Privacy Policy

1. Information we collect

• Account information. When you sign in, we collect your email address and, if you set one, a display name. Sign-in is passwordless (a one-time link or code sent to your email).
• Your preferences. Your favorite resorts and alert settings, so they sync across your devices.
• Community conditions reports. The reports, ratings, notes, and photos you submit. Photos are compressed in your browser before upload, which strips embedded location (EXIF) data.
• Interactions. Forecast-accuracy votes and "helpful" marks on conditions reports (see Technical data below for how we prevent duplicates).
• Payment information. If you subscribe to SnowBrains Premium, our payment processor (Stripe) collects and processes your payment details. We do not receive or store your full card number.
• Email subscriptions. If you sign up for powder or report alerts, we store your email address and the resorts you follow.
• Phone app and push alerts. If you use the SnowBrains Weather app for Android or iPhone and turn on push alerts, we store a notification address for your phone (a random token issued by Google or Apple), a random ID for that app install, and the resorts, snow amount and units you chose. It isn't linked to your email or account. Turning push alerts off deletes it, and we delete it when Google or Apple tells us the phone no longer accepts notifications, or when the app hasn’t been opened for 120 days. The home-screen widget (Android and iPhone) sends only the names of your favorite resorts, to fetch their forecast. The map's "locate me" button uses your phone's precise location on the phone only, to center the map; it is never sent to us.
• Technical data. When you use the Service, our hosting provider (Netlify) automatically receives and logs your IP address, device and browser type, and the pages requested. We use this to operate and secure the Service, including rate limiting to prevent abuse. For forecast-accuracy votes and "helpful" marks, we store a keyed one-way hash of your IP address rather than the address itself, to prevent duplicate votes.

2. How we use your information

We use your information to provide and improve the Service: to sign you in, sync your favorites, publish and moderate conditions reports, send the alerts you request, process Premium subscriptions, prevent abuse and duplicate voting, and keep the Service secure.

We never sell or share your email address.

3. Service providers we share with

We share limited information with trusted providers who process it only to perform services for us:

• Supabase: account authentication and storage of your profile, favorites, and reports.
• Stripe: payment processing for SnowBrains Premium.
• Resend: delivery of alert and confirmation emails.
• Netlify: website hosting and storage.
• Google Firebase Cloud Messaging and Apple Push Notification service: delivering push alerts to the phone app (the notification address and the alert text).
• Google AdSense: serving non-personalized ads on the free version of the website, once ads appear (see section 4).
• Google Analytics: counting visits and understanding how the Service is used (pages viewed, approximate location, device and browser type). We do not send it your name, email address or account details (see section 4).
• Anthropic (Claude): automated screening of submitted conditions reports for spam and abuse before a person reviews them. We send the report's text, resort, ratings and tags, and the display name shown on it, never your email address or photos. Anthropic processes this data on our behalf under its commercial terms. Every report is reviewed by a person before it is posted, and photos from rejected reports are deleted.

Our forecast and snow data come from public and licensed sources, including the U.S. National Weather Service and NOAA Climate Prediction Center, Environment Canada, NRCS SNOTEL, Open-Meteo, and resort-reported conditions from SnoCountry and MtnPowder. We do not send your personal information to those sources.

To show the site, your browser also loads some content directly from other services, which, like any website, receive your IP address and basic browser information when it does: Google's favicon service (resort icons), Open-Meteo and the weather agencies above (forecast data), jsDelivr, unpkg and cdnjs (open-source code libraries), Stadia Maps and OpenTopoMap (map tiles), Esri ArcGIS (snowpack map data), SnowBrains.com and WordPress.com’s image service (SnowBrains articles and photos), and YouTube and resort webcam providers (live cams you choose to view). We don't send them your account details.

4. Cookies and local storage

The Service uses your browser's local storage and similar technologies to keep you signed in, remember your preferences and favorites, and cache data so pages load quickly.

