Privacy

The short version

• There are no ads, analytics services or tracking scripts.
• Accounts are optional. You only have one if you sign in to the Sticker Book with Google.
• The site sets no cookies unless you sign in to the Sticker Book.
• Your settings stay in your own browser.
• Visitor numbers are counted on our server, without cookies, and kept only as daily totals.
• Some things on the page come straight from other services, mainly YouTube (videos and pictures) and Esri (the map). Your browser connects to them, so they see your IP address.

Cookies and storage on your device

AirLive sets no cookies for visitors unless you sign in to the Sticker Book (see Sticker Book accounts). To remember your choices, the home page uses your browser’s local storage, which stays on your device:

• your favourite streams and channels
• whether live planes are switched on
• whether the live chat panel is open
• your Multi-view grid, if you use one
• your Sticker Book: the stickers you collect and any notes you add. If you sign in, your stickers are also saved to your account, but your notes never leave your browser.

You can clear these at any time by clearing this site’s data in your browser.

Tower, the site’s admin area, sets one sign-in cookie (airlive_admin). It’s only for the site’s admin. It lasts at most 12 hours and is removed when they sign out. To slow down password guessing, failed sign-ins are counted against a one-way code made from the IP address. Old entries are cleared out after an hour, the next time a sign-in fails.

Visitor statistics

Our own server counts page views and visitors. It uses no cookies and no outside analytics service.

To count each visitor only once a day, the server makes a one-way code (a hash) from your IP address, your browser’s user agent and a random key that’s made fresh each day. The key and that day’s codes are kept together in one file on our server, which is deleted at the first visit counted on the next day (UK time). Your IP address and user agent are never written down.

The page also tells our server when a stream is played (which stream) and when a link is shared (how it was shared).

We also count which website sent you here (the domain only) and whether you are on a phone or a computer. Your country is counted only if our hosting passes it to us in the request. We never look it up from your IP address.

Only the daily totals are kept, for 13 months. Search engines and other bots aren’t counted.

The contact form

The contact form sends what you type to us by email: your name, your email address, the reason, an optional link and your message. It isn’t stored on the website. Your email address is used to reply to you.

To stop spam and abuse, each sender can send 3 messages an hour and 10 a day. To enforce this, the server keeps a one-way code made from your IP address, with the times you sent messages. Entries more than 24 hours old are deleted the next time anyone sends a message. There’s also a limit of 50 messages a day across the whole site.

The form uses no cookies.

Server logs

The site is hosted by IONOS. Like most web hosts, IONOS keeps standard logs of requests to its servers, which typically include the IP address, the page asked for, the time and the browser. It keeps these under its own policies.

The site’s own code only logs errors, and leaves out visitor details on purpose.

YouTube videos

The streams are YouTube videos. AirLive doesn’t host them.

The video player loads from youtube-nocookie.com, YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode. It loads only when you choose a stream or open a link to one. Once a player has loaded, YouTube (Google) receives your IP address and handles your data under its own policies.

On wide screens, while a stream is playing, the live chat next to it loads from youtube.com itself, not the privacy-enhanced youtube-nocookie.com. The chat panel is open by default, and you can close it.

Stream pictures (thumbnails) load from YouTube’s image server (i.ytimg.com) whenever a page shows them. Links to YouTube, including Watch on YouTube and the rows in Coming up, take you to YouTube itself.

See Google’s privacy policy.

The map

Your browser loads the map background (tiles) directly from Esri’s servers (server.arcgisonline.com), so Esri sees your IP address and which part of the map you are looking at.

The map software (Leaflet) and the fonts are hosted on our own server. Nothing is loaded from Google Fonts.

Planes, weather and flight data

Our server fetches the live planes, rare aircraft, arrivals and departures, and airport weather, and your browser only asks our server. The sources are adsb.lol, adsb.fi as a backup, and aviationweather.gov for the weather.

Those services see our server, not you. When planes are switched on, our server sends them the map position you are looking at, but nothing about you.

The Sticker Book

If you don’t sign in, your Sticker Book is kept only in your browser’s local storage, and your stickers and notes are never sent to us.

When you add a sticker, your browser sends the aircraft’s registration to our server. Our server looks it up at adsbdb.com and Planespotters.net, so they see a request from our server, not from you. To prevent abuse, each IP address can look up 60 aircraft an hour, and there’s a much higher limit for photo requests. These are refreshing the photos of stickers you already have, and showing the photo when you hover over a registration in a stream’s Inbound/Outbound list, which sends that registration to our server. To enforce these limits, our server keeps a one-way code made from your IP address, along with the times of your lookups and photo requests, for one hour.

