Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 2026

Earth Explorer is a free, educational tool that shows real-time natural events on an interactive globe. We keep things simple — and so does this policy.

What we collect

We use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to understand how many people visit the site and which features are used. GA4 sets a small cookie in your browser to do this.

The information collected includes:

• Pages visited and time spent
• General location (country/city — not your precise address)
• Device type and browser

We do not collect your name, email address, or any information that identifies you personally.

Why we collect it

Knowing roughly how many people use Earth Explorer helps us keep the site running and decide what to improve.

Your location ("What's near me?")

The 📍 What's near me? button shows the natural events closest to you. Nothing happens until you press it.

• When you press it, our host (Vercel) makes a rough guess at your town from your internet connection and shows it to you to check. It is often wrong, for example at school, so you can tap the globe or type your town instead. We never ask for your exact GPS location.
• Your place is rounded to about 11 km (7 miles) and saved only in your own browser. It is not sent to us, stored on our servers, or shared with Google Analytics.
• Distances to events are worked out in your browser.
• To turn a tap on the globe or a town name into a place name, the site asks OpenStreetMap (see below).
• Your place only appears on the page after you press the button, on every visit.
• Press Forget my place at any time to delete it.

Cookies

GA4 uses cookies — small text files stored in your browser. They expire after 2 years or when you clear your browser data.

You can opt out of analytics tracking any time by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, or by blocking cookies in your browser settings.

Third-party services

• NASA EONET — provides the natural event data displayed on the globe. No personal data is sent to NASA.
• Google Analytics — processes anonymised usage data on Google's servers. See Google's privacy policy.
• OpenStreetMap Nominatim — turns map positions into place names, for the "Where" line on an event and for "What's near me?". It receives the position being looked up, and, like any website, your IP address. See the OpenStreetMap Foundation privacy policy.

Your rights

If you're in the UK or EU, you have the right to ask what data is held about you, request it be deleted, or withdraw your consent to analytics cookies at any time.

Contact

Any questions? Email us at info@earth-explorer.org.