Operator: HydroComplete LLC. Effective November 2, 2026
With your explicit consent through Ring's account linking, Lightning Log collects your Ring cameras' names and, when the satellite places a lightning flash within 10 miles of your home, one existing still image per camera from the seconds around that flash. At linking you also give us your email address and your ZIP code. We use these for one purpose: to show you the lightning near your home (how many flashes, how close, which direction, how bright) and, where a camera caught it, what kind of lightning it was. We do not collect live video, audio or motion-event video, and we do not identify people, vehicles, animals or objects.
Flashes come from NOAA's GOES-19 Geostationary Lightning Mapper, which NOAA publishes as whole-hemisphere files on Amazon Web Services' public open-data archive. Lightning Log downloads each whole file and measures each flash's distance from the centre of your ZIP code on our own server, so no location, account or device information is sent to NOAA, Amazon Web Services or anyone else. Your camera images are never used to decide whether lightning happened, how much, or how close.
Your email is required by Ring's account-linking system to identify the link. We send it to Ring when you connect, and again only to pause the link if you delete your data. We use it for nothing else: not to sign in, and never for marketing. Your ZIP code is converted, on our own server, to the centre of its Census area (rounded to about 1 km) and used only to measure distances. Neither is sold or shared.
Lightning Log uses one AI model, for one task. Each camera image collected as described above is sent to Anthropic's Claude API, which returns a single label: a bolt to the ground, a flash in the clouds, a lit-up sky, no lightning visible, or an unusable frame. The image goes with no name, email, address, account or location information. Claude is asked only about lightning; it is not asked to identify, describe or track people, faces, vehicles or anything else in the scene. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, Anthropic does not use this data to train its models, and Lightning Log never uses your data to train any model. Labels are automated and can be wrong; the page says so next to each one.
We do not sell, share or disclose your images, lightning record or account information to any third party for their own purposes. Your log and frames are visible only to you, through your private link. Two sub-processors handle data on our behalf: Fly.io, Inc. (cloud hosting, United States), which stores data and does not use it for anything else, and Anthropic, PBC (United States), which receives the camera images described above only to return a label. NOAA's lightning files are only downloaded; nothing is sent to NOAA.
Deletion is automatic and self-service. Delete my data on your log page immediately and permanently removes everything above. Removing Lightning Log from your Ring app does the same automatically. You may also request deletion, or a copy of your data, by email (below); we respond within 30 days.
Everything is automated. No person, including the developer, views your frames or lightning record in routine operation. A human looks at your data only if you ask for support on your account or for a copy of your data, and only to fulfil that request.
Nothing is collected until you complete Ring's account-linking consent. You can stop all collection by removing Lightning Log in the Ring app, and remove all stored data with the delete control. There is no advertising, data sale or AI training to opt out of: those uses do not happen.
Everything Lightning Log holds for you is on your log page: the counts, the daily chart, each recent flash with its label, and the frames that showed lightning. Your original Ring recordings stay in your Ring account, under Ring's controls, untouched.
If we change what we collect or how it is used, we will update this page with a new date and show a notice on your log page before the change takes effect.
Access to your Ring account uses Ring's account-linking system; Lightning Log never sees your Ring password. Data travels over HTTPS and is stored on access-controlled, encrypted infrastructure.
Questions, data requests or deletion requests: michaelbflynn@gmail.com