Privacy,
plainly.
Local-first by design. No account, no telemetry, no data sent to Lazy Raccoon Lab.
RaccoonFeed is a desktop application published by Lazy Raccoon Lab. It displays public news metadata and located public-domain earthquake events, and links every headline to the original publisher. This page explains exactly what the application accesses, what it stores on your device, and what it does not do.
The short version
- RaccoonFeed has no account system. You do not sign in, and there is no RaccoonFeed server holding your data.
- Your cache, follows, alerts and display preferences are stored only on your device.
- There is no telemetry, analytics, advertising or crash reporting in the application.
- The app contacts only the public services whose data it displays: the GDELT Project for headline metadata and event records, and the U.S. Geological Survey for earthquake data.
- RaccoonFeed does not download article bodies, excerpts or publisher photographs, and it does not load publisher pages inside the app.
What the application accesses
News metadata — GDELT Project
To show current reporting, RaccoonFeed requests public article metadata from the GDELT Project:
api.gdeltproject.org— the GDELT DOC 2.0 article-list endpoint. The request asks for recent English-language headlines in a category and receives the headline, article URL, publisher domain, the time GDELT recorded the article, language and publisher country. The request contains a product User-Agent string; it carries no cookie, account identifier or advertising identifier.data.gdeltproject.org— GDELT's 15-minute event exports. These rows provide the provider's own coded event location for an article, which is what the world view plots. On a cold start the app reads at most 96 export files (roughly one day); later refreshes read only the newest slots.
RaccoonFeed deliberately ignores GDELT's socialimage field. It does not request or display article text, and it does not store publisher images.
Earthquake events — USGS
RaccoonFeed requests the public U.S. Geological Survey "all earthquakes, past day" feed from earthquake.usgs.gov. That response supplies the event title, magnitude, place, time, coordinates and USGS event link. USGS-authored data is in the U.S. public domain. The earthquake layer is optional and off by default.
Map outline — bundled
The world outline is a Natural Earth 1:110m asset shipped inside the application package. It is read from disk and causes no network request.
Publisher links
Choosing a headline's Open action hands the original article address to your default web browser. The address can only be launched when its host is the publisher domain recorded for that report (or a subdomain), over http or https, without embedded credentials and without a non-standard port. There is no embedded browser or web view, and no page is loaded, framed or monitored inside RaccoonFeed. Once your browser opens the page, the publisher's own terms and privacy policy apply.
Network information
As with any request to any internet service, GDELT and USGS receive your IP address and standard technical request information. RaccoonFeed attaches no cookies, account identifier, advertising identifier or tracking parameter, and it does not route these requests through a proxy or a Lazy Raccoon Lab server.
What is stored on your device
All application data lives in your Windows user profile under %LOCALAPPDATA%\RaccoonFeed\:
settings.json— display preferences: appearance, window size, selected category and view, refresh interval and the onboarding flag, plus notification opt-in status, sensitivity, quiet hours and cooldown.news-cache.json— the last successful headline metadata and USGS events, bounded to 1,500 reports, seven days and at most 200 earthquake records. It exists so the feed stays readable offline and so GDELT's rate limit is respected.news-geo.json— a local cache of event locations keyed by article URL, bounded to 6,000 points. It stores the article key and the provider's own coordinates, nothing derived.news-follows.json— the events, keywords, countries, companies and topics you follow.news-alerts.json— up to 200 locally generated alert records.news-radar.json— Breaking News Radar history: up to 500 local story-memory records and 100 local notification records. Story memory contains the event identifier, first-observation and newest-report times, coverage counts, local ranking, and previous notification time and signature. Notification history contains the event identifier, headline, notification title and class, signature, and shown time. These records track developing stories and prevent repeated notifications; they are not sent to Lazy Raccoon Lab or news providers.logs\errors.logandlogs\errors.previous.log— bounded diagnostic logs (1 MB each, rotating once) containing timestamps and local error text. They are not uploaded anywhere.
These files are used only by the application on your device. RaccoonFeed never uploads them, never syncs them to a cloud service and holds no copy of them.
Windows may redirect a packaged installation's local files into its package-specific LocalCache folder. These records still remain on your device.
Desktop notifications
Desktop notifications are off by default and are generated locally from retrieved news metadata while the installed app is running. Turning them on does not subscribe you to a server or send your follows, settings, notification history or headlines to Lazy Raccoon Lab. Windows notification settings may prevent delivery. Selecting a notification opens the matching story in an app window using metadata still available in the local cache. No background notification service retrieves news when the app is closed.
If a previous version of RaccoonFeed was installed, files such as watchlist.json, alert-rules.json and imagecache\ may remain in the same folder. This version does not read or modify them. You may delete them at any time.
Retention and deletion
- The news cache drops records older than seven days and is capped at 1,500 reports; earthquake records are capped at 200; alert records at 200; location points at 6,000.
- Radar memory is capped at 500 story records and notification history at 100 records.
- Clear local data in the status bar deletes the news cache, the location cache, follows, alerts, radar memory and local notification history, and clears the visible feed immediately. Display preferences are kept, and the confirmation text in the app says so.
- Uninstalling RaccoonFeed removes the application. To remove the remaining local data folder after uninstalling, delete
%LOCALAPPDATA%\RaccoonFeed. - The app does not keep copies elsewhere, and Lazy Raccoon Lab holds no copy of your local data.
What RaccoonFeed does not collect
- No name, email address, account or sign-in
- No location, contacts, calendar, camera, microphone or personal files
- No device identifier or advertising identifier
- No telemetry, analytics, crash reporting or advertising SDKs
- No article text, publisher images or paywalled content
- No financial, payment or wallet information
- No data sent to Lazy Raccoon Lab — the application has no server endpoint to send it to
Children
RaccoonFeed collects no personal information from anyone, including children. News coverage may describe conflict, disasters or other sensitive events; the application contains no images, gambling, user-generated content or advertising.
Third-party services and attribution
Headline metadata is used under the GDELT Project's terms, with attribution and a link to gdeltproject.org. Earthquake data is credited to the U.S. Geological Survey (public domain). The map outline is credited to Natural Earth (public domain).
RaccoonFeed is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by GDELT, USGS, Natural Earth or any publisher whose headline is linked. Publisher names and article titles remain the property of their respective owners. RaccoonFeed displays metadata and links; it does not republish articles, and it does not write summaries or claim consensus.
Changes to this policy
If the application's data handling changes, this page will be updated with a new effective date. Because there is no RaccoonFeed server, changes would concern the app's local storage or the public services it contacts.
Contact
Questions about this policy or RaccoonFeed's data handling: info@lazyraccoonlab.com
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