PLANETRACK

Overview

PLANETRACK is a personal flight-tracking tool that displays live aircraft position data on a map. This page explains the SMS alert feature built into the site, what data the site handles, and who to contact with questions.

How SMS alerts work

PLANETRACK offers an automated alert feature: when a military or government-flagged aircraft (as identified by ADS-B Exchange) enters a specific monitored region, the system sends one SMS notification to every subscribed phone number.

You can subscribe on the SMS Alerts Signup page by entering your phone number and explicitly checking a consent box. Nobody is enrolled without taking that action themselves.

Consent & message frequency

By submitting the signup form, you expressly consent to receive automated SMS airspace alerts at the number provided. Consent is not a condition of any purchase — there is nothing to buy. Immediately after signing up, you'll receive one confirmation text; this also verifies the number is real and reachable.

Message frequency is variable and event-driven — a message is sent only when qualifying aircraft activity is detected in the monitored region, which may range from zero to several messages per day depending on real-world air traffic.

Opt-out

You may stop receiving messages at any time by replying STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, or QUIT to any alert message. You'll get a one-time confirmation text, and no further messages will be sent unless you resubscribe by replying START or signing up again.

Reply HELP to any message for support, or use the contact information below.

Requesting a summary

Reply SUMMARY to get a text recap of every military/government aircraft logged in your watch zone over the last 24 hours, or SUMMARY 12H (up to SUMMARY 48H) for a different window. This draws on the sighting log described below — see "What data this site collects" for what's recorded and for how long. Limited to a few requests per hour per number to keep this feature from being used to run up SMS costs.

Message and data rates

Message and data rates may apply, depending on your mobile carrier and plan. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.

What data this site collects

This site does not use visitor accounts. It collects: what you explicitly submit through the SMS signup form; if you grant permission, your browser's location; and general traffic/usage data via Google Analytics (below).

Google Analytics: this site uses Google Analytics to understand traffic and usage — pages visited, approximate location (city/region level, derived from IP), device/browser type, and referring site. Google Analytics sets cookies in your browser to do this. This data is handled by Google under its own privacy policy and is not linked to your SMS subscription, phone number, or any account on this site. To opt out, use a browser extension such as Google's Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, or block cookies/scripts from googletagmanager.com and google-analytics.com in your browser. See Google's Privacy Policy for details on how Google handles this data.

SMS signup form:

• Phone number — used solely to send airspace alerts and manage your subscription.
• Consent timestamp and IP address — kept as a compliance record showing when and that consent was given, in case of a dispute.
• Subscription status (subscribed / opted out) — updated automatically based on your STOP/START replies.
• Watch-zone location — set via "Use my location" when subscribing (required to complete signup): an approximate (rounded) location and your chosen alert radius, used only to determine which alerts to send you.
• Watched aircraft types/tail numbers (optional) — if you fill in the optional "only alert me about specific aircraft" fields at signup, the aircraft types and/or ICAO24 tail codes you entered are stored and used only to narrow which alerts inside your zone get sent to you. Leaving this blank (the default) alerts you about every aircraft in your zone, unchanged.

This data is stored in an access-controlled AWS database, is never sold, and is shared only with Twilio (our SMS delivery provider) as strictly necessary to send messages. You can request deletion of your data at any time by contacting us below.

Sighting log (powers the SUMMARY command): every time a military/government aircraft enters your watch zone, we log the event — timestamp, the aircraft's callsign, ICAO24 code, and type — tied to your phone number, so that a SUMMARY text reply can look it up. This is recorded for every aircraft that enters your zone, independent of any optional type/tail filter you've set for alerts, so a summary reflects everything that was actually in your zone. Each entry is automatically deleted after 48 hours — this is a short-lived operational log to support the SUMMARY feature, not a standing history of airspace activity near you.

Browser location ("My Location" on the map): if you grant location permission while browsing the map, your coordinates are used only to move your own map view to your area. They are not sent anywhere beyond that, are not tied to your identity, are not linked to a phone number or subscriber record, and are not stored.

Personal watch zone (required, tied to your subscription): when subscribing, you tap "Use my location" and choose a radius (10, 25, or 50 miles) to get SMS alerts for military/government aircraft near your own location — every subscriber sets one; there is no shared or default zone. This coordinate is linked to your phone number and subscriber record — that's what lets us alert you specifically. Before storage, your coordinates are rounded to roughly two decimal degrees (about 0.7 miles of precision, a few city blocks) — we never store your exact location. This is used only to decide which alerts to send you, is stored in the same access-controlled database as the rest of your subscription record, and can be deleted on request (see above).

IP-based location (fallback): if your browser doesn't or can't provide precise location — you deny the prompt, your device has no location support, or the request fails — the site automatically looks up an approximate, city-level location for your IP address, with no prompt. This is used only to set your own initial map view. Your IP address is sent to a third-party IP-geolocation lookup service (ip-api.com) to resolve the approximate location; the resolved coordinates are not stored and are not linked to your identity, a phone number, or a subscriber record.

The aircraft position data shown on the map comes from ADS-B Exchange, a public flight-tracking data provider. This data describes aircraft, not people.

Third-party services

• Twilio — delivers SMS alert messages and processes inbound STOP/HELP replies. See Twilio's privacy policy.
• ADS-B Exchange — supplies live aircraft position data displayed on the map.
• Amazon Web Services — hosts this site and stores subscriber data and configuration secrets.
• Google Analytics — collects site traffic and usage data. See Google's privacy policy.

Changes to this page

This page may be updated as the site's features change. The "Last updated" date above reflects the version of these terms you agreed to at signup.

Contact

Questions about this page or the SMS alert feature can be sent to steven.shane.moore@gmail.com.