Privacy policy

Who is responsible for your data

The data controller is Michaël Vincent, who publishes and operates Météo Belge, the website www.meteobelge.be and the mobile app.

Our three rules

• We do not sell any data. Not to an advertiser, not to a broker, not to anyone, at any price.
• We only collect what is useful. Every piece of data described below corresponds to a feature you use.
• You can take your data back whenever you like. An account can be deleted from your account area in a few seconds, without having to write to anyone.

What we collect, and why

Most pages can be viewed without an account and without leaving anything with us. The table below covers everything else.

Visiting the website

Our servers keep the usual technical logs: IP address, page requested, date, browser. They are used to run the website, to detect a fault and to block abuse.

Locality searched for

Your town and your favourite places, so we can show them to you again. Without an account, they stay in your browser or on your phone. With an account, they are linked to it so they follow you from one device to another. Ten Belgian places at most, and ten European places.

Member account

Email address, password (never in plain text: it is hashed), username, first and last name if you give them, language, profile photo if you add one, sign-up date and origin (website or app). If you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive your email address and your name, not your password.

Devices and sessions

A device identifier and a session that keeps you signed in for thirty days, renewed each time you use it. Five devices at most per account. If you turn on notifications, a sending token specific to your phone.

App statistics

The screens opened in the app, its version and the type of phone (iPhone or Android), linked to a device identifier: on Android, the Android ID specific to our app (never the advertising ID), on iPhone a randomly generated identifier kept in the keychain. They are used to count installs, updates and reinstalls, and to know which screens are useful. If you are signed in, they are linked to your account. They are not passed on to anyone.

Preferences and alerts

Your rain, thunderstorm, weather warning, river and wind alerts, the municipalities concerned, and the time at which you want to receive the weather by email.

WeatherPoints

Your points, your history, your predictions, your referrals, the Facebook name you declare for a share, and your gift requests. For a gift sent by post, your postal address. The referred person's IP address is recorded at sign-up, solely to prevent someone from referring themselves.

Chat and Shared Sky

Your messages, the photos and videos you post there, your profile bio, reports and any sanctions. A shared sky observation carries the locality you chose, never your exact position without your knowledge.

Emails we send

We record whether an email has been opened and whether a link has been clicked. This tells us whether our emails arrive, lets us stop writing to people who never read them, and helps us measure a campaign. You can unsubscribe in one click from any of our emails.

Orders and invoices

Name, address, email address, contents and amount of the order. Your card number never reaches us: it is entered with our payment provider, which only sends us a confirmation and the last four digits.

Weather certificates

The name, address, place and date of the incident, since that is what the document has to certify.

Contact form

Your message and your email address, so we can reply and keep track of the conversation.

On what legal basis

European regulations require us to say why we are entitled to process each piece of data. Here is how it breaks down.

Performance of a contract

Your account, your favourites, your subscriptions, your orders and their delivery.

Legal obligation

Invoices and accounting records, which Belgian law requires us to keep.

Your consent

The newsletter, notifications, weather emails and personalised advertising. It can be withdrawn as easily as it is given.

Legitimate interest

The security of the service, fighting fraud and abuse, moderating the chat, and measuring our own mailings.

Advertising

The website shows adverts provided by Google AdSense, and the app by Google AdMob. This is what funds the free part of the service. Google may place cookies or read an advertising identifier to choose the adverts and count how often they are shown.

A consent message is shown to you before the first advert, on the website and in the app alike: you accept or refuse personalised advertising, and refusing does not deprive you of anything. You can change your choice at any time by reopening this message: on the website from the bottom of the page, in the app from Menu › Ad choices. You can adjust your Google ad preferences at any time at myadcenter.google.com, and the advertising identifier can be reset in your phone's settings.

Who else sees your data

We use a few service providers, each for a specific task, and none of them is allowed to use the data for anything else.

alwaysdata

Hosting of the website, the database and the emails. Servers located in the European Union.

Stripe

Card payments and subscriptions. Stripe receives what it needs to collect payment and fight fraud.

Google

Advertising (AdSense, AdMob) and, if you use it, signing in with a Google account.

Histats

A visit counter: it records pages viewed, country, browser and where the visitor came from, so we know what is being read. It is not used for advertising or to identify anyone.

Apple

Only if you use "Sign in with Apple".

Expo

Delivery of notifications to your phone. Expo receives the device token and the text of the notification.

bpost

Name and address, to deliver a parcel or a gift to you.

How long we keep all this

Your account

For as long as it exists. When it is deleted, it goes immediately and backups are overwritten on their own within thirty days.

Technical logs

Twelve months at most.

Invoices and accounting

Seven years, as required by Belgian law. This period applies even if you delete your account.

Newsletter

Until you unsubscribe. A sign-up that is never confirmed is deleted after sixty days.

Chat messages

For as long as the channel exists. A deleted message disappears from view, and a deleted account loses its username.

Sky observations

Three hours on public display, then kept anonymously for statistics.

Sessions

Thirty days without use, after which the session expires by itself.

Your rights

You can ask to access the data we hold about you, to correct it, to erase it, to restrict its use, to object to processing, or to receive it in a readable format to take elsewhere. You can also withdraw your consent at any time, without having to give a reason.

The quickest way: your account area, where you can change your details and your alerts, and where the delete account button does the job straight away. Otherwise, write to contact@meteobelge.be: we reply within a month.

Cookies and your browser's memory

We use only what is strictly necessary for the site to work, plus the advertising described above.

• Essential: your sign-in session, your language, your basket. Without them, the website does not work.
• Local storage: your favourite places, your display settings and the last town you viewed stay in your browser or on your phone. They are not sent to any server as long as you do not have an account.
• Advertising: the cookies and identifiers placed by Google, described in the previous section.

Security

The website runs entirely over HTTPS, passwords are hashed and cannot be read back, and access to administration is protected and restricted. No system is invulnerable: if an incident were to affect your data, we would notify the people concerned and the Data Protection Authority within the time limits set by law.

Children

The service is not intended for children under 13. Between 13 and 16, creating an account requires parental consent. If you are a parent and an account has been created without your consent, write to us: we will delete it, no questions asked.

Changes

This policy may change when the service changes. The date at the top of the page shows the latest version. Any significant change will be announced to you by email or in the app, not slipped quietly into a paragraph.