VelaVela (“the app,” “we,” “us”) is a live map of aircraft and ships. We built it to be private by default. This page explains what the app does — and does not do — with your information.
The short version
- The map works fully with no account or sign-in.
- No ads, no third-party tracking, no analytics SDKs.
- We don’t sell your data.
- We never receive your exact GPS coordinate.
Location
If you grant location access, Vela uses your precise position on your device to center the map and power “Near me.” Before requesting nearby craft, the app expands the visible map area onto a fixed 0.1° geographic grid; our server receives that coarse rectangular area, not your exact GPS coordinate.
If you turn on Notable Nearby (a Vela Plus feature), the app additionally sends a coarsened version of your location — rounded to roughly a kilometer, never your exact GPS coordinate — to our server and stores it, so we can alert you when a notable aircraft (for example a military aircraft or a rare wide-body) is near you, including while the app is closed. This is optional and off by default, and is used only while the feature is on. Turning the feature off deletes the stored location, and we automatically remove it after a period of inactivity. So the alert can still find you while you travel, this feature can use background location (“Always”); you can change that at any time in iOS Settings.
Location is optional — the app works fully without it — and is requested only when you use a feature that needs it.
What our server receives
To display craft, the app asks our backend for the vehicles inside the coarsened map area you’re currently viewing (a rectangular region aligned to a 0.1° grid). When you center the map on yourself, this can indicate your approximate area, but it does not contain your exact GPS coordinate and is not tied to your account identifier.
If you enable Notable Nearby, the server also receives and stores the coarsened location described above, associated with your anonymous subscription identifier, so it can check for notable aircraft near you between visits.
When you search by flight number, tail number, vessel name, or MMSI, Vela sends the query to our backend to search the current live snapshot. We do not store search history or use it for advertising, analytics, or tracking. Plus flight-number tracking lookups may be associated with your anonymous subscription identifier solely to verify Vela Plus access.
When your device contacts our server, the server briefly processes your IP address to prevent abuse and control costs (rate limiting) and keeps short-lived operational request logs. We do not use this to build a profile of you or link it to your identity.
Data from third parties
Vela displays aircraft and vessel information aggregated from public and commercially licensed data sources (listed in the app under Settings → About Vela). This is transportation data about aircraft and ships — not about you.
Maps use Apple's MapKit service. Public craft photos can load directly from their image hosts; those hosts receive the image request and network information such as your IP address. Vela does not send them your subscription identifier or GPS coordinate. Our hosting and database providers process the operational data described in this policy to run the service.
Ask AI (Vela Plus)
Ask AI is an optional Vela Plus feature you start by tapping it for a specific craft. When you use it, the app sends that craft’s public details and identifiers (for example its type, operator, and ICAO 24-bit address or MMSI) to our AI service provider, Anthropic, which may run a web search, to generate a short summary. No location, no account identifier, and no personal profile is sent. This happens only when you tap Ask AI, and the data shared is public information about the craft — not about you.
Vela Plus & your account
To check whether you have Vela Plus, the app generates a random, anonymous identifier (not your name, email, or Apple ID) and sends it to our server when it checks your subscription status. This happens for everyone who uses the app, whether or not you subscribe; it isn’t tied to your real-world identity and is never used for tracking.
If you do subscribe, Apple handles the payment — we never see your card or Apple ID — and tells our server the subscription status (such as active, renewed, expired, or refunded), which we store against that anonymous identifier so the app knows you’re a subscriber.
Vela does not offer account sign-in and does not ask for your name or email. When StoreKit supplies the identifier originally attached to a restored purchase, the app reuses it so the subscription continues to work on that installation.
Push notifications, flight tracking, and Notable Nearby
If you use Vela Plus flight tracking, we store your APNs device token, its Sandbox/Production environment, and the anonymous subscription identifier so we can deliver Live Activity updates and approach/landing alerts. Tokens that Apple reports invalid are deleted, and tokens not refreshed for 90 days are removed.
