Privacy Policy — ANU Severe Weather Decisions

Effective date: October 24, 2026

ANU is made by Cognito Agora, Inc. (“we” and “us”). We run the ANU app and ANU’s warning service. This page explains what ANU does with your information, in plain English.

The short version

  • ANU has no accounts, no ads and no tracking. It has no analytics tools.
  • When you check the weather, your phone asks weather and hazard services directly, such as the National Weather Service and a forecast service. Our warning service is not in the middle.
  • Our warning service hears from your phone only after you first turn on warnings for a place, or turn on “Warn me where I am”. Warnings are part of ANU Watch, the paid subscription. After that first time, each time ANU starts (including when iOS starts it in the background) it contacts the service again, even if you later turn every place off. Opening the Warnings page does too. See “Warnings” below.
  • We do not sell your information.

What ANU keeps on your phone

  • Your places. The places you save, any label you give them (such as Home or Work), which place is open, and which places have warnings on.
  • Your settings. For example, whether you have seen the welcome screen, and a count of the days you have used ANU so it does not ask for a rating too often.
  • The latest weather for each place, so widgets and ANU on your Apple Watch have something to show.
  • Warning details. The last area ANU sent for “Warn me where I am” and whether that switch is on, the status of each warning request (with the place name), and the time until which each quieted place stays quiet (cleared once that time passes). The phone also keeps the warning-service ID, which places the service confirmed, the names the service holds for the places it lists for your phone, and whether a request to turn a place off, or to forget your area, is still waiting for the service to confirm it, in ANU’s shared app storage, which widgets can read.
  • A search entry for each place, so Siri, Shortcuts and Spotlight can find it.
  • Keys for the warning service. Your phone’s notification address (saved whenever ANU runs). If you use warnings, a random ID and a secret key. If you subscribe, a random purchase code and Apple’s signed record of your subscription. They, and the Lock Screen addresses Apple gives ANU when Live Activities are on, are kept securely on your iPhone, in its Keychain. iOS may keep Keychain items after you delete an app.

Your phone shares your places and the open place with ANU’s widgets and with ANU on your Apple Watch.

iCloud

If you are signed in to iCloud, ANU copies your list of saved places to iCloud so they appear on your other devices. The copy holds each place’s name, label, coordinates, state and weather-zone codes, a random ID, the date you saved it and the time of the last change, plus the random IDs of places you recently removed. Which places have warnings on, and which place is open, are not copied. The copy sits in your own iCloud account, not on our service. Removing a place in ANU removes it from the copy. Deleting the app may not remove the copy.

What your phone asks other services

Checking the weather does not go through our service. Your phone asks these services directly. Every request also shows the service your phone’s internet address and the name of the app, as with any website. Requests to the National Weather Service, USGS, the wildfire, NASA and National Hurricane Center sources, and FEMA also include Cognito Agora’s contact email in the app name. Each service has its own privacy rules, and we do not control them.

These services receive the coordinates of the place you are checking, precise to about 36 feet (11 meters):

  • National Weather Service (weather.gov). Official alerts for the place, and a lookup of the official weather zone when you add a place.
  • Open-Meteo. Forecast data for those coordinates. Open-Meteo’s terms say its server logs may contain coordinates and are deleted after 90 days.
  • USGS. Earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater within about 190 miles.

The radar screen sends these:

  • NOAA nowCOAST receives requests for radar images covering the map area you are viewing.
  • National Weather Service receives a request for the outlines of active warnings in the place’s state (for example, all of Arizona). If ANU does not have a state for the place, it sends the place’s coordinates instead.
  • Apple Maps draws the map, so Apple receives the map area you are viewing. ANU does not show your own location on it.

Apple also receives:

  • The city or address you type when you add a place. Apple’s maps service finds the spot.
  • A shelter’s name and address, if you tap Directions for a shelter. They are handed to Apple Maps.

