Privacy Policy

ForeWind is a golf shot calculator made by Nilbyte Studio ("I", "me"). This policy covers both the Android app, published as com.jnsoftware.forewind, and the iOS app, which uses a different bundle identifier. It replaces the earlier generic policy, which described data collection the app has never actually performed.

What the app stores on your device

Everything ForeWind keeps is stored locally on your phone:

• A weather cache — a small database of recent readings (wind, temperature, pressure, elevation) with the coordinates they were fetched for, rounded to two decimal places. Entries expire after 5–10 minutes and are cleaned up automatically.
• Your preferences — distance unit, wind speed unit, theme, and a flag recording whether you have bought Remove Ads.

That is the complete list. There are no accounts, no shot history, no saved rounds, no notes and no photos, because the app has no feature that would create them. None of this data is transmitted, uploaded or synced by ForeWind, and all of it is removed when you uninstall.

What ForeWind does not do

• No user accounts, sign-up or login
• No servers or cloud storage operated by me
• No analytics of mine — no usage tracking, event logging or session recording that reports to me, and no analytics SDK in the app beyond what the ad library does (see Advertising)
• No crash reporting to me — the app ships no crash-reporting library of its own, and I never receive a crash report
• No background location — the permission is "while using the app" only
• No access to contacts, calendar, camera, photos, microphone or files
• No sale of personal information — I have never been paid for data, and never will be. (Personalised advertising does count as "sharing" under California law; see California privacy rights.)

Location

ForeWind asks for location permission because wind is local. When you request a reading, the app takes your position from the operating system and sends the latitude and longitude to MET Norway's public Locationforecast service, which returns the conditions for that point. Nothing else accompanies the request. There is no identifier, nothing describing you or your device, and nothing that ties one request to another — the only header of note is the User-Agent that MET Norway's terms require, which names the app, its version and my support address, and says nothing about you.

To be precise about the precision: the position is requested from the operating system at medium accuracy, and the coordinates are sent to the API to four decimal places — roughly ten metres. ForeWind also rounds your position to about a kilometre, but that rounded value is only used as a key for the on-device cache so that nearby holes reuse one reading; it is not what gets transmitted. If you would rather not share a location that exact, the permission is the control, and declining it is respected.

Weather data is provided under CC BY 4.0; MET Norway is a Norwegian government institute and its handling of API traffic is governed by its own published terms.

The permission is optional and revocable in your system settings at any time. Without it the app cannot fetch weather, which is most of what it does — but nothing else about it changes.

Compass and motion sensors

ForeWind reads the magnetometer and accelerometer to work out which way you are facing and to detect the figure-8 motion that calibrates the compass. These readings are used in the moment to draw the compass and calculate the wind angle. They are not stored and never leave the device.

Advertising

ForeWind is free and funded by a single banner ad served through Google AdMob. This is the part of the app with real privacy consequences, so it is worth stating plainly.

Google's Mobile Ads SDK — not me — collects information in order to select and measure the ad. Google publishes what that includes in the privacy manifest shipped inside the SDK itself, and the honest answer is that it is broader than just the ad:

• Advertising identifier — the one item Google flags as used for tracking
• Advertising data and coarse location derived from your IP address
• App interactions — how you use the app
• Crash, performance and other diagnostic data

Google's stated purposes for these are advertising and analytics. That last bullet is worth dwelling on: ForeWind contains no crash reporter of its own and I never see a crash report, but the ad library does collect one. Saying "no crash reporting" without that caveat would be false, so it is stated here.

Google's handling is governed by Google's privacy policy and its description of how Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services. I see none of this data about individuals; my access is limited to aggregate earnings figures in the AdMob dashboard.

Your controls

• In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, ForeWind shows Google's consent form the first time it runs. Your choices there govern whether personalised ads are served and can be changed later from the same form.
• On iOS 14 and later, the system asks for your permission before any app tracks you across other companies' apps and websites. Declining is respected by the SDK; you can change it in Settings › Privacy & Security › Tracking.
• On Android, you can reset or delete your advertising ID in Settings › Google › Ads.
• Buying Remove Ads stops the banner appearing at all.

Purchases

Remove Ads is a one-time in-app purchase processed entirely by Google Play or the Apple App Store. They handle the payment and tell the app whether you own the product; I never see your name, payment details or address. The app records only a yes/no flag on your device. Refunds and receipts are handled by the store, not by me.

