Privacy policy

Magnitude has no accounts, no ads and no third-party tracking. We do not know who you are, and we have built the app so that we do not need to.

This policy covers the Magnitude app for iPhone and this website. Magnitude is operated by Katapult Labs (Katapult Inc.). Questions go to support@magnitudealert.com.

What our server holds

The app registers with our server so that it can receive notifications. The registration is anonymous: it has no name, email address, phone number or advertising identifier, and we never ask for one. It holds the following.

Push token

The token Apple issues to this app on your iPhone. Without it we cannot notify you.

Your place

The spot you chose for warnings, rounded to about a kilometre, with the town name the app showed you, whether you picked it or used your location once, and in that case how accurate the fix was. Warnings are matched only against this place; without one you receive none. Changing it replaces it.

Region

The Colombian department shown in the app and used to filter the earthquake list. It does not decide which warnings you receive.

Notification choices

Whether you want test alerts and Critical Alerts, and your earthquake notification settings: on or off, worldwide or a radius, and the smallest magnitude.

A centre, only if you ask

If you turn on earthquake notifications around a place, the coordinates of that centre and the radius. We remove them when you switch to worldwide or turn the notifications off.

App details

The app version and the platform (iOS), to keep notifications compatible.

A credential

A random token the app keeps in the iPhone Keychain to change or delete its registration. Our server stores only a hash of it.

Delivery records

For each notification sent to your registration: when it was sent, how Apple's push service answered, how long it took, and for a warning which screen you were shown and how far the observation was from your place. This is how we measure whether warnings arrive in time.

Location

The app asks for your location only while you are using it, only when you tap a button that needs it, and only once each time. It never asks for background location and it does not track your movements.

When you tap Use my location while choosing your place for warnings, the app takes one fix of about a kilometre in accuracy, rounds it to about a kilometre and saves that as your place, with the fix's accuracy, because the server has to compare it with each warning it receives. You can equally search for a town or drag the map, and then no location request is made at all. The place stays where you put it until you change it.

When you use your location to choose a region, the app works out the nearest department on the phone and discards the coordinates; only the department reaches us. When you use it, or the map, to set a centre for earthquake notifications, the coordinates of that centre are sent to our server, for the same reason.

When the app shows what is usual for an area, it rounds the area to about ten kilometres before asking our server, and the request is not tied to your registration.

Analytics

The current version of the app sends us no usage analytics at all, whatever the Product analytics switch in Settings says.

A later version will send a short, fixed list of events to our own server, such as that the app was opened or that a warning was shown and how long it took to arrive. The list is published in the app under What we collect. Those events will carry a random identifier that changes every 90 days and when you reinstall, the app and iOS version, the iPhone model, your region and your language. They will not carry your push token, your coordinates or your IP address, and they are stored with no link to your registration. We plan to keep individual events for 90 days. With the switch off, the app will send nothing.

We will update this page when that version ships.

IP addresses

Our server reads the IP address of each request to limit abuse, holds it in memory for that purpose and does not write it to our database. The companies that host our server and this website process IP addresses to route traffic, as every host does.

Who else is involved

We do not sell or share data with advertisers, data brokers or analytics companies, and the app contains no third-party code. These are the only other parties that handle anything.

Apple

Delivers our notifications through the Apple Push Notification service, and supplies the maps in the app. Apple receives the push token and the content of each notification.

Railway

Hosts our server and its database.

SGC and USGS

The app normally gets the earthquake list from our server. When our server cannot answer, the app reads the public catalogs of the Servicio Geológico Colombiano and the U.S. Geological Survey directly, and they see your IP address as any website would.

Vercel

Hosts this website.

This website

This website sets one cookie, which remembers the language you chose, and runs no analytics or tracking scripts. If you email us, we use your address only to reply.

Deleting your data

You can turn off earthquake notifications in the app, which also removes any saved centre from our server. When you delete the app, Apple eventually reports the push token as no longer valid and our server stops using the registration.

The app does not yet have a button that deletes the registration itself. Until it does, email support@magnitudealert.com and we will delete it, along with its delivery records. Because the registration is anonymous, we will ask for the region you chose and roughly when you installed the app so that we can find it.

Children

Magnitude asks no one for their age or identity, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Changes

When this policy changes we will change the date at the top of this page.