These services receive no location from ANU. ANU downloads a broad public list and filters it on your phone:

  • Wildfire incidents from the National Interagency Fire Center’s data, served by Esri’s ArcGIS service.
  • NASA EONET (volcanic activity and flooding).
  • National Hurricane Center (tropical systems).
  • FEMA (open shelters).
  • ANU also checks that the National Weather Service can be reached. That request carries no location.

Widgets, Apple Watch complications and background refresh ask the National Weather Service for alerts and Open-Meteo for the forecast, for your places, by themselves, even when ANU is closed, and iOS decides when. Siri, Shortcuts and ANU on your Apple Watch do the same when you ask or open them. Background refresh also tells the warning service your subscription is still active, if you have warnings set up.

ANU uses these requests only to show you weather and alerts for your places. It does not use them for advertising or marketing.

Device location

Device location is optional. You can always type a city or address instead.

  • Use my current location. ANU asks permission while you use the app. It uses your position once, to find the official weather area you are in, and offers it as a place to save. If you save that place, ANU keeps its coordinates to about 36 feet (11 meters), the same as a place you typed.
  • Warn me where I am. This is part of ANU Watch. It needs location set to Always. See Warnings below.

ANU does not keep a log of where you have been on your phone.

Warnings (ANU Watch)

Warnings are part of ANU Watch, our paid subscription. When you turn on warnings for a place, ANU’s warning service, run by Cognito Agora on Cloudflare, checks the National Weather Service for that place, usually every minute or two. It sends your phone a notification when the National Weather Service issues one of the warnings or watches ANU covers: tornado, severe thunderstorm, flash flood and flood, hurricane, tropical storm, storm surge, tsunami, winter storm, extreme heat and cold, high wind, and fire weather warnings, plus watches for some of these. It does not send advisories or other statements, so no notification does not mean nothing is happening. The service asks the National Weather Service using the place’s coordinates and a fixed contact name for ANU. It does not send your ID.

If you never turn on warnings, your phone sends nothing to the warning service. Once an ID exists, each time ANU starts (including when iOS starts it in the background) it sends your phone’s notification address, and your Lock Screen address if Live Activities are on. When you open ANU, or iOS runs a background refresh, it also sends your subscription record again. This continues even with every place off, and the Warnings page reads what the service holds. When you come back to ANU, it may also read from the service the list of places it holds for your phone. That request carries your random ID and secret key and no position.

To do its job, the service stores:

