Privacy Notice

1. Who we are

Flood Sentinel is operated by Adam Murphy as a sole trader trading as Flood Sentinel, based in New South Wales, Australia. Our contact for privacy enquiries is privacy@floodsentinel.com.au.

2. What we collect

Account data — email address, bcrypt-hashed password, plan tier, account creation timestamp, last-login timestamp.

Billing data — subscription state and invoicing history. Card details are handled exclusively by Stripe; we never see them.

Usage data — API request counts, IP address, browser/user-agent, alert delivery logs, audit-trail of plan changes.

Alert subscriptions — the catchments and stations you've opted to receive alerts for, and (if provided) your phone number for SMS delivery.

We do not use third-party analytics or advertising cookies. The only cookies we set are session cookies essential for keeping you signed in.

3. Why we collect it

• To provide the service you've signed up for.
• To enforce plan-tier limits and bill you correctly.
• To deliver alerts you've opted into (email, SMS, webhook).
• To investigate security incidents, abuse, and rate-limit violations.
• To meet our legal obligations (e.g. tax, financial-records retention).

4. Hydrological data

Rain and river observations served by Flood Sentinel come from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's Flood Warning Network — the legislated public data feed under the Water Regulations 2008. This data is environmental sensor output, not personal information. See our data attribution page for the licensing terms.

5. Where it's stored & cross-border transfers

Personal information is stored on the following systems:

• Primary database: Hetzner Online GmbH, Germany (EU).
• Encrypted backups: Backblaze B2, USA (AES-256 server-side encryption).
• Disaster-recovery replica: QNAP appliance in our operations facility, NSW Australia.

By signing up you consent to your account information being stored in Germany and replicated to the United States and Australia for backup and disaster-recovery purposes. We rely on the Hetzner DPA and Backblaze SOC-2 attestation for cross-border safeguards.

6. Third-party processors

• Stripe (USA/Ireland) — payment processing. Their privacy notice applies to card data.
• Hetzner Online GmbH (Germany) — primary hosting.
• Backblaze (USA) — encrypted off-site backups.
• Twilio (USA, when SMS alerts are enabled) — SMS delivery. Phone numbers are passed to Twilio at send time only.
• Cloudflare (USA/global) — DNS only; no traffic proxying.

We do not sell or rent personal information. We do not share it with advertisers, data brokers, or marketing platforms.

7. How long we keep it

• Active account: for as long as you maintain a subscription.
• After cancellation: 30 days, then deleted from the primary database. Backups containing your data age out within 90 days.
• Billing records: retained for 7 years to comply with Australian Taxation Office record-keeping requirements.
• Audit logs: 12 months.

8. Security

• TLS 1.2+ for every connection (HSTS enforced).
• Passwords stored only as bcrypt hashes — never plaintext.
• JWT-based session tokens, signed with a 4096-bit secret rotated quarterly.
• Volume-level encryption on the primary database disk.
• Automated daily backups, point-in-time WAL recovery, and DR replica.
• Stripe webhook signature verification, replay-attack idempotency.

9. Your rights

You have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate or incomplete information.
• Delete your account — this anonymises the billing trail and removes alert subscriptions immediately.
• Export your data in JSON/CSV format on request.
• Withdraw consent for SMS alerts, marketing email, or any optional processing.
• Lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) if you believe we've mishandled your information.

Email privacy@floodsentinel.com.au to exercise any of these rights. We will respond within 30 days.

10. Children

Flood Sentinel is not directed to children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you become aware that a child has signed up, contact us and we'll delete the account.

11. Changes to this notice

We may update this notice from time to time. Material changes will be notified by email at least 30 days before they take effect. The current version is always available at this URL with a “Last updated” date in the header.

12. Contact

Privacy enquiries: privacy@floodsentinel.com.au
General support: support@floodsentinel.com.au
Postal: available on request.