Cookie policy
This site sets no cookies of its own and runs no advertising or cross-site tracking scripts. Your browser's local storage holds the theme you chose, which cameras you have opened, the places you have marked as visited β on a camera or typed into the Journey page β the code for the encrypted copy of those places, if you asked for one, whether you have waved away the offer to add the map to your home screen and the count that decides when to make it, and β if you have used the Jet Lag Planner β the last few plans it made, so they can be opened again without a connection. Your language is not among them: it is the address you are reading, not a setting. None of it leaves your device.
We count visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, so we can tell whether anyone is finding the site. It stores nothing in your browser β no cookies, no local storage, no identifier β does not fingerprint your device, and cannot follow you to any other site. What it records is the page, the referring site, and coarse details like country and browser. There is no way for us, or for Cloudflare, to single you out or to recognise you on a later visit.
We also keep daily totals of how the site is used β how often Random Camera, the layers, full screen, its next button and the share button are pressed, which cameras are opened, which sites the outbound links lead to, and how many visits reach a second, fifth or tenth press of Random Camera, or a first, fifth or twentieth camera in Watch mode. These are counts per day with nothing attached to them: no identifier, no address, no cookie, nothing stored in your browser, and nothing that could tell one visitor from another. They are kept for about a year.
Cookies from embedded players
Live video is embedded from its provider, and that provider may set cookies or similar storage when the player loads. For YouTube sources we use the privacy-enhanced youtube-nocookie.com domain, which defers most storage until you press play β but what happens inside the player is controlled by the provider, not by this site.
Map tiles
Map tiles come from OpenFreeMap, which states it sets no cookies and keeps no user database.
Optional layers
Three of the map's layers fetch from someone else, and only once you switch them on. Rainfall imagery comes from NASA, and relief from Amazon's open data service β turning either on means your browser asks them for tiles, so they see your IP address the way any site you visit would. Neither is asked for anything until you press the button, and the weather badges are not one of them: those are fetched by this site's own server, so the weather service never sees you at all. The aurora forecast normally comes the same way, through this site's server; if that ever fails your browser asks NOAA directly instead, and NOAA would then see your IP address as NASA does. The weekly volcano report has no fallback and always comes through this site's server, so the Smithsonian never sees you either. The space station's position is the same arrangement as the aurora: this site's server asks for it, and if that fails your browser asks wheretheiss.at directly. A heritage marker's photograph is loaded from Wikimedia Commons when you open that marker, so Wikimedia sees your IP address for as long as it takes to send a picture, and is asked for nothing until you open one.
Whether the rules where you live require a consent banner for embedded third-party players is a question for a local adviser. We have kept third-party storage to the minimum the feature allows rather than assuming an answer.