  • A random ID for your copy of ANU, and a secret key. The service makes both the first time you turn on warnings (for a place or for “Warn me where I am”) and sends them to your phone. It keeps the ID, and only a scrambled one-way version of the secret. The ID is not your name, email, Apple Account or advertising ID. It connects the places, notification addresses and subscription status that belong to your copy of ANU, so everything below is tied to that one ID.
  • Your phone’s notification addresses from Apple (Apple calls them tokens), stored encrypted. With Live Activities on, this includes the address that lets a warning appear on your Lock Screen. If Apple tells us an address no longer works, we stop using it, but it stays stored until the record is deleted. The Lock Screen start address is cleared when Apple says it no longer works or when you turn Live Activities off.
  • A few details from your phone when the ID is made: the ANU version and build, and which of Apple’s two notification systems (test or live) the copy uses. Earlier test copies of ANU also sent your language and region setting and your time zone; the service stored them and does not use them. They are stored as plain text and the service does not use them for anything.
  • Your subscription status: whether ANU Watch is active, when it runs out, and a random purchase code that ANU attaches to your purchase. Your phone sends Apple’s signed purchase record. The service checks Apple’s signature, keeps the status, the end date and the purchase code, and does not keep the record itself. ANU never sees your card or your Apple Account sign-in.
  • What Apple last said about your subscription, kept under your purchase code: whether the subscription is running or stopped, when Apple signed that, the dates it is paid through (the date Apple gave or, when a message from Apple carried none, a provisional end the service sets), and when Apple signed the latest stop. It holds no name, email or location. The purchase code is separate from your ID, but your ID record carries it, so while both records exist the service can link them. The service uses this record so that an old proof of a refunded subscription cannot switch warnings back on. It is not tied to your ID record, so removing your ID record would not remove it. It is deleted automatically (the check runs about every minute) once 400 days have passed since Apple signed it and 30 days have passed since its paid-through date. If a record has no Apple signing time (for example a note that a paid period simply ran out) or no paid-through date, that test counts as already met, so it can be deleted sooner, and a record with neither is deleted at the next check. Backups of deleted versions are covered below.
  • Each place you turn on: its name, its coordinates, its state and weather-zone codes, the warning types ANU sends for (all of the ones listed above), whether it is on, the time until which you quieted it, when it was first stored, when your phone last updated it, and when the service last checked it. The name is the label you gave it; otherwise it is the place’s saved name, cut to 30 characters. That saved name is normally the city from the National Weather Service, followed by the state’s two-letter code (for example Tampa FL). If that is missing, a place you typed gets Apple’s city, county or state (or “Saved place”), and a place added from your current location is called “Current location”. The address or words you type to find a place are never used as its name in this version of ANU; places saved by earlier versions keep the names they were given. The coordinates are precise to about 36 feet (11 meters).
  • Where you are, only if you turn on “Warn me where I am”. This needs location set to Always, because warnings have to reach you while ANU is closed. Your phone rounds its position to about 1 km (under a mile) before it leaves the phone, and the service rounds it again. That is ANU’s rounding: the position iOS gives ANU can itself be several kilometers wide, so your area may be rounder than 1 km. It is sent when iOS reports a significant change in your location and ANU’s own filter finds the change large enough, when you turn it on, and again whenever you open ANU or the Warnings page (ANU then sends the area it already holds). The position is saved under the name “Where you are”. Only your latest position is kept in your record. For up to 24 hours the service also holds encrypted technical copies of its replies, one each time your phone sent a position, and those copies contain the positions. The service uses these copies only to answer a repeated request the same way. Backups can hold earlier versions for up to 30 days. The position is never used for anything else.
  • A delivery record for each warning sent: which of your places, which warning (an identifier built from the issuing office, the type of warning and its tracking number), whether Apple accepted the notification, how many tries, and the times. It is kept for 60 days so the same warning is not sent twice.
  • Live Activity records, one for each warning shown on your Lock Screen: its addresses, which place, the warning’s name, the ending message (which can name your place) and Apple’s reply. “Live Activity” is Apple’s name for this. They are removed 30 days after the display ends.

How a warning gets to you. The service sends the notification through Apple’s notification service. The text of a warning (the National Weather Service’s headline and, in some messages, the name of your place) passes through Apple on its way to your phone. The notification also carries the warning’s identifier and the place’s random ID, and a Lock Screen start message always names the place.

Where the service runs. On Cloudflare. Cloudflare handles every request, so it sees your phone’s internet address, and its logs may record it. The service has Cloudflare’s request logging on for a sample of requests (about one in ten). The web address of each request, which contains your random ID and sometimes a place’s random ID but never coordinates, appears in those logs. Cloudflare decides what else its logs record, and keeps them for up to 7 days. ANU’s own service code does not read or store your internet address.

Short-lived copies and backups. For up to 24 hours the service keeps an encrypted copy of its reply to each setup request, so a repeated request gets the same answer. These replies can include your place names and coordinates and, when your ID is first made, your ID and secret key. Next to each copy the service keeps, unencrypted and for the same 24 hours, a random request code, the time, and a plain one-way fingerprint of the request; for notification-address and place requests it also keeps your ID, and for place requests the place’s ID. Our database host also keeps automatic backups that can hold earlier and deleted versions of records for up to 30 days.

