Privacy Policy

Last updated August 26, 2026

Short Version

AviHawk doesn't run ad trackers or analytics scripts, and doesn't sell your data. An account is optional — most of the site (registry lookups, weather) works with no login and no personal information at all. If you do create an account, we collect the minimum needed to run it: username, email, a securely hashed password, and whatever profile info you choose to add.

What We Log

Like any web server, ours records standard access logs for each request: IP address, requested URL, timestamp, user agent, and referrer. This is used only for operating and securing the site (debugging, abuse/attack detection) and isn't shared with third parties.

What Stays On Your Device

Preferences like your chosen temperature/wind units and "favorited" tail numbers are saved using your browser's local storage, not sent to our server. Clearing your browser data removes them.

If You Create An Account

We store your username, email, and password — the password only ever as a one-way bcrypt hash, never in plain text or anywhere we could read it back. A session cookie keeps you logged in; it's not used for tracking or advertising. Anything you choose to add to your profile (bio, home airport, ratings, aircraft in your fleet, who you follow) is stored and shown per the visibility rules described on those pages — for example, an unverified instructor-rating request is visible only to you until we approve it. Your email is used only for account purposes: verifying it's really you, and password resets. We don't send marketing email and don't share your email with anyone else.

Deleting your account (email [email protected] to request this) removes your profile, ratings, fleet, and follow relationships.

Aircraft Registry Data

Search results for U.S. tail numbers can include a registered owner's name, city, and state. This is not information we collect about you — it's public record data published by the FAA in its Releasable Aircraft Database, which we mirror and display as-is. If you're an aircraft owner and want your information withheld, that's handled directly through the FAA's own privacy procedure under 49 U.S.C. §44114(b), not through this site.

Third-Party Data Sources

To show weather and live position data, our server makes outbound requests to NOAA's Aviation Weather Center, OurAirports, and adsb.lol on your behalf. These requests only ever include the airport code, tail number, or aircraft hex code you searched for — never anything that identifies you personally. Account-related email (verification, password reset) is sent through Resend; it receives your email address and the message content only, solely to deliver that email.

Payments

If you pay a school through AviHawk, your card details go directly to Stripe, Inc., our payment processor — they're entered into Stripe's own secure form and never pass through or get stored on our server. We only store the resulting transaction record: amount, description, timestamp, and Stripe's reference ID for it, not your card number. Stripe's own privacy policy governs how they handle your payment details.

A school's admins can see the transaction history for their own school, including which of their members made which payment, since that's necessary for them to run their billing. We don't share your payment activity with any other school, or with anyone outside AviHawk and Stripe.

If you're a school admin connecting a Stripe account to accept payments, Stripe collects business and identity verification information (business details, banking information, and identity documents) directly from you during their own onboarding flow — we never see or store that information ourselves.

Changes

If this policy changes, the "last updated" date above will change with it.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or to request your data be deleted: [email protected]