Seismograph

What the app stores

Your settings, your location rounded to about 1 kilometre, your last 50 detections, and a minute-by-minute log of how much the phone shook over the last 14 hours.

Monitoring

Monitoring is off until you turn it on. When it's on, Seismograph listens to the motion sensor in the background and shows a notification while it does. By default it only listens while the phone is charging; you can let it listen on battery too.

Your location

Seismograph asks for your approximate location once, when you turn monitoring on, or when you tap "Update". It rounds it to about 1 kilometre and saves it.

It never uses location in the background, and doesn't update it unless you tap "Update".

The Seismograph network

When the app starts, it signs in to Google Firebase anonymously, with a random ID and no name or email, so it can show confirmed earthquakes.

If monitoring is on and "Share detections" is on (it is by default), the app uploads two things to Seismograph's database on Google Firebase. First, a status every 10 minutes while listening, with your rounded location and whether the phone is listening. Second, a record of each shake it detects: the time, the shaking measurements and your rounded location.

These records are linked by the random ID, so together they can show roughly where the phone is and when it's charging and listening. Other users can't read them. People only see confirmed earthquakes: their time, approximate area and how many phones felt them.

Permissions

Approximate location: for your rounded location, only when you set it.

Notifications, running in the background and starting after a restart: to listen while monitoring is on.

Internet: for the Seismograph network.

Sharing

Seismograph doesn't sell your data or share it with anyone. Google Firebase stores it for Seismograph.

Deleting your data

"Clear detection history" deletes the detections and shaking log on your phone. Uninstalling the app deletes everything on your phone.

Turn off "Share detections" to stop uploading. Records already uploaded are kept with no set expiry, and the app can't delete them yet. They're linked only to the random ID, not to your name or account.

Children

Seismograph isn't aimed at children.

Phone backups

If you've turned on backup to your Google account in Android's settings, Android may include Seismograph's saved data in that backup. The backup belongs to your Google account and isn't sent to me.

Changes to this policy

If the app starts handling data differently, this page will be updated before that version is released, and the date above will change.

Contact

Seismograph is made by Kidus Yohannes. Questions about this policy or your data: kidyoh789@gmail.com.