Privacy policy
Draft of 2026-11-03
Who runs Aetheris
Aetheris is an independent student project — not a company and not a government body. Questions about this policy or about your data: izbanovj3@gmail.com.
There are no accounts
You do not sign up and we do not ask for your name, e-mail or phone number. To let your browser recognise its own reports, it creates a random device identifier and keeps it in its own storage. That identifier is stored with what you submit, but no visitor can read it, and it is not linked to who you are.
When you file a report
The following is stored in the shared database and shown publicly on the site: category, severity, title, description, city, the time of filing, and the map position rounded to about 1 km. Its status (for example, “matches other reports” or “forwarded”) is public too.
Write only what you saw. Please do not put other people’s names, phone numbers, car plates or home addresses into a report — it is public.
The device identifier is stored with the report but is not public.
Photos stay on your device
A photo you add is not uploaded. It is shrunk and re-encoded in your browser — which also removes the metadata a camera writes into the file, including GPS coordinates — and kept only in this browser’s storage, next to your copy of the report. Nobody else sees it, including us.
It is deleted when you delete the report on this device, or when you clear this site’s data in your browser.
Your location
You place the pin yourself; your device may suggest a position if you allow it. Before the report leaves your device the position is rounded to two decimal places — about 1 km — and the database rounds it again, so the exact point is never stored. Even so, a 1 km square can point to a small settlement or a single street: if that matters to you, move the pin.
Events, sign-ups and check-ins
An event’s title, description, meeting place, its pin and start time are public — the organiser chooses them to be found. Sign-ups and check-ins are stored with the device identifier and shown only as counts.
To check in, your device sends its position once; the database uses it to compute the distance to the event and then discards it. Only the distance is kept.
Protection against flooding
To stop one sender flooding the feed with many device identifiers, the database keeps a one-way hash of the network address a submission came from, made with a random key that is replaced every day and deleted when the day ends. Hashes are deleted after 24 hours. The address itself is never stored.
What we pass on
The team may forward a public report — its text, category, city and rounded position — to a local akimat or environmental inspection; the report then shows status ④ and the body it went to. The device identifier is never forwarded. If an organisation replies and agrees to be named, its reply is shown with the report.
Stored in your browser
- the device identifier;
- your own reports and their photos;
- your text-size and theme choices.
Clearing this site’s data in your browser removes all of it. After that the site can no longer recognise your earlier reports as yours, so you will not be able to delete them yourself — write to us instead.
Services the site uses
- Vercel — hosts the site and counts visits and page speed in aggregate (Vercel Web Analytics and Speed Insights);
- Supabase — the database for reports and events;
- Open-Meteo, GBIF and CARTO — your browser requests air-quality data, species records and map tiles from them directly, so, like any website you load, they receive your network address.
Where the Supabase database is physically hosted, and what that means under the law of Kazakhstan, is part of the legal review.
How long data is kept
A fixed retention period for reports and events has not yet been set; until it is, they stay until you or the team delete them. Network-address hashes are kept for 24 hours. This section will change after legal review.
Deleting and asking
On the community page, every report filed from this device has a “Delete” button. A report already forwarded to an organisation (status ④ or ⑤) cannot be deleted from the device, because that would also erase the record of the transfer — write to us and we will remove it.
To ask what is stored about a report, or to have one removed when you no longer have the device: izbanovj3@gmail.com, with a link to the report.