Controller
The controller for everything described here is the operator named in the legal notice, reachable at hello@orbinauts.com. There is no data protection officer; the law does not require one for a site of this size.
What the site does not do
The site sets no cookies. There are no accounts, no logins and nothing that recognises you: nothing is written to your browser's storage but the live map's settings, the moment you last closed its Open in app button and, once you switch on its Last selected Widget, what you last selected on it, and only once you change one or close that button (described below), no identifier follows you from one page or visit to the next (the apps carry one, their Install id, described below), and no page remembers your previous visit beyond those settings. There is no advertising and no third-party tracking.
Hosting and the network: Cloudflare
The site, the API and the domain's name service run on Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., San Francisco), which processes data on the operator's behalf under its data processing addendum. Every request you make passes through Cloudflare's network, which keeps its own aggregate traffic statistics for the domain. Cloudflare's servers in the European Union are used where your connection reaches them; Cloudflare's own privacy policy describes its processing.
Server logs
Each request the site or the API answers leaves one log record at Cloudflare: the address requested, the method, the request's headers, among them your IP address and your browser's identification or, from one of the apps, its own and its Install id (described below), the status and timing of the answer, and any error the code raised. These records are kept for seven days and then deleted. They are read only to find faults, and nothing derives a profile from them. The basis is the operator's legitimate interest in running the service and keeping it working (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).
The rate limiter
The API allows each caller a number of requests per clock hour. A caller is an IP address when you use the API directly or a page on the site fetches from it on your behalf, and an app's Install id (described below) when one of the apps does. To count the requests it keeps, per caller, the start of the current hour and the number of requests seen in it, and nothing else. The record is overwritten by the next hour the caller calls in. The site's Most followed request described below is not counted.
A rough city, read from your connection
So that the site can say when a satellite next passes over you before you do anything, it reads a rough city from your connection. As the live map, a satellite's page, a constellation's page or a news Article opens, the page asks Orbinauts' own API once, and the API answers with the city, and the point of it, where Cloudflare's network places your connection from its IP address: often a neighbouring city or your provider's, never the spot where you stand, and nothing at all where Cloudflare cannot place the connection. No permission of your browser is involved, and your browser's own position is not read. The live map also opens over that city when you arrive, at a zoom that shows the region around it, unless its link names something to open on; where it opens never goes into the page's address. Each of them marks the city "(approx.)" wherever it uses it and offers Use my exact location beside it: in the map's panel and its Tonight over you card, in a satellite page's card of passes or of where the satellite is in your sky, in the count of a constellation's satellites in view, and in the Next over you block after an Article's text. The map's Next over card answers from the city too, without marking it. That button is Locate me, described next; a position you give that way always replaces the guess, and the guess never replaces it.
The rough city is never stored. The API reads it and answers, keeping nothing of it and logging nothing of it itself; the page holds it only in its memory, writes nothing of it to your device, and has lost it when you close or reload the page. To find the passes, the page sends the rough point, rounded to two decimal places, to Orbinauts' own API, as it does a position you give, and like every request that one leaves the log record described above, deleted after seven days; the count of a constellation's satellites in view is worked out in your browser, and sends the point nowhere. Where your connection gives no point, the page guesses nothing: no city is ever assumed for you, and the live map opens on the whole world. The basis is the operator's legitimate interest in answering a visitor without asking first, from what the connection already shows (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).
Locate me: your position
The live map, the satellite pages and the news Articles offer to find the next pass over you, and the live map to centre itself on your position. Your browser is asked for nothing until you press Locate me, or Use my exact location beside a rough city, on the map or in a card: the site never asks your browser for your position when a page opens, even when your browser already allows it. Your browser then asks your permission, unless you have given it before, and reports your position. Orbinauts rounds the latitude and longitude to two decimal places, about a kilometre, and the altitude, when the browser reports one, to the metre, and sends them only to its own API, which answers with the passes over that point. The position is not stored anywhere beyond the log record described above, and it never reaches anyone else. An assistant that asks the Orbinauts connector for passes (described at the connector page) sends the API a place name or a latitude and longitude the same way: the API computes the passes with them and never logs them, so a place you name to an assistant leaves no record here beyond that same log record of the request. The basis is your request (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR): the pass cannot be computed without the point.
