Privacy Policy

Privacy policy for Ray Thurman and other connected websites

Last Updated: July 2025

1. Introduction

Welcome to the privacy policy for Ray Thurman's application platform. We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting the personal information you share with us. This policy describes how we collect, use, and safeguard your information across our connected websites and applications, including the Geospatial Playground interactive map.

2. Information Storage and Local Data

Our Commitment to Local Storage: A core principle of our applications is to keep your data in your control. Wherever possible, any info created across our app platform for any of our applications stores content in local storage and is used for no other purposes. This means that user-generated content (such as notes, drafts, or application state) is primarily stored locally on your device (in Local Storage or IndexedDB) and is not synced to our servers unless explicitly required for a specific feature (like submitting a bug report or using an AI feature).

Map Preferences:The Geospatial Playground stores your layer visibility, opacity, basemap choice, and panel state in your browser's local storage. This data never leaves your device. Map view position (latitude, longitude, zoom) is encoded in the URL hash so you can share or bookmark a specific view, but it is not sent to our servers.

3. Information We Collect

While we prioritize local storage, certain information is collected automatically or voluntarily to maintain the platform's functionality, security, and performance.

  • Voluntary Information: Information you provide when you contact us, use our AI chat features, or submit feedback (e.g., creating a GitHub issue).
  • Usage Data: We may collect information about how you access and use the platform, including your IP address, browser type, operating system, and pages visited.
  • Cookies and Tracking: We use cookies and similar technologies to track activity on our service and hold certain information for analytics and advertising purposes.
  • Geolocation (Opt-in):The Near Me tool on the interactive map can request your device's location using the browser Geolocation API. This is entirely optional— the tool will not access your location unless you click "Use my GPS" and grant permission in your browser. Your location is processed only in your browser to display a pin and scan for nearby map features; it is not sent to our servers or stored. Alternatively, you can use "Use map center" which does not access geolocation at all.
  • Place Search Queries: When you use the map search box, your search text (e.g., a place name or address) is sent to our server and forwarded to the OpenStreetMap Nominatim geocoding service to retrieve matching locations. These queries are cached server-side to reduce upstream requests. We do not store search queries beyond the caching period (24 hours for forward search, 7 days for reverse geocode).

4. Third-Party Services

We utilize trusted third-party services to provide specific functionalities. These services may process your data in accordance with their own privacy policies.

  • Ollama (AI): We use Ollama to provide AI-powered chat features. User input sent to the chat agent is processed by the AI model to generate responses.
  • Google Analytics: We use Google Analytics to understand website traffic and usage patterns to improve user experience.
  • Google AdSense: We may display advertisements provided by Google AdSense, which may use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to our website or other websites.
  • Sentry: We use Sentry to track errors and monitor application performance. This may include capturing IP addresses and session data to help us debug and resolve technical issues.
  • Upstash (Redis): We use Upstash for rate limiting to protect our API from abuse. Your IP address may be temporarily stored for this purpose. Upstash is also used to cache map data responses (weather alerts, stream data, elevation data, geocode results) to reduce load on public data providers and keep the map fast.
  • GitHub: If you submit an issue or feedback through our platform, that content is transmitted to GitHub to create a public or private issue in our repositories.

5. Geospatial Data Sources

The interactive map displays data from public government and open-data services. When you pan or zoom the map, your browser requests map tiles and data from these sources, either directly or through our caching proxies:

  • Esri ArcGIS Online: Basemap imagery, streets, topographic, and hillshade tiles. Esri Privacy
  • NASA GIBS: Vegetation (NDVI) satellite imagery. NASA Privacy
  • USGS National Hydrography Dataset: Streams and waterbodies, fetched based on your current map view bounding box. USGS Privacy
  • NIFC / WFIGS: Active wildfire perimeters from the National Interagency Fire Center. NIFC Privacy
  • NOAA / NWS api.weather.gov: Active weather alerts (watches, warnings, advisories). NOAA Privacy
  • EPA AirNow: Air quality (PM2.5) monitoring data. EPA Privacy
  • Open-Meteo: Elevation data for the profile tool. Open-Meteo Terms
  • OpenStreetMap Nominatim: Place search and reverse geocoding for the map search box. Your search queries are sent to Nominatim via our proxy. OSM Privacy

These data sources are accessed through our Edge-cached API proxies, which add a server-side caching layer (via Upstash Redis) to minimize requests to the upstream providers. The cached data includes only the public geospatial responses (map features, weather alerts, elevation values) — no personal data is included in the cache.

6. How We Use Your Information

We use the collected data for the following purposes:

  • To provide and maintain our Service (e.g., AI responses, content delivery, interactive map features).
  • To monitor the usage of our Service and detect technical issues.
  • To protect our platform from abuse (e.g., rate limiting).
  • To improve our website through analytics.
  • To cache public geospatial data for performance and to reduce load on public data providers.

7. Data Security

The security of your data is important to us. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your Personal Data, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. We encourage you to use our local-storage-first applications which keep your personal data on your own device. Geolocation data accessed by the Near Me tool is processed entirely in your browser and is never transmitted to or stored on our servers.

8. Your Browser Permissions

The interactive map may request the following browser permissions, all of which are opt-in and can be revoked at any time through your browser settings:

  • Geolocation:Requested only when you use the Near Me tool and click "Use my GPS." You can decline this prompt and use "Use map center" instead, which does not access geolocation.
  • Local Storage: Used to remember your map layer preferences and panel state between visits. No personal data is stored — only UI preferences.

9. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page. You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes.

10. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us via the contact methods available on our website.