While a flight is actively tracked, the backend temporarily keeps the selected public craft identifier, its last-known public position and display details, and the Live Activity push tokens. When restart recovery is enabled, we also store these checkpoints in our Supabase database, linked to the anonymous subscription identifier, along with delivery status needed to avoid repeat alerts. No device location or search history is included. Active tracking ends when you stop following, final delivery completes, or its original lifetime expires; restarting the server never extends that lifetime beyond 20 hours from the start of tracking. A small completed-flight record (craft identifier and arrival/delivery status, without activity tokens or position) may remain to prevent duplicate alerts, also within that original 20-hour limit. Expired records are excluded from use immediately and scheduled for database deletion every minute; an outage can delay physical deletion. Provider backups follow the hosting provider's configured backup retention and may retain deleted records for that period. Backups are not used to continue tracking. “Delete My Vela Data” removes these records from the active database.
The app’s existing on-device followed-craft record also remembers whether its Live Activity was dismissed, so reopening the app respects an observed dismissal. This preference remains on your device and resets when you explicitly follow again or stop following.
If you enable Notable Nearby, we store your coarsened approximate location, your chosen alert categories and range, and the anonymous subscription identifier so our server can check for notable aircraft near you and push you an alert — and a short record of which aircraft we’ve already alerted you about, so we don’t repeat ourselves. You can delete all of this at any time by turning the feature off, and we automatically remove it after a period of inactivity.
Data we store about you
The anonymous subscription identifier described above; your subscription status if you subscribe; and, if you enable flight tracking or Notable Nearby, the push information and (for Notable Nearby) the coarsened location and alert preferences described above. We keep no name, email, Apple ID, or other personal profile. We don’t use this data for advertising or cross-app tracking, and we don’t sell it.
How long we keep data
| Data | How long |
|---|---|
| Map-area and search requests, IP address | Processed to answer and rate-limit the request; kept only in short-lived operational logs |
| Anonymous subscription identifier and subscription status | Until you use “Delete My Vela Data” |
| Push token for flight tracking | Until Apple reports it invalid, or 90 days without a refresh |
| Tracked-flight checkpoints and alert records | At most 20 hours from the start of tracking |
| Notable Nearby location and preferences | Until you turn the feature off, or after a period of inactivity |
| Ask AI | A daily request count to enforce usage limits; answers are cached per craft, not per person |
Your choices
- Location: allow, limit or turn off location access at any time in iOS Settings. The map works without it.
- Notable Nearby and flight tracking: turn them off in the app, which deletes the related stored data.
- Notifications: manage them in iOS Settings → Notifications → Vela.
- Delete everything: in Vela, open Settings → Delete My Vela Data to erase all server-side data tied to your anonymous identifier.
- Ask us: email hello@willhubbard.com to ask what we hold or to have it deleted. Because Vela has no accounts, “Delete My Vela Data” in the app is the quickest way to erase your records.
Your privacy rights
Depending on where you live (for example California and other U.S. states), you may have the right to know what personal information we hold, to get a copy, to correct it, and to have it deleted, and not to be treated differently for using those rights. You can use them through the choices above. We do not sell or “share” personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we do not use it to profile you.
Security
All traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted with HTTPS. Stored data is kept with access-controlled hosting and database providers, and only the minimum needed to run each feature is kept. No system is perfectly secure, but we design Vela to hold as little as possible, so there is little to expose.
Where data is processed
Our servers run in the United States. Our hosting, database, notification and AI providers may process data in the United States and other countries where they operate, under their own security and privacy commitments.
Who we are
Vela is made by an independent developer. For anything about this policy or your data, email hello@willhubbard.com.
Children
Vela is a general-audience app and does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children.
Changes
If this policy changes, we’ll update the effective date above.
Contact
Questions? Email hello@willhubbard.com.