Web analytics: Cloudflare's beacon
To know how many people use the site and which pages they read, the pages carry Cloudflare Web Analytics. It is a small script loaded from static.cloudflareinsights.com that sets no cookie, stores nothing on your device and does not fingerprint your browser. It sends to Cloudflare, as the operator's processor, the path of the page, the page it was reached from, the kind of browser and how long the page took to load. Cloudflare discards the IP address it arrives from at the edge, keeps the individual records for seven days and aggregates after that. The basis is the operator's legitimate interest in knowing whether the site is used (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR). Blocking the script with a content blocker costs you nothing on the site.
Most followed: counting Followers
The live map lists the satellites its visitors have selected right now. To count them, a map showing a satellite or constellation you chose, by a tap, a search, a list or a link naming it, sends a small request to Orbinauts' own API once a minute while the page is on screen, and a map whose Most followed list is open, with nothing chosen, sends one every ten minutes to fetch the list. A map also sends a single one, naming nothing, the first time it is on screen with room for the list beside it, so that the list is ready when it appears. The request carries two things: a random number the page makes when it loads, held only in the page's memory and gone when you close or reload the page, and the satellites and constellations selected on the map, or nothing. Your position is never part of it. The live map opens with nothing selected and counts nothing until you choose, a map embedded in another site never sends it, and nothing is sent while the page is hidden in a background tab. Nothing is stored on your device.
The API keeps each random number with what it named and when it last named it, and answers every request with the counts, never with the numbers themselves. A map is in the live count for two minutes after its last request, and in the count of the past 24 hours for 24 hours after it last named what is selected on it; its record is then deleted at the latest ten minutes later. The count keeps no IP address; like every request, this one leaves the log record described under server logs, which holds your IP address and not what the request carried. The basis is the operator's legitimate interest in showing visitors what others select, counted without knowing who they are (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).
The API's rate limiter does not count this request. Instead one Cloudflare rule turns away, for ten seconds, an IP address that sends more than ten of these requests in ten seconds, so that no single machine can flood the count. To apply it Cloudflare counts the requests per IP address at its edge, as the operator's processor, as for the server logs above.
Your map settings: kept on your device
When you change a setting of the live map, such as its units, time zone or clock, or which Widgets stand beside it and in what order, the map keeps your settings in your browser's local storage on this device, so that they apply the next time you open it. Once you switch on its Last selected Widget, which is off until you do, it keeps with them the last ten things you select on the map from then on, which that Widget lists; while the Widget is off, nothing you select is kept. On a phone, closing the map's Open in app button keeps with them the moment you closed it, so that the button stays away for thirty days. They stay there: they are never sent to Orbinauts or to anyone else, in a link or in any request. Reset all settings, in the map's Settings, removes them, and so does clearing the site's data in your browser. Until you change a setting or close that button, nothing is kept.
A link to the live map, the one Share hands out or the one in your address bar, carries only what the map shows: the satellites and constellations selected on it, what you filtered out of it and, while Playback shows it at another moment, that moment. It never carries your settings, so sharing your map shares none of your choices.
Writing to the operator
Mail to hello@orbinauts.com, or to any address at orbinauts.com, is forwarded by Cloudflare's Email Routing, which does not store the messages it passes on, into a mailbox at Google (Google Ireland Limited). Your message and address are kept there for as long as the matter takes and then deleted. The basis is answering your request (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR).
The apps
Orbinauts has two apps, both identified as com.orbinauts.app: one for Android, installed and updated from Google Play, and one for iPhone and iPad, installed and updated from Apple's App Store or, while it is tested, Apple's TestFlight. Neither has accounts, advertising, or analytics or crash-reporting code. Each sends requests to two places only, both Orbinauts' own: its API, for the satellites, their positions and their passes, and this site, for a satellite page's cards and photos. Each request identifies itself as Orbinauts Android/<version> or Orbinauts iOS/<version>, followed by (https://orbinauts.com; hello@orbinauts.com), instead of with a browser's identification, and passes through Cloudflare like the site's, so the sections above on Cloudflare and the server logs cover it.
