Last Updated: October 2026
Bright Forge Labs LLC
What’s That Smell? helps people explore publicly available environmental information and understand what may be in the air and ground around them. There are no user accounts, no logins, and no cross-app or cross-site tracking. We do not sell information that identifies you as an individual.
We do not collect or store:
We do not create user accounts, and we do not ask you to sign in to use the App.
The App accesses your device location only when you use a feature that needs it — searching the map around you, or submitting a report. If you decline location access, you can still use the App by typing a city, address, or ZIP code instead.
When you submit a report, the location you choose is stored with that report. Your location is not used to track you, is not combined with data from other apps or websites, and is not sold in a form that identifies you.
When you submit a smell report, an emission report, or a correction about a facility, we record:
Reports are submitted without an account and are not attached to your name or identity. Please do not include personal information about yourself or anyone else in the notes field. Notes are stored as written.
Smell reports are shared with other people who use the App, and shown on the map at whatsthatsmell.app, so that a community can see what has recently been noticed nearby. For a report you submit, other users can see:
The words in your notes are not shared with other users — only the emojis are — and neither is your device identifier. We keep the full notes ourselves, as described in Section 4. An approximate location is not a guarantee of anonymity: avoid reporting from a place you would not want associated with a report. Shared reports appear on the map for up to seven days. Reports sent from versions of the App older than 1.3.0 are not shown on the community map; as before, they can appear in the optional “nearby report alerts”, now with an approximate location.
Other users can flag a report for our review, or choose to hide reports from the same contributor on their own device. To make that work we store which reports a device has flagged or hidden. On the website this uses a random identifier kept only in your browser; clearing your browser data forgets it, and anything you hid will show again. Nobody is shown who submitted a report. To keep the shared map useful we also limit how many reports from one device are shown to others in a short period; reports over the limit are still saved.
We do not store your IP address. When your device contacts our servers, we convert the network address into a one-way fingerprint that cannot be reversed back into an address, and store only that. It is used solely to detect and prevent abuse — spam, automated submissions, and repeat offenders — and to block submitters who break the rules. It is not used to identify you, not used for advertising, and not sold.
We also record the app version and platform making the request, so we can diagnose faults and interpret bad data.
The App generates a random identifier the first time you use it and stores it on your device. It is not your name, your email, your phone number, or any identifier issued by Apple, Google, or an advertiser, and it is not shared with anyone, including other users. We use it to leave your own reports out of the "nearby activity" you are shown, and to enforce the community rules in Section 8 if a device repeatedly submits abusive content.
Deleting and reinstalling the App generates a new identifier and severs the link to your previous submissions.
The App and Site display environmental, industrial, and contaminated-land data obtained from publicly available government sources, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state environmental agencies. This includes EPA Superfund, brownfield, and facility records.
This information is public record. Its presence in the App is not an accusation: the App does not claim that any facility is the source of an odor, and a contaminated-site listing does not mean a location is currently unsafe. Cleanup status changes over time, and we link to the EPA record so you can check the current status at the source.
Where a public record appears to name a private individual rather than a business — which happens with small farms and private wastewater systems — we mask that name before it is shown in the App.
We use the information described above to:
We may publish, share, or license aggregated and de-identified information — for example, how many reports of a given category occurred in an area over a period of time, or counts of listed facilities and contaminated sites near a location. This information does not identify individual people, and we do not attempt to re-identify it or to combine it with other data in order to identify anyone.
We do not sell information that identifies you as an individual. We do not use advertising networks, analytics SDKs, or cross-app tracking in the App.
Outside services the App and Site use. To draw the map, your device requests map tiles for the area you are viewing from MapTiler. To show wind and air quality, your device sends the coordinates of the searched or current location to Open-Meteo. When you type a place to search, our server sends that text (not your device address) to the US Census geocoder and to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim to find it. Each of these providers receives the request under its own terms; we do not send them your name, your reports, or your device identifier.
Server logs. Our web server keeps short-lived access logs for operating the service. They do not contain IP addresses, cookies, or the parameters of your requests (such as search coordinates); they record the page or endpoint requested, the response code, the timing, and the browser or app version.
If we ever share data with a service provider, that provider is required by contract to protect it to the same standard described in this policy and to use it only for the purpose we specify.
When you submit a report or notes, you keep ownership of what you wrote. You grant Bright Forge Labs LLC a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, reproduce, adapt, publish, and distribute that submission, including in aggregated or de-identified form, for the purposes described in Section 7.
You confirm that what you submit is yours to submit, and that it does not contain personal information about another person.
Reports are retained indefinitely as part of the environmental record the App is built on, because their value is in showing change over time. Because we store no raw network address (Section 5), there is no IP log to expire.
Removing a report in the App (version 1.3.0 or later) takes it off the map and out of the alerts other users see, and removes it from your device. This works even if you are offline at the time: the App finishes the removal the next time it can reach our servers. A copy of the original submission remains in our stored records unless you also ask us to delete it, as described below.
You may withdraw consent or request deletion of your reports at any time by emailing support@whatsthatsmell.app. Because reports are anonymous, please include the approximate date, time, and location of the report so we can find it. We will confirm when it has been deleted.
You can also turn off location access for the App at any time in your device settings, which stops any further location collection.
The Site may display advertising and may use cookies or similar technologies for basic traffic measurement. Any advertising on the Site is not personalised using data from the App, and App report data is not shared with advertisers. Where required, the Site will present a cookie choice and honour your selection. The App itself contains no advertising and no analytics SDKs.
The App and Site are not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has submitted information to us, contact us and we will delete it.
We take reasonable measures to protect stored data, and data transmitted between the App and our servers is encrypted in transit. No electronic system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, or obtain a copy of your personal information, and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights. We do not sell personal information as that term is defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act. To exercise any of these rights, email support@whatsthatsmell.app.
We may update this policy as the App evolves. The “Last Updated” date reflects the latest version. If we make a change that materially expands how we use information you have already submitted, we will say so in the App before the change takes effect.
Questions, deletion requests, or reports of offensive content:
Bright Forge Labs LLC
Email: support@whatsthatsmell.app