Swrve: why do weather alerts and profile collection share a component?

What does Swrve provide?

Swrve supplies engagement tools for messages, campaigns and audience selection. Its documentation describes selecting audiences using user/device profiles and behavioural history, including sessions and campaign interactions. A profile is a set of properties associated with an identifier; an audience is a group selected by conditions on those properties or events. These capabilities do not prove that every customer uses every targeting option. Swrve audience filters.

An SDK can combine those measurement features with functional push delivery. A push notification is a message delivered to an app installation through a notification service. Removing the SDK can therefore remove both optional profiling and a feature the person wants to keep.

Why does location plus an ID matter?

Hypothetical example: two latitude/longitude pairs are sent hours apart with the same user ID. The ID lets a receiver associate those points even if the record contains no name. Whether they describe current GPS location or places deliberately saved for a forecast matters too. This example explains linkability; it is not a reconstructed journey or a claim about server-side inference.

What is the actual Buienradar finding?

Buienradar 7.4.8 starts Swrve and supplies device/session information and properties including dark mode and subscription status. Separately, LocationIntelligenceWorker reaches userapi.buienradar.nl/2.0/userlocation, with latitude, longitude and the Swrve user ID. The location receiver is a Buienradar service; the audit does not label it a direct Swrve upload or pin every Swrve upload hostname. The important concrete finding is the shared identifier in the location request. Pinned Buienradar audit.

Does Disable tracking remove this?

No: Swrve and the background location upload remain by default. The separate Disable Swrve and location upload control is off by default and includes Disable tracking. It selects Swrve's existing inert implementation and stops the upload; the worker can still store the last location locally.

Selecting that control disables Buienradar weather alerts, because all its weather alerts use Swrve push. Current-location alerts also depend on the upload. Rain, air quality, barbecue and daily-forecast alerts are part of that tradeoff. The default tracking control must not be read as a promise that no location leaves the phone.

Evidence reviewed 28 October 2026. Read location, identifiers and methodology.