Flightradar24

Is Flightradar24 safe?

For the person using it, yes: Flightradar24 is a map of aircraft with no messaging, no marketplace and almost nothing a stranger can use to reach you. The concerns sit elsewhere. The app's privacy label includes your location among the data used to track you for ads, a 2018 breach exposed older accounts, and its privacy policy has not caught up with current law. In June 2025 Sweden's data regulator reprimanded the company over how it treated aircraft owners who wanted their planes off the map. We score it 56/100.

What the app collects about you

Apple's privacy label is broader than you might expect for a flight map. It lists precise and coarse location, email address, purchase history, user ID, device ID, how you use the app and advertising data as data that may be used to track you across other companies' apps and websites. Device ID and advertising data are linked to you for third-party ads. Precise location is also used for third-party advertising, though the label says it is not linked to your identity.

The privacy policy, last updated on 15 August 2024, is short and dated. Next to the GDPRGDPRThe EU's General Data Protection Regulation, which sets rules on how organisations collect and use personal data and allows large fines.More in the glossary, it still refers to Sweden's 1998 Personal Data Act and the EU directive that the GDPR replaced in 2018. It says that by clicking "I accept" when opening an account, you agree to receive direct marketing "from us or third parties", which you can then refuse. Requests to see or delete your data go by letter to a Stockholm address. One rule does protect you: accounts inactive for 12 months are deleted. Some service providers are in the US, under EU standard contractual clauses.

You do not need an account to use the free map, which is the simplest way to share less.

The 2018 breach

In June 2018 Flightradar24 emailed users to say that an intrusion on one server may have exposed the email addresses and hashed passwords of people who registered before 16 March 2016. The Hacker News put the number at over 230,000 accounts; we found no figure from Flightradar24 itself. The company said the server was shut down at once, the hashing used in that retired part of its system was no longer considered strong enough, and it had reset the passwords. It said no payment data was taken, and it reported the breach to the Swedish authority. We found no regulator decision on it.

Since then we found no further breach. We also found no paid bug bounty and no published two-factorTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary login, so account security rests on your password.

Aircraft owners and the Swedish reprimand

Most aircraft broadcast their identity, position, speed and altitude through ADS-B transponders, unencrypted by design. Flightradar24 collects these signals through more than 30,000 ground receivers, many run by hobbyists, plus government and satellite feeds. It told the regulator it has about 30 million users a month.

For private owners, that means their movements can be public. Four complaints from Sweden, Germany and Denmark led Sweden's Authority for Privacy Protection (IMY) to rule on 30 June 2025. It found that a registration number can be personal data when a national register links it to a private owner. It accepted that Flightradar24 has a legitimate interest in publishing flight data. But it found that between May 2018 and June 2021 the company routinely demanded registration certificates before acting on erasure requests, and in one case asked for more proof from an owner who had already identified himself. IMY issued a reprimand, with no fine, and ordered the company to deal with three complainants' requests and stop publishing data that identifies their aircraft.

Flightradar24 now hides blocked aircraft so that only the type, such as "Cessna 172", appears and no history can be found by registration. It also honours the US FAA's LADD block list, and says aircraft such as Air Force One are not shown.

How to use Flightradar24 with less tracking

1. Use the map without an account if you only want to follow a flight.
2. Set location access to "While Using the App", or "Never" if you do not need the nearby-aircraft view.
3. Turn off "Allow Apps to Request to Track" in iPhone settings.
4. If you have an account from before March 2016, make sure its password is not reused anywhere else.
5. If you own an aircraft, ask Flightradar24 to block it; you should not have to send more ID than needed to show it is yours.

How we scored it

Privacy (40) is the weakest factor, because location, email and purchases are listed for cross-app tracking and the policy bundles third-party marketing consent with sign-up. Scams and harmful content (82) is the strongest, as users face almost no contact with others. Security (58) carries the 2018 breach, and the regulatory record (65) reflects IMY's reprimand and orders, which concern data the app publishes about aircraft owners. Skyscanner scores 63 and Airalo 70.