Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible for your information?

Astro Corner is the controller of personal information processed to operate the Astro Corner service. Astro Corner is an astronomy-focused community platform with profiles, posts, comments, direct messaging, Communities, projects, events, observing records, planning tools, media, astronomy alerts, search, moderation and account-security features.

Privacy enquiries can be sent to privacy@astrocorner.net.

2. Personal information Astro Corner may process

3. Why we use personal information and our lawful bases

Astro Corner uses personal information only where there is an appropriate lawful basis. Depending on the processing, this may include:

• Contract: to create and maintain your account, deliver the features you request, store your selected content and settings, provide messaging, Communities, events, observing tools, Trading Post classifieds and account support.
• Legitimate interests: to secure the service, prevent abuse and fraud, improve reliability, maintain audit records, operate proportionate moderation, investigate Trading Post safety/dispute reports, understand service performance and protect users, where those interests are not overridden by your rights.
• Legal obligation: where we must retain, disclose, restrict or process information to comply with applicable law, regulatory requirements or lawful orders.
• Consent: only where we specifically ask for a freely given, informed choice for an optional use that genuinely relies on consent. Consent requests will be presented separately where required and can be withdrawn for future processing.
• Vital interests/public task: only in unusual circumstances where the law permits and the situation genuinely requires that basis.

Agreeing to the Terms of Service is not treated as blanket consent to unrelated uses of personal data.

4. Google, Microsoft, Apple and Discord sign-in

If you choose a supported social sign-in provider, Astro Corner receives a stable provider account identifier and the limited identity information the provider releases for the requested sign-in scopes, such as email address, email-verification state and display/profile information.

Astro Corner does not receive your provider password and does not request access to Gmail, Google Drive, Outlook mail, OneDrive, iCloud files, Discord private messages, Discord server administration, contacts or unrelated provider content as part of the current sign-in implementation.

Provider identities are linked using the provider’s stable subject identifier, not silently merged just because two accounts report the same email address. Google, Microsoft and Discord access tokens used during sign-in are not retained as long-lived account-access credentials after identity verification. Where Apple supplies a refresh token needed for account-link revocation, Astro Corner may store it encrypted until the link is removed or no longer needed.

You can manage linked providers from Account Security. Removing a provider link does not automatically delete the provider account itself.

5. Precise locations, public observing sites and astronomy conditions

Precise observing coordinates can reveal a home, workplace or regular travel pattern. Personal/home coordinates are therefore designed to remain private unless you deliberately choose a broader visibility setting. A separate public label can be used instead of exact coordinates.

Public observing-site pages are intended for locations that are suitable to identify publicly. If you publish a public site, report or image, the information you choose to publish may be visible to anyone according to the page visibility.

When you request a forecast, coordinates and related forecast parameters are sent to the configured weather provider to obtain forecast data. Astro Corner stores forecast or observed-condition snapshots with relevant observing records where this is necessary to preserve historical context.

If you use the browser’s “use my device location” feature, your browser asks you for permission. The coordinates are used to fill the location form; Astro Corner does not need continuous background device tracking for this feature.

6. Public, member-only and private information

Astro Corner contains several visibility controls. Public content can be viewed and redistributed by other people outside our control. Public profiles and supported public content may also be exposed through public discovery pages and XML sitemaps, and may be indexed, cached, quoted or surfaced by search engines and AI-powered search or retrieval services. Member-only, follower, friend, Community, unlisted and private controls are intended to restrict ordinary access within Astro Corner, but no online system can guarantee that another authorised viewer will not copy what they can see.

Before posting, review the visibility selected for the item, especially for media, event addresses and location information.

7. Who we may share information with

We share only the information reasonably needed to operate the feature you use. Current integrations can include:

• Google, Microsoft, Apple and Discord for optional account authentication, as described above;
• Open-Meteo, or another configured weather provider, when a forecast is requested. Forecast requests can include observing coordinates, timezone and forecast parameters;
• Astrometry.net when plate solving is enabled and an image is submitted for solving. The configured integration submits the image as a private/non-public Astrometry.net submission;
• NASA GSFC, NASA/JPL, NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, the U.S. Naval Observatory and the International Meteor Organization as astronomy-data sources. Astro Corner primarily retrieves shared catalogue/event data from these sources rather than sending them user profiles;
• the configured hosting, email/SMTP, infrastructure and security providers where technically necessary to deliver, secure and maintain the service.

