Privacy Policy

Data controller

Aurora di Elia Tolin (Aurora Digital), Italy. Privacy contact: info@auroradigital.it.

Accounts

• HamQRG: sign in with email, Apple or Google. We store your email, name and, if you enter it, your amateur radio callsign.
• HamQSO: an account is not required. On first launch the app creates an anonymous account, identified only by a random code. If you choose to link Apple or Google, we also store the email the provider shares with us.

Information we collect

In both apps

• GPS position: used on your device to show what is nearby and compute distances and headings. It is not stored on our servers, except as described below.
• Push notification token: identifies your device so we can send the notifications you turned on.
• Pro subscription: subscription status, product and expiry. Payment is handled by Apple or Google: we never see your card details.

HamQRG only

• Favourites: the list of repeaters you save.
• Repeater feedback and reports, including the approximate position at the time of submission.
• Crash reports (Sentry), without personal data, so we can fix problems.

HamQSO only

• Profile: callsign, locator and QTH position, if you enter them. The QTH position is stored only to apply the distance filter to alerts.
• Preferences: theme, DX Cluster source, enabled xOTA programs.
• Alerts (HamQSO Pro): the filters you build (countries, callsigns, references, bands, modes, distance) and the history of notifications you received, kept for 30 days.
• Spots sent from the app: callsign, frequency, mode, reference and comment. Spots are published to the public networks you choose (POTA, SOTAwatch, DX Cluster) and are visible to everyone together with your callsign.
• DX Cluster connection: if you enter your callsign, the app connects to the DXFun Cluster with it, as any telnet client does.
• Activations (“I’m on the air”): when you announce an activation we store your callsign, frequency, mode, references, comment and start and end times. People with an alert on your callsign or your references get a notification with this data. If you keep the live page on, the activation is visible to anyone at hamqso.app/live/<callsign>, without your position. With the “Show on the live page” option, on by default and which you can turn off for each operation, the page also shows the data described in the section “Live page: operations and photos”.
• Nearby parks and summits: when you pick references, the app sends our server your position rounded to about 1 km (or, without GPS, the centre of your locator) only to find the closest parks and summits. We do not keep it.
• Operation photos: up to 3 for each operation. The app re-encodes them before sending, removing the metadata (GPS included), and stores them on your account in private storage. If you publish them, see the section “Live page: operations and photos”.
• Logbook: the QSOs you log (the other station’s callsign and details such as name, QTH and locator, date and time, frequency, mode, reports, references, notes), the QSL confirmations you receive, your operations, station profiles, saved locations, and the name and type of the devices you use the logbook on. They are stored on your phone and synced to your HamQSO account for backup and use on several devices; no other user can read them, except what you publish on the live page.
• Services linked to the logbook (QRZ.com Logbook, eQSL, HRDLog): your credentials stay only on your device, in the system’s secure storage, and QSOs are sent directly from there. On our servers we store only the upload status of each QSO and which of your devices sent it.
• LoTW: if you link LoTW, you upload your LoTW certificate (.p12 file) to our servers. We keep the certificate’s private key and your LoTW website password encrypted, together with your user name. We use them only to sign and upload your QSOs to LoTW and download its confirmations; they are never shown or sent back to any device, and they are deleted when you remove the certificate or delete your account.

Live page: operations and photos (HamQSO)

The live page hamqso.app/live/<callsign> is visible to anyone with the link and is not indexed by search engines. Only published operations appear on it: an operation tied to an announced activation, as long as “Show on the live page” is on; an operation that was not announced only if you choose it, after closing it. The page of a callsign belongs to the first account that published an activation on it.

• What it shows of an activation in progress: the QSOs (in total and today) with the last 10 (the other station’s callsign, band, mode and UTC time), radio and antenna, bands, modes, countries, a QSO map with the other station’s locator at 4 characters at most or its country, and the photos.
• What it shows of a closed operation: date, callsign, references, number of QSOs and countries, bands and modes, the photos and the full log (the other station’s callsign, band, mode and UTC time).
• What it never shows: your position, the name of the operation, signal reports (RST), notes, tags, or the other station’s name, QTH or full locator.
• Photos: they are public with the same switch as the operation, all together. In an announced operation a photo is public as soon as it is uploaded. Your callsign comes with them: do not upload photos showing other people’s personal data without their permission. We show them through temporary addresses that expire after 10 minutes. When you delete a photo or take it off the page, it leaves the page at once; an address already generated can work until it expires, and anyone who saw it may have kept a copy, which we cannot delete.

Purpose and legal basis of publishing: providing the service you chose to use. You can take yourself off the page at any time, operation by operation.

Reporting a photo

Anyone visiting a live page can report a photo, with no account and no text to write. When you do, we process:

• The reported photo, the reason if you pick one, and the date.
• A salted SHA-256 hash of your IP address and browser, to count one report per device. We do not store the IP address with the report: we use it to compute the hash and, for a few minutes in memory, to limit the number of requests.
• On your device, in the browser, the list of photos you reported, to show “Reported”. It does not leave the device.

Purpose: keeping the page free of unsuitable content and preventing abuse. Legal basis: our legitimate interest. Whoever published the photo does not know who reported it. Each report reaches us in a Telegram message with the callsign of the page, the code of the photo, the reason and the number of reports, not the hash. We can hide a photo; after 3 reports from different devices it hides by itself. A hidden photo leaves the page and stays visible to whoever uploaded it, who can ask for a review from “Report a problem” in the app.

Coverage test and public page (HamQSO)

The coverage test (