Privacy notice
Northern Drone LLC, Fargo, North Dakota. Version 2026-09-05. This covers the operations app at app.northerndrone.com and the quote and contact forms on northerndrone.com.
What we collect, and why
| Who | What | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customers and their staff | Name, company, email, phone, site addresses, quotes, invoices, payments, project files you share with us | To quote, schedule, fly, deliver and bill the work (performance of a contract) | For the life of the relationship, then 7 years for tax and contract records |
| Pilots and contractors | Name, email, phone, home base, certificates, insurance, W-9 and identity documents, rates, jobs, time, expenses, pay records, sign-in and activity records | To assign work, confirm you are cleared to fly, and pay you (contract, and the law on contractor records) | While you fly for us, then 7 years for pay and tax records; identity documents are deleted when your record is removed |
| People who fill in the website form | What you type (name, email, phone, message), and your IP address | To reply to you; the IP address only to stop abuse of the form (our legitimate interest) | IP address 90 days; the enquiry until it is closed, then 2 years |
| Anyone who signs a quote online | Typed name and title, the time, IP address and browser | Evidence that you agreed | IP and browser 2 years; the signature with the contract |
| Everyone who signs in | Sign-ins, failed sign-ins, downloads and changes to money, with the address they came from | Security and an audit trail that cannot be edited | Kept |
Cookies
Two, both needed for the app to work: one keeps you signed in (it expires after 12 hours, or 4 hours without activity) and one protects forms against forgery. No advertising or analytics cookies are set by the app.
Who else handles the data
We use these providers to run the app. Each holds only what its job needs.
- Render (hosting, database, backups) — everything in the app. United States.
- Cloudflare R2 (file storage) — documents, receipts, photos and deliverables, in a private bucket reached only by short-lived links.
- Microsoft 365 (email) — invoices, invitations, password resets and the mail you send us.
- Sentry (error reporting) — technical error details with personal data switched off.
- Google (address lookup, website statistics) — the address typed into a job, and aggregate website traffic; no customer names.
- Esri and OpenStreetMap (map tiles) — your browser fetches map imagery for job sites directly from them.
- QuickBooks and Ramp (payments) — we read remittance emails; we do not send them your data.
We do not sell personal data and do not share it for advertising.
Your rights
You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it where we no longer need it for a contract or by law. Pilots can download their own copy from Documents → Download my data in the portal. For anything else, email cody@northerndrone.com and we will answer within 30 days.
Where the law of your state or country gives you further rights, those apply too. If you are in the EU or UK, the lawful bases above are contract (Art. 6(1)(b)), legal obligation (6(1)(c)) and legitimate interests (6(1)(f)).
Security
Everything travels over HTTPS. Sign-ins support two-factor authentication, lock after repeated wrong passwords, and end after inactivity. Files are stored privately and reached only by links that expire in ten minutes. Every sign-in, download and money change is written to a log that cannot be altered. If we ever have a breach that affects you, we will tell you.