Privacy Policy

Fire Nearby (firenearby.com) is an independent wildfire information site that aggregates official government and agency data for the United States and Canada. For anything in this policy, contact us at firenearbysupport@gmail.com.

Analytics. In production we use Google Analytics 4 to understand aggregate usage: which pages are visited, how visitors arrive, and general device and browser information. Google Analytics sets its own cookies (such as _ga) and derives an approximate location from your IP address. We use this only to understand what content is useful. See Google’s privacy policy for how Google processes this data.

Location you choose to share. Some features (such as “fires near me”) can use your device location, but only after you explicitly allow it through your browser’s permission prompt. When you do, your coordinates are sent to our own server to look up the nearest place name and build your local report. We do not save your precise coordinates, and nothing links a location lookup to you.

Place searches. When you type a city or place into the history search, we keep an aggregate, city-level counter (for example, “Boise, Idaho: searched 42 times”) to power the “most searched places” list. These counters contain a place name, its coordinates, and a count. They contain no IP addresses, no identifiers, and nothing about who searched. Searches made via “use my location” are excluded from these counters entirely.

Browser storage. The site sets one session-storage flag (fn-near-logged) so a repeated search in the same tab is not double-counted in the aggregate counters. It stores no personal information and is deleted when you close the tab. We set no cookies of our own.

Server logs. Like nearly every website, our hosting infrastructure may keep short-lived technical logs (including IP addresses) for security and reliability. We do not use these logs to identify or profile visitors.

No accounts or passwords, no names, no email lists, no payment information, no advertising identifiers, no cross-site tracking, and no stored history of your precise location. There is no mechanism on this site that ties activity to an identifiable person.

When you use the site, your browser connects to a small number of services:

• Google Analytics (analytics, as described above).
• OpenFreeMap serves the basemap tiles behind our fire maps. Like any web request, tile requests include your IP address. Basemap data is © OpenFreeMap, OpenMapTiles, and OpenStreetMap contributors.

On the server side, we use a few processors on your behalf: when you search for a place or share your location, our server queries geocoding services (the US Census Geocoder, Photon by Komoot, and Open-Meteo Geocoding) with the place text or coordinates only, never with anything identifying you. Aggregate search counters are stored with Supabase. Wildfire, weather, and air-quality data shown on the site come from government and public sources and involve no visitor data at all.

Analytics data is retained according to Google Analytics settings. Aggregate, city-level search counters are kept indefinitely because they contain nothing personal. Session storage clears when you close the tab. Transient infrastructure logs rotate automatically.

• Decline the browser location prompt: every feature still works with a typed place name.
• Block analytics with your browser’s tracking protection, a content blocker, or Google’s opt-out browser add-on. The site works fully without analytics.
• Clear cookies and site data at any time through your browser settings.

Because we hold no personal data about you, there is generally nothing for us to access, correct, or delete, but if you believe we hold something about you, email us and we will investigate.

The site is a general-audience information service and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

The site is operated from the United States and data is processed there. By using the site you understand that your information (such as analytics data) is processed in the United States.

If our practices change, we will update this page and its effective date. The current version always lives at firenearby.com/privacy.

Questions about privacy: firenearbysupport@gmail.com. See also our Terms of Use.