Keeping and deleting your information

What you can delete today:

  • Turn a place off, or remove it in ANU. The place is deleted from the warning service when your phone can reach it. If it cannot, ANU keeps the turn-off pending and asks again each time you open the Warnings page or tap Try again, whether or not ANU Watch is active, until the service confirms. While it is pending, the Warnings page may say so, in a message about the place or in the card at the top; which message appears, and whether one does, depends on what else the page has to show. Delivery records and short-lived copies expire as listed below.
  • Turn off “Warn me where I am”, or set location below Always. ANU deletes your position from the service when your phone can reach it. Until the service confirms, the Warnings page says ANU has not been able to tell it to forget your area, and ANU asks again each time it starts and each time you come back to it. Short-lived copies expire within 24 hours.
  • Turn off Live Activities for ANU in your iPhone Settings. ANU clears the Live Activity start address from the service the next time ANU runs.
  • Delete my data (Warnings page). Deletes this phone’s ID record, notification addresses, phone details and places from the service when your phone can reach it. If it cannot, nothing is deleted and ANU says so. Your saved places stay in ANU.
  • Remove places in ANU to remove them from the iCloud copy too.
  • Places the warning service still has on. After you reinstall ANU or set up a new iPhone, the warning service can still have places on that this copy of ANU does not have turned on. ANU never deletes such a place on its own. Once the service has answered, and going by its last answer, the Warnings page offers a choice for each place the service is still watching that is not turned on here. For a place saved on this phone, its row shows Keep (turn it on here) and Stop (delete it from the service). For a place that is not saved on this phone, the page lists it by the name the service holds for it, with a Stop button that deletes just that one. You do not get these choices for a place you have already asked to stop: ANU keeps that turn-off pending and asks again until the service confirms (see above). “Where you are” is not in these lists: use the “Warn me where I am” switch.

Your ID record. The ID, your notification addresses, the details from your phone and your subscription status stay on our service until they are deleted. They are deleted automatically when the app has not contacted the service for 180 days and the subscription is not running. You can also delete them at once with Delete my data on the Warnings page in ANU. The record has no name or email on it, so we cannot tell from a message which record is yours. The record of what Apple last said about your subscription is kept apart from your ID record and follows the schedule under “How long things are kept”.

Deleting the app does not delete anything from our service at once; the automatic deletion after 180 days of no contact applies. iOS may also keep the app’s Keychain items and the iCloud copy of your places.

If your subscription ends, the service stops sending warnings, but it allows up to three days after your paid period ends, in case a renewal arrives late, so warnings can still arrive during those days. Your places stay on the service until you remove them or until the automatic deletion after 180 days of no contact described below. To remove one, turn it off in ANU or tap Stop on the Warnings page; ANU sends that request even if ANU Watch is no longer active, and asks again until the service confirms. If “Warn me where I am” is still on, ANU can send your position again at the next update, even though no warnings are sent. Turn that switch off to stop it.

How long things are kept:

  • Your places and your position: until you turn them off or remove them in ANU. If you delete ANU first, they stay on the service until the automatic deletion after 180 days.
  • Delivery records: 60 days.
  • Copies of replies: up to 24 hours.
  • Live Activity records: 30 days after the display ends.
  • Your ID, notification addresses, phone details and the subscription status on your ID record: deleted automatically when the app has not contacted the service for 180 days and the subscription is not running, or at once when you use Delete my data on the app’s Warnings page. See “Your ID record” above.
  • What Apple last said about your subscription, kept under your purchase code: deleted automatically once 400 days have passed since Apple signed it and 30 days since its paid-through date; sooner if the record has no Apple signing time or no paid-through date.
  • Cloudflare request logs: up to 7 days.
  • Backups of earlier and deleted versions: up to 30 days.

Subscriptions and payment

Apple handles payment, renewal and refunds. ANU never sees your card or your Apple Account sign-in. To cancel, open Settings › Apple Account › Subscriptions on your iPhone.

What ANU does not do

  • No advertising and no ad networks.
  • No analytics or tracking tools in the app. If you share iPhone analytics with app developers, Apple may give us crash reports. ANU does not collect them itself.
  • We do not sell your information, and we do not share it for advertising or marketing.
  • No accounts and no login. We do not ask for your name, email address or phone number. Any label you type for a place is stored as you typed it.
  • We do not track you across other companies’ apps or websites.

Children

ANU is a general-audience weather app and does not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Changes to this policy

If ANU’s data practices change, we will update this page before the change ships. The effective date above will change.

Contact

Privacy questions: hello@cognitoagora.com

ANU is made by Cognito Agora, Inc.