbers, nothing else. They are stored only on your own device, in this app's local storage, and are never transmitted anywhere. "Clear" beside the list in the search box forgets them; clearing the app's data, or deleting the app, removes them too.
So it can tell you what changed in orbit while you were away, the app remembers when you last had it open — a single date and time, nothing about what you looked at. It is stored only on your own device, in this app's local storage, and is never transmitted anywhere. The summary itself is worked out on your device from the same public event feed everyone receives. You can turn the summary off in Settings → Display; clearing the app's data, or deleting the app, removes the stored time.
In the same way, so it can mark what's new in Today in Space, the app remembers when you last opened it — again a single date and time, stored only on your own device and never transmitted anywhere.
About one in seven of the objects in the app has a hand-written profile. To choose which ones to write next, the app sends two things to the app's backend, and nothing else about how you use it:
49271, a piece of a rocket stage).Nothing is sent with them: no account, device or advertising identifier, no location, and nothing else you've searched for or looked at. Each is sent at most once each time you use the app. The backend keeps only a count of how many times each search or object came up on each day. It doesn't record who or which device sent it, or the time beyond the day, and counts older than six months are deleted. They are used only to decide which write-ups to add, and are never sold or shared. You can turn this off in Settings → Privacy & Permissions (Help choose new write-ups); with it off, nothing is sent.
These are services the app fetches public orbital/space data from. None of them receive any information that identifies you, with three exceptions. First, if the app's backend is ever temporarily unreachable, the app falls back to fetching data directly from CelesTrak from your own device, in which case CelesTrak sees your device's IP address for that request. This fallback is rare — in normal operation, every such request is proxied through the app's backend and CelesTrak never sees your device directly. Second, photos — astronaut portraits on the crew card and launch photos on the launch card — are loaded by your device directly from The Space Devs' image server, which sees your device's IP address when a photo loads, as any web server does. No other information is sent with those requests. Third, the iOS app asks Apple's App Store, from your device, what the app's latest version is, so it can tell you when an update is out. That request carries only the app's own App Store ID; Apple sees your device's IP address, as it does for any App Store request.
The app's backend runs on Cloudflare, which, like any web infrastructure provider, processes standard connection metadata (such as IP address) as a normal part of serving requests. Orbital Traffic's own code does not read, log, or use this information — though Cloudflare's platform-level request logging, enabled for operational debugging, does make this connection metadata visible to the app's operator via the Cloudflare dashboard, separately from anything the app itself does.
Orbital positions are computed on your own device from cached and periodically refreshed public orbital element data. This data is accurate as of each refresh, and is provided for informational purposes only, not for navigation or operational use.
If what the app collects changes, this page will be updated and the "last updated" date above will change accordingly.
Orbital Traffic™ is a trademark of Ian Lewis.
Questions about this policy: orbitaltraffic@outlook.com