Advertising. The free version of the SnowBrains Weather website may show ads served by Google AdSense. Every ad we request is non-personalized: it is not based on your interests or your activity on other sites. Google may still use cookies or similar technologies to limit how often an ad is shown, to report on ads in aggregate and to prevent fraud; learn more at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites. Visitors in the EU/EEA, the UK and Switzerland see Google’s consent message first, where you can consent, decline or choose purposes; you can change that choice at any time. We do not sell your personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. SnowBrains Premium members see no ads, the SnowBrains Weather apps show no ads, and advertising features in Google Analytics are turned off everywhere.

Analytics. We use Google Analytics on the website and in the apps to understand how many people use the Service and which features help them. For most visitors it uses cookies to tell visits apart, and it receives pages viewed, device and browser type, and an approximate location derived from your IP address. It does not receive your name, email address or account details, and its advertising features are turned off. Visitors we detect as being in Canada get no analytics cookies; Google Analytics receives only cookieless measurements that do not link your visits together. Visitors we detect as being in the EU/EEA, the UK or Switzerland are not measured by Google Analytics at all. You can opt out of Google Analytics on every site with Google's browser add-on at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

5. Data retention

We keep information only as long as needed:

• Account information and favorites: until you delete your account.
• Email alert subscriptions: until you unsubscribe or delete your account.
• Push alert data: until you turn alerts off, the device stops accepting notifications, or the app has not been opened for 120 days.
• Conditions reports: photos from rejected reports are deleted after moderation; pending reports and their photos are deleted when you delete your account. Approved reports remain public as part of the community record, de-identified from your account when you delete it.
• Premium records: your membership status, until you delete your account (deleting it cancels the membership); billing records held by Stripe and us as tax and accounting law requires, typically seven years.
• Server logs: kept by Netlify for a limited period under its standard retention.
• Vote and "helpful" records: the counts and the hashed device keys are kept while the related resort or report is on the Service. They are not linked to your account or email.

6. Your choices and rights

You can update your display name and favorites in your account, unsubscribe from alert emails using the link in any alert, and manage or cancel your Premium subscription through the billing portal. You can delete your account at any time on the Your account page in the website or apps, or at snowbrainsweather.com/account. If you have an active Premium membership, deleting your account cancels it immediately; billing records we must keep for legal reasons are retained as described in Data retention. You may also request access to or deletion of your personal information at any time by emailing contact@snowbrains.com.

California and other US state residents. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA) and similar laws in other states (such as Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas and Oregon), you have the right to know what personal information we collect and how we use it, to request access to or a copy of it, to request correction or deletion, and to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information and of targeted advertising. In the past 12 months we collected these categories of personal information: identifiers (email address, display name, account ID, IP address, push notification token); commercial information (Premium membership status); internet activity (pages viewed, votes and other interactions with the Service); approximate location derived from your IP address; and content you submit (conditions reports and photos). We collect it from you, from your device, and from our service providers, for the purposes described in section 2, and we disclose it only to the service providers in section 3 for those purposes. We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we do not use sensitive personal information to infer characteristics about you. We honor Global Privacy Control signals as an opt-out request; browser Do Not Track signals do not otherwise change how the Service operates. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights. To make a request, email contact@snowbrains.com; we may need to verify your identity before responding.

7. Where we process your information

SnowBrains LLC is based in the United States, and the providers we use to operate the Service store and process information in the United States.

8. Canada, Quebec and international users

If you are in Canada, your information is processed in the United States by us and our service providers, and may be accessible to courts, law enforcement and national security authorities there. Miles Clark, CEO of SnowBrains LLC, is responsible for the protection of personal information and can be reached at contact@snowbrains.com. You may request access to or correction of your information, withdraw consent, or, in Quebec, request that we stop disseminating your information.

If you are in the EU/EEA, UK or Switzerland, we process your information to provide the Service you request (contract) and for security and abuse prevention (legitimate interests); we do not use Google Analytics for visitors we detect in those regions. You have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, object to and port your data, and to complain to your local data protection authority.

9. Children

The Service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has provided us information, please contact us and we will delete it.

10. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date above and post the changes here.

12. Contact

Questions or privacy requests? Email us at contact@snowbrains.com.