The quesiton of privacy is an excellent one and probably worth splitting this off into it’s own topic. Allowing users the option to provide third-party access to their data in an open & useful way is core to our approach. It’s what makes all of the integrations (like IFTTT, Weather Underground, Alexa, etc.) possible. But we also recognize that there are privacy concerns. We are committed to the seemingly conflicting goals of (1) allowing you to share your data and (2) allowing you to maintain your privacy.
The location delivered by our API for stations set to “share publicly” is the location you set in the app when you configured your station. This location is part of your station’s metadata (name, elevation, indoor/outdoor, height above ground are others), which you have complete control over. With your permission, we use your phone’s location to center the map, making it easier to set your station’s location (typing in latitude/longitude coordinates is a pain!), but can set the location where ever you like. @GaryFunk’s map uses our API and therfore only shows stations where the “share publicly” setting is toggled “on”. If that setting is toggled “off” then your data requires authentication to view and is therefore invisible to anyone who does not have your username and password.
If you want to hide or obscure your location, there are currently two ways to do that:
- To completely hide your station, its data and metadata, you can open the app, go to Settings->Stations->[your station] and toggle the “share publicly” setting to “off”. If you do that, the only way to see your data will be to sign in to one of the Smart Weather apps with your username and password. To everyone else, you’ll be invisible. As @Phoenix points out, this will disable Weather Underground and any other integrations that don’t provide an authentication feature.
- To continue sharing your data but obscure or hide your actual location, simply change your station’s location by a small amount: Open the app, go to Settings->Stations->[your station]->location and move the marker. You can set it as close or as far to the actual location as you like. But be aware that moving it too far may have unintended consequences. For example, your forecast and some of your derived parameters rely on your location to be the most accurate.
But what if you want to share your data publicly but you don’t want to disclose your station’s location accurately? We’re in the process (thanks in part to earlier field tester feedback regarding location sensitivity) of adding a feature to address this case. After much discussion, we’ve decided the most flexible solution is to add a “public location” (along with a “public name”) field to each station’s meta-data. This public location would be pre-filled with a “fuzzified” version of your station’s actual location (as Blitzortung and others do). The public location would be delivered transparently and instead of the regular location to any unauthenticated requests over our API and any applications or integrations that use it. Your actual location would be used internally for forecasts and derived parameters, but only authenticated users (yourself or others you give permission to) would be able to see your actual location. Finally, those users who are not sensitive to sharing their accurate location would have the option of overrided the fuzzified location and setting the “public location” to the same value as the actual location.