Your position is used only to find the passes over you, and you can refuse an app the location permission and choose a city from its list instead. Either app sends your position only when you ask for the passes over you, never when the app opens and never in the background, and rounds the latitude and longitude to two decimal places, about a kilometre, and the altitude to the metre before it leaves your device. The Android app takes your position only when you ask for the passes. The app for iPhone and iPad asks the system for your position at reduced accuracy, an area several kilometres across, so the exact point where you stand is never in the app unless you turn on Precise Location for it in your device's settings, and the rounding applies either way. Once you allow it, that app also takes your position when it opens, only to place the map, and sends it when you open Next over you or a selected satellite that shows its next pass over you. Either app sends the position only to Orbinauts' API, which answers with the passes over that point and keeps nothing of it beyond the log record of the request described above. The basis is your request (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR): the pass cannot be computed without the point.
Each app has a Sky, which shows the satellites where they are in your sky. With your permission, the Sky draws the picture from your device's back camera under the satellites while the Sky is open. No frame is stored, sent anywhere or analysed. To turn the Sky as you turn your device, the app reads its compass and motion sensors, and what they report stays on your device.
On its first launch each app makes a random identifier, its Install id. It is tied neither to you nor to any identifier of your device, and it is gone when you uninstall the app or, on Android, clear its data. On iPhone and iPad it is left out of the device's backups, so it does not move to a new device. The app sends it in the X-Orbinauts-Install header with its requests to the API, never with those to the site. It is there so that the API's hourly quota counts this install rather than everyone who shares its IP address: the rate limiter above keeps, per Install id, the start of the current hour and the number of requests seen in it, overwritten the next hour, and the API uses the id for nothing else. Like any header, it is part of each request's log record, kept for seven days. The basis is the operator's legitimate interest in sharing the API fairly between its callers (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).
The apps take part in Most followed as the live map does (described above). While an app's map is on screen and shows a satellite, constellation or close approach you chose, by a tap, a search, a list or a link naming it, the app sends a small request to Orbinauts' API at once and then once a minute, and one more at once when you change or drop your choice; while its Most followed list is open with nothing chosen, it sends one every ten minutes to fetch the list. The request carries a random number the app makes each time it starts, held only in its memory, and what you chose, or nothing: a satellite, a constellation or, for a close approach, both of its satellites, as the live map sends them (the app for iPhone and iPad names the first of the two). Your position and the city you chose are never part of it. Like every request an app sends to the API, it carries the Install id in its header (described above). What an app only brought back from its last launch is not counted until you choose again, and nothing is sent while the app is in the background. Beyond that request, what you select, the city you chose, the map's settings, the catalogue of satellites and the cards an app has read stay on your device and are sent nowhere.
Google Play installs and updates the Android app. The crash and performance reports Google collects (Android vitals) come from Google Play and Android, not from the app, and Google's privacy policy covers them. Apple's App Store and TestFlight install and update the app for iPhone and iPad. If you choose to share analytics with app developers in your device's settings, Apple passes on crash reports from the system, not from the app, and Apple's privacy policy covers them.
The r/Orbinauts moderator
The operator moderates the Reddit community r/Orbinauts with the help of an app, u/orbinauts-mod, which runs on Reddit's Developer Platform and acts only inside that community. When someone comments there, the app sends the comment, the comments above it in its reply chain and the post's title and text, with their authors' Reddit usernames, to OpenAI (OpenAI Ireland Limited, Dublin), which rates the comment against the community's rules. OpenAI processes this on the operator's behalf under its data processing addendum, does not use it to train its models, and keeps it for up to 30 days to detect abuse; OpenAI's privacy policy describes its processing. A comment rated as breaking a rule is reported to the community's moderators, who decide what happens to it: the app removes nothing and bans no one.
The app keeps, in storage Reddit provides for it, each comment's rating (the rating, a one-sentence reason, the author's username and the comment's link, never its text) for three days, for the moderators' daily summary. It also keeps a record of each removal of a member's comment or post by a moderator, and of each ban (the username, the item's id and the time, never its text), for 90 days, so the moderators know when a member's removals add up. A comment deleted on Reddit leaves the ratings. Reddit runs the app and its storage, and Reddit's privacy policy covers what Reddit itself processes. The basis is the operator's legitimate interest in keeping the community civil and free of spam (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).
Your rights
You have the right to ask what personal data the operator holds about you, to have it corrected or erased, to have its processing restricted, to object to processing based on a legitimate interest, and to receive the data you provided in a portable form. Write to hello@orbinauts.com. You also have the right to complain to a data protection supervisory authority, in particular the one of the place where you live.
Changes
This notice describes the site and the apps as they are; it changes when they do. This version is from October 2026.