Privacy Policy

Effective date: upon first public release.

WildFire-Ready is a free, ad-free wildfire preparedness app for British Columbia and Alberta. We built it to help you stay informed during wildfire season — not to collect data about you. This policy is the honest, complete description of what the app does with information.

Summary

• We never sell your data.
• We don't track you across other apps or the web.
• Your preferences, checklist progress, and saved locations stay on your device.
• The only data that leaves your phone is a push-notification token and a Firebase anonymous user ID so we can send you the alerts you opted into, plus crash reports when something goes wrong.

What we collect and why

On your device only (never sent)

• Your saved locations and preferences. Name, latitude, longitude, alert thresholds. Stored locally in app storage. Cleared when you uninstall.
• Your checklist progress and Home Ignition Zone answers. Stored locally. Cleared when you uninstall or tap Reset.
• Your precise location (only when you grant the "while using the app" permission). Used to center the map and to calculate distance from your saved locations for alerts. The coordinates are never sent to our servers.

Transmitted to our servers

• Expo push notification token — a string from Apple / Google that lets us deliver push notifications to your device. We associate it with a Firebase anonymous user ID so we know where to send alerts for your saved locations.
• Firebase anonymous user ID — a random string that identifies this install of the app. It is not linked to your name, email, phone number, or any account. If you uninstall or sign out, it is discarded.

Diagnostic data (Sentry)

If the app crashes or hits an error, we send a stack trace to Sentry so we can diagnose and fix the issue. Sentry reports are scrubbed of IP address and do not include your saved locations or checklist content.

What we do NOT collect

• No name, email, phone number, address, or account credentials
• No contacts, photos, microphone, or camera access
• No advertising identifiers or cross-app tracking
• No health or financial information
• No browsing or search history

Third-party services

• Firebase (Google) — authentication, Firestore database, push notification routing. Google's privacy terms apply to Firebase.
• Railway — hosts our backend API. Railway's privacy terms apply to infrastructure logs (request timestamps, IP addresses, standard web server logs).
• Sentry — crash reporting. Sentry's privacy terms apply to error reports.
• Expo — mobile application framework and push notification service. Expo's privacy terms apply to push token delivery.
• Mapbox — geocoding service for the on-screen location picker. See "Map-based location picker" below.

Map-based location picker. When you use the on-screen map to select a location (home, cabin, etc.), your typed search queries and the map's center coordinates are sent to Mapbox, a third-party geocoding service, which returns human-readable place names. These queries are not associated with your account and are not stored by WildFire-Ready. See Mapbox's privacy policy at mapbox.com/legal/privacy for details.

We do not share your data with advertisers, data brokers, or any other third party.

Data sources shown in the app

The information on the map and alert screens comes from public, official sources — BC Wildfire Service, Alberta Wildfire, NASA FIRMS, DriveBC, 511 Alberta, and Environment and Climate Change Canada. We simply display this public data. WildFire-Ready is not operated by any of these agencies.

Your choices

• Opt out of push notifications. Turn off notifications in Profile → Notifications, or at the device level in Settings.
• Remove a saved location. Profile → Saved locations → swipe to delete or tap Edit → Remove.
• Delete all app data. Uninstall the app. Everything on the device is erased. To also have us delete your server-side push token, email the support address below.

Data deletion requests

Email team@wildfire-ready.ca with the subject "Data deletion request". Within 30 days we delete your push token and Firebase user record. Since we have no other data, that is everything we hold.

Children

WildFire-Ready is rated 4+ (Apple) / Everyone (Google). We do not knowingly collect information from children. The app has no user accounts, no messaging, no social features.

Security

All traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted over HTTPS. Your push token and Firebase user ID are the only user-linked data on our servers, and they are not sellable or useful on their own.

Changes

Any material change to this policy will be announced in the app before it takes effect, and the effective date above will be updated.

Contact

Developer: Jeff Parr, based in Western Canada.
Email: team@wildfire-ready.ca

WildFire-Ready is a companion to official emergency services. In an emergency, call 911 and follow the instructions of local authorities.