When you add an aircraft from a stream’s list of nearby aircraft, or from its Inbound/Outbound list, your browser also asks our server to check that the aircraft is near that stream’s airport right now. The check uses the same live planes data as the map. If it is, the sticker gets a Spotted live mark. Each IP address can make 120 of these checks an hour. They’re counted with the same one-way code made from your IP address, which is kept for one hour.

Aircraft photos load straight from Planespotters.net (cdn.planespotters.net), so Planespotters sees your IP address. That happens in the Sticker Book and when you hover over a registration in a stream’s Inbound/Outbound list. Clicking a photo takes you to Planespotters.net itself. See Planespotters.net’s privacy policy.

Sticker Book accounts (Sign in with Google)

You can sign in with your Google account to save your stickers and see them on all your devices. It’s optional, and the Sticker Book works fine without it.

Google’s sign-in only loads when you tap Sign in to sync. Google then handles the sign-in under its own privacy policy and tells us who you are. We ask only for the basic sign-in details, such as your Google account’s id, name and email address. We don’t get access to anything else in your Google account.

What we keep on our server, and why:

• a one-way code made from your Google account’s id, so we can find your stickers when you sign in again. We don’t keep the id itself.
• your first name, to show who’s signed in
• your stickers: each aircraft’s registration and details, when and how often you spotted it, the streams and airports where you spotted it, and whether it was spotted live
• for each browser you’re signed in on, a one-way code made from its sign-in cookie, and when it was last used

We don’t keep your email address, your Google profile picture or anything else Google sends us. Your notes and photo details stay in your browser and are never sent to us.

Signing in sets two cookies. airlive_sb keeps you signed in for up to 180 days after you last used it, and airlive_csrf stops other websites from making changes to your account. Signing out removes airlive_sb and ends that sign-in on our server. Your stickers stay in your account and in that browser.

To prevent abuse, each IP address can try to sign in 20 times an hour and sync 600 times an hour. These limits use the same one-way code made from your IP address as the lookup limit, kept for one hour.

To delete everything, open the Sticker Book, sign in and choose Delete my account and stickers. We delete your account, your stickers and every sign-in straight away, and the Sticker Book also clears this browser’s copy. You can also ask us to delete it through the contact form.

Swapping stickers is optional. If you put a sticker up for swap you choose a swap name (not your Google name). Other signed-in collectors who search for that registration see your swap name, that sticker’s details and dates, and the registration you’d like back (never your notes or the streams you watched). The sections below explain swaps, follows, collector pages and the leaderboard.

We keep your account until you delete it.

Swaps

If you swap stickers, we keep a record of the swap on our server: who asked, who was asked, which stickers were offered and wanted, and whether the swap was accepted, declined or cancelled. Open requests lapse after 7 days, and finished requests are kept for 30 days. A record of each completed swap, with both collectors’ names and the stickers swapped, stays in your swap history.

Follows

If you follow another collector, we keep a note that you follow them, so we can show you their updates. You can unfollow at any time, and that link is deleted straight away.

Collector pages

Your collector page is off unless you turn it on. When it’s on, anyone can see your collector name, your stickers and your recent swaps. In your recent swaps, the other collector’s name only appears if they’ve turned their page on too. If they haven’t, they’re shown as “a collector”.

Leaderboard

Only collectors whose page is turned on appear on the leaderboard. It shows your collector name, how many stickers you have, how many are shiny, how many collections you’ve completed and how many swaps you’ve made. It’s refreshed every 5 minutes. If you turn your page off, your name comes off the leaderboard straight away.

Sightings

When a sticker is stamped “Spotted live”, we add one to a daily count for that aircraft type (for example, “A320: 14 today”). The count doesn’t record who spotted it.

Once per aircraft per day

To stop the Sticker Book being spammed, each collector can only stamp an aircraft once a day. To check this, we keep a one-way code (a hash) made from your account, or from your IP address if you’re not signed in, together with the aircraft and a secret key that only our server has. The code can’t be turned back into your account or IP address, and it’s deleted after 24 hours.

Visitor counts

Visitor numbers use a different one-way code, made with a random value that changes every day and is deleted the next day.

Deleting your account

If you delete your account, we delete your Sticker Book, collector name, follows, swap history and stickers listed for swapping, and we cancel any open swap requests.

The map on other websites

Other websites can show the AirLive map. That map works the same way: it loads Esri’s map tiles and YouTube pictures, and it sets no cookies or local storage.

Facebook and other links

Our Facebook link is a plain link: there is no Facebook code on the site. Links to other websites take you to sites with their own privacy policies.

Questions

For any question about this page or your information, use the contact form.