prologue: (u can skip it)

SmartPhones try to spy and collect data, that why SmartPhone games and weather-apps are usually free.

Because the user pays with user data.

What even fuels the paranoia are stories like these: in 2011 Rothschild bought a controlling stake in “Weather Central”

why? is a legit question… why? oh why would they do that?

probably (unkown!) not to control the weather, but to understand it (!?) and thus secure their wealth from climate change, which gets harder and harder to ignore and deny even for the most self destructive business men (if their weather app does spying: also unkown)

weather in the browser

the easiest… and (probably) privacy friendly way to check on weather forecasts is still  firefox browser app and website/url or for mobile look at FOSS-Browser-App (vailable on f-droid.org) or for desktops: Tor-Firefox-Browser-Bundle (but Google blocks Tor, so no Google-weather in via tor).

what is important, that the weather forecast is displayed in a way, that:

  • the user can use (for free, or free registration via e-mail would be great)
  • the user can make sense of and will answer those questions with one nice overview/dashboard:
    • “will it be a dry or wet day today/tomorrow?”
    • “what temps and rain can be expected today/tomorrow/the next 3 days?” (most forecasts become very inaccurate beyond 3 days)
    • “when will the rain starts?” (completely unrelated game with the funny Risk of Rain X-D)
      • so how much risk of rain is today, tomorrow? (in mm is a good thing, so how much rain?)
      • when will the rain start? (aprox, nobody can predict it very accurate, rain radar animated maps help)

let’s start with dwd.de, their website aka dashboard

1) always the positive first: dwd re-generates a general weather forecast overview picture.png for the next 3 days, on a daily basis…

which is great to get an general overview, but of course it would be nice to know… when the exactly the rain starts 🙂

The dwd.de website needs a redo, it is primitive and user-unfriendly and speaks the language of “go figure out where to get that needed data”

privacy wise even worse: their WarnWetter App does not work on LineageOS (Android phones without Google)

Google Desktop View:

here Google has (nobody is doing everything wrong) a pretty nice and easy overview of the weather forecast, that with “one glimpse” tells the user

  • will it rain today?
  • when will the rain (probably) start? (usually it is coming later than predicted)

the problem:

  • of course Google is the BigBrother of BigData so should be avoided
  • this nice weather with the temp and rain curves is only available only Desktop Browsers!
    • workaround: If user wants it on mobile: Firefox Android App has a neat feature: “Desktop-Page” (View)

DuckDuckGo Weather

DuckDuckGo.com can do that now too: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=weather+lisboa&ia=weather

it’s okay… but here again: no hourly forecast of rain… no charts…

they are using: https://darksky.net/forecast/38.7204,-9.1373/ca24/en

the Open Source weather App: RadarWeather

whats great about it:

  • the app itself is 100% Open Source and privacy friendly
    • what might be problematic is BigData collection by OpenWeatherMap.org? (UK, London based, with whom will they share their data?)
      • see OpenWeather Ltd’s privacy statement here saying:
        • Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending our or third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by Contacting us
        • We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any company outside the OpenWeather Ltd group of companies for marketing purposes or potential investors.
        • EXTERNAL THIRD PARTIES are:
          • Professional advisers acting as processors including lawyers and auditors based in USA who provide banking, legal and accounting services.
          • HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities acting as processors based in the United Kingdom who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
          • Potential investors who signed non-disclosure and non-compete agreements.
  • the animated rain radar view is nice
    • “when will the rain start” question can be answered with the rain-radar view 🙂 so thumbs up and thanks for that 🙂
    • the user can try to answer the “will there be rain” and “when will the rain start” question, by side-scrolling the section below the day-of-week, giving and hourly update of the predicted temps and rain

how to get it?

download / get the apk android app: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.woheller69.weather/

“show me the src” https://github.com/woheller69/weather

This application is forked from Privacy Friendly Weather (https://github.com/SecUSo/privacy-friendly-weather) a privacy friendly weather app. The original function has been modified to support the new OpenWeather One Call API, which provides a lot more features, like precipitation forecast for the next 60 minutes, hourly forecasts for the next 2 days, 8 day week forecasts, etc. In addition a rain radar functionality powered by RainViewer API (https://www.rainviewer.com/api.html) has been added. More weather categories were added, most images and icons were replaced. RadiusSearch now also shows the results on a map with weather icons. A chart showing forecasts with min/max temperature and precipitation for the next week has been added. In addition to the built in city list it is now also possible to use search-as-you-type location search via the photon API (https://photon.komoot.io) which is based on OpenStreetMap.

RadarWeather lets you watch the weather for cities and locations you are interested in.

Weather data is provided via the free API from OpenWeatherMap. As the new One Call API allows only 1000 calls per day, every user must enter his own free OpenWeatherMap key (https://home.openweathermap.org/users/sign_up).
Data for the rain radar is retrieved via the free RainViewer API.

Features:
– Current weather
– Hourly forecasts for 48h / 3h forecasts for 5 days
– 8 day forecast
– Precipitation in next 60min
– Rain radar
– Radius search
– Widget with optional GPS auto position update
– No advertisement

Minimum permissions:
RadarWeather only requires the minimum amount of permission, namely only the INTERNET permission. This permission is necessary to make HTTP requests to remote servers for retrieving weather data.
Optional: authorization for GPS.

What privacy problems might arise?

This app has features you may not like. Learn more!

  • This app promotes non-free network services
    • OpenWeather used to be a partner of Google
      • (is Samsung still a partner? don’t have Samsung so can not tell)
      • but Google has shifted to weather.com
      • Non-Free Network Services – promotes or depends entirely on a non-libre network service”

definitely consider donations to:

https://liberapay.com/F-Droid-Data/donate

they publish their finances:

https://opencollective.com/f-droid#category-BUDGET

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