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This privacy statement provides information about how we process your personal and non-personal data in connection with the MeteoSwiss app.
This privacy statement provides information about how we process your personal and non-personal data in connection with the MeteoSwiss app.
The MeteoSwiss app is one of the main distribution channels of the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss. It includes weather forecasts, current measurement readings and natural hazard warnings in Switzerland and the MeteoSwiss weather and climate blog. It is therefore designed for people in Switzerland.
This privacy statement provides information about how we process your personal and non-personal data in connection with the MeteoSwiss app (hereinafter also referred to as the “app”).
By downloading the app, you agree to the usage rights (Legal information) and this privacy statement.
For the MeteoSwiss website's privacy statement, see: Privacy statement
“Personal data” means data that relates to an identified or identifiable person, i.e. it is possible to draw conclusions about their identity based on the data itself or with relevant additional data. Further data generated when using the app may contain a unique, non-personal identifier which we are unable to assign to a named individual.
“Processing” means any handling of data, e.g. collection, storage, use, disclosure and deletion.
The Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss (“MeteoSwiss” or “we”) is responsible for data processing in accordance with this privacy statement.
With any processing of personal data, there are one or more entities that assume primary responsibility for ensuring that the data processing complies with the requirements of data protection law. This entity is called the “controller”. Among other things, it is responsible for responding to requests for information and for ensuring that personal data is secured and only used in ways that are permissible by law.
If you wish to contact us, please write to the data protection officer at the following address:
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss
Data Protection Officer
Operation Center 1
P.O. Box 257
CH-8058 Zurich Airport
If you use the contact form or contact us in any other way and disclose your name, email address or other personal data, we will process this data.
You can also use the app without disclosing personal data such as your name or email address. In this case, we can assign the data collected during use of the app (see section 3.2) to specific devices, but not to named individuals.
When the app is installed, the app store operator (e.g. Apple or Google) processes certain data under its own responsibility and in accordance with its own privacy policy. Data may be collected and also passed on to third parties via these services. MeteoSwiss has no influence over, and is not responsible for, the collection and subsequent use of this data.
Each time the app is installed, a push token is created that is linked to the postcode or mountain favourites that you have specified. This allows us to display push notifications about severe weather warnings on your device.
When the app is used, the following data and device information is processed:
The “Locations based on your usage” feature uses interactions with “Local forecasts” and “Find a location” and, with your consent, uses location data to keep a list of relevant locations. The data required for this is only stored locally in the app. MeteoSwiss does not have access to it.
Push notifications for severe weather warnings for “Your locations” and all other features work even without authorisation to access your location.
We process personal and other data for the following purposes (for more information about specific purposes, see section 5 onwards):
Operation of the app: Some data required for operation of the app is collected automatically when the app is used. Subject to consent, additional data is processed for specific features (e.g. for crowdsourced meteo reports).
Security and stability: We process data to improve the security and stability of the app.
Statistics: Data may be processed for statistical purposes (e.g. information about app use, app content or the distribution of different app versions). This information is collected without session tracking, i.e. multiple uses are not correlated. See section 5 for more details.
Improving our services: We use data to continuously improve the app and other services (e.g. by responding to different uses, adapting existing content or developing new content).
Communication: We use data to communicate with you, for example if you have contacted us using the contact form. For this purpose, we process the personal content of the communication as well as data on the type and time of communication.
Compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements: We may process data in order to comply with laws, instructions and recommendations from other authorities and internal regulations. This includes the prevention, detection and investigation of criminal offences and other violations, internal and external investigations and the disclosure of data to other authorities.
Defence against and enforcement of claims: We may use data for civil and criminal proceedings or for defence in such proceedings.
“App Insights” and “Sentry” are used for analytics, statistics and crash logs. Both systems run on the app servers, do not collect any personal data and do not share any data with third parties.
Service providers: In certain domains, we work with external service providers who are given access to data and process it at our request in order to fulfil their obligations (e.g. for app development, hosting, support, maintenance and testing). These service providers are each subject to contractual and/or statutory confidentiality and data protection obligations.
Authorities and offices: In connection with the exercise of rights, defence against claims and fulfilment of legal requirements, we may pass on data to other authorities, offices, courts and other public bodies, for example in the context of official, legal, pre-trial and extrajudicial proceedings and in the context of legal information requirements and cooperation obligations.
Your data is not processed solely by us but also by other authorities or external service providers in Switzerland and abroad within the limits of mandates and collaboration projects. Services provided by Cloudflare (content delivery network) and Amazon Web Services (AWS, cloud services) are used to ensure a high level of availability and performance in app operation. The app also uses push services from Apple (APNS) and Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging). These services have local branches and infrastructure in Switzerland, but depending on the service, data is also processed in other countries, including outside the European Union or the European Economic Area (i.e. also in so-called third countries).
We store data for as long as required for our processing purposes, any retention periods and our legitimate interests in processing for documentation and evidence purposes. The duration of our data processing is therefore based on statutory provisions and internal regulations and on the processing purposes (see section 4), which also include the safeguarding of our interests, e.g. for the enforcement of or defence against claims or for documentation and evidence purposes.
We handle data confidentially and take appropriate security measures of a technical and organisational nature to safeguard the confidentiality, integrity and availability of your data, to protect it against unauthorised or unlawful processing and to counter the risk of loss, unintentional modification, involuntary disclosure or unauthorised access.
Under the applicable law, you have the right to information, correction, deletion, restriction of data processing and objection to our data processing and the right to receive from us, free of charge and in a readable format, the personal data that you have provided to us. You also have the right to revoke consents, but doing so does not affect the legitimacy of the data processing performed prior to the revocation. Please note that we will need to identify you in order for you to exercise the aforementioned rights and that these rights may be subject to specific restrictions or exemptions.
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, you can get in touch with us using the contact details provided in section 2. You can also contact the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner: Contact - FDPIC