Providers may act as processors, independent controllers, or both depending on the service and circumstances. Their own terms and privacy information can also apply to information they receive.

We may also disclose information where reasonably necessary to comply with law, respond to lawful authority, protect a person from a serious threat, investigate fraud/security incidents, enforce legal rights, or transfer the service as part of a genuine corporate reorganisation subject to appropriate safeguards.

Astro Corner does not sell personal information to advertisers and is designed without conventional targeted advertising or engagement-ranking business models.

8. International transfers

Some third-party providers may process information outside the United Kingdom. Where UK data-protection law requires safeguards for an international transfer, Astro Corner will use an appropriate transfer mechanism or rely on another lawful route made available by applicable law.

9. How long information is kept

Retention depends on the type of information and why it is needed. In general:

• active account/profile data is kept while the account is active;
• posts, media, messages, observations, projects and other user records are kept until deleted, anonymised, archived or otherwise handled under the relevant feature and account lifecycle;
• security, login, rate-limit and audit information is kept for a proportionate period needed to investigate abuse, protect accounts and demonstrate security actions;
• moderation records may be retained after content removal where necessary for appeals, repeat-abuse detection, safety or legal claims;
• OAuth flow records and one-time tokens are short-lived and expire after their security purpose ends;
• backup copies may remain for a limited rotation period after deletion before being overwritten;
• information required by law or for legal claims may be retained for the applicable period.

Account deletion may remove some records, anonymise others, and preserve limited information where deletion would undermine another person’s record, a moderation/legal obligation, security evidence or the integrity of a durable shared record.

10. Security

Astro Corner uses technical and organisational measures intended to protect personal information, including prepared database queries, CSRF protection, secure sessions, optional two-factor authentication, password hashing, OAuth state/nonce/PKCE protections where applicable, rate limiting, upload validation, security headers, access controls, audit records and restricted staff actions.

No internet service can guarantee absolute security. If you believe your account or Astro Corner has a security problem, contact us promptly and avoid publicly posting exploit details that could increase risk to users.

11. Cookies and local browser storage

Astro Corner uses strictly necessary session/security cookies and may use local browser storage for interface preferences or similar service functionality. OAuth sign-in uses temporary browser state/correlation data to prevent login-request tampering. If Astro Corner later introduces non-essential analytics or other optional storage requiring consent, it will be handled separately from essential service storage.

12. Automated processing and ranking

Astro Corner intentionally avoids conventional engagement-ranking algorithms and global popularity scores. Some features do perform automated calculations, matching or ordering—for example search matching, target visibility, forecast-derived planning, alerts, anti-abuse/rate limits and project opportunity matching. These processes support service functionality and are not intended to make solely automated decisions producing similarly significant legal effects about you.

13. Adults-only service and children

Astro Corner currently requires users to be 18 or over and asks for date of birth to enforce that eligibility rule. We do not intentionally offer account registration to children. If we learn that an account belongs to someone below the minimum age, we may restrict or close it and handle the information according to applicable law and safety considerations.

14. Your data-protection rights

Depending on the circumstances, UK data-protection law may give you rights to be informed, access your information, correct inaccurate information, request erasure, restrict processing, object to certain processing, receive portable information, and raise concerns about solely automated decisions. Where processing relies on consent, you can withdraw that consent for future processing.

Some rights are qualified and do not always require deletion or disclosure—for example where information must be retained for legal claims, another person’s rights, security or other lawful reasons. Astro Corner provides account export, privacy, security and account-lifecycle controls to support these rights.

You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office if you believe your personal information has been handled unlawfully.

15. Changes to this notice

We may update this Privacy Policy as Astro Corner changes or legal requirements develop. The effective version is shown at the top. Material changes may also be announced within the service.