Who receives data, and why

There is no fifth row. No other network destination exists in the app.

Contacting support

The Contact button on the About screen opens your own mail app with a draft that pre-fills the app version, your device model and your OS version, because those are what make a bug report diagnosable. You can see and edit all of it before sending, and nothing is sent unless you send it. If you email me, I have your address and whatever you wrote, kept only as long as it takes to answer you.

Who is responsible for your data

For the little data that reaches me — your email address and whatever you write, if you contact support — Nilbyte Studio is the data controller:

The advertising layer is different, and I would rather be precise than flattering. Google determines how the data its Mobile Ads SDK collects is used, and acts as a controller in its own right. Because I chose to embed that SDK, European case law treats me as a joint controller with Google for the collection and transmission of that data — not for what Google subsequently does with it. So the honest statement is not "I am not a controller"; it is that I hold none of this data, cannot access it, and share responsibility only for the fact that the app collects it at all.

Where the law expects joint controllers to have an arrangement between them setting out who is responsible for what, that role is served by the Google terms I accepted to serve ads. In practice: Google is responsible for the data it collects, for honouring your consent choices, and for answering requests about that data. I am responsible for this policy being accurate, for showing you the consent form, and for the fact that ads run in the app at all. If you are unsure who to approach, write to me and I will point you to the right place.

Legal bases

Under the GDPR, each purpose needs a lawful basis. These are ForeWind's:

International transfers

MET Norway is in Norway, inside the EEA, so weather requests involve no third-country transfer.

Google processes advertising data in the United States and other countries. Those transfers rely on Google's own safeguards — its certification under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and, where that does not apply, the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses. Google publishes the current position in its privacy policy. If you would rather no such transfer happened, declining ad personalisation and buying Remove Ads are the levers available to you.

Children

ForeWind is a general-audience golf utility, not directed at children, and I collect no personal information from anyone regardless of age. Because the app shows ads, it is not suitable for a child-directed audience and is not listed as such in either store.

Retention and deletion

The weather cache and your preferences live on your device for as long as you keep the app. Cached readings expire within minutes; uninstalling removes everything, including the record of your purchase — which you can restore at any time from the store.

I hold no copy of anything, so there is no retention period on my side and no deletion request to make to me. Data held by Google in connection with advertising is subject to Google's own retention policies and is managed through the controls listed above; the same applies to purchase records held by Google or Apple.

Your rights

The GDPR gives you the right to access your personal data, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to its processing, and to receive it in a portable form.

ForeWind satisfies most of these by design rather than by process. Your settings are yours to change and delete in the app; there is nothing of yours on a server of mine to export, because there is no server. If you email me, that correspondence is the only personal data I hold, and you can ask me to delete it at any time — write to the address above and I will.

For advertising data, the practical levers are the ones described under Advertising: the consent form, the iOS tracking setting, the Android advertising-ID controls, and Remove Ads. Access and erasure requests for data Google holds are best directed to Google, which is the only party able to act on them.

You also have the right to complain to a data protection authority. Nilbyte Studio is established in Sweden, so the lead authority is Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten (IMY). If you live or work elsewhere in the EEA or the UK, you may complain to your own country's supervisory authority instead — you are not obliged to use mine, and you do not need to raise it with me first. Though if something here concerns you, I would rather hear about it and fix it.

California privacy rights

Under the CCPA as amended by the CPRA, personalised advertising counts as "sharing" personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising, even though no money changes hands. ForeWind does that when ads are personalised, so the plain answer is: yes, this app shares personal information in the CPRA sense. I have never sold personal information, and receive no payment for data.

The categories involved are the ones in the Advertising section: identifiers (the advertising ID), coarse geolocation, internet or application activity, and diagnostic data.

To opt out of that sharing, any of these works:

• iOS — Settings › Privacy & Security › Tracking, and turn off tracking for ForeWind
• Android — Settings › Google › Ads, and delete or opt out of the advertising ID
• Either platform — buy Remove Ads, and no ad is requested at all

You also have the right to know what is collected, to delete it, to correct it, and not to be discriminated against for exercising any of these. Since I hold nothing about you beyond support email, requests about advertising data need to go to Google; email me and I will tell you what I can and point you to the right place.

Changes to this policy

If the app changes in a way that affects this policy, I will update this page and change the date at the top before the change ships.

Contact

Questions about this policy or the app: forewind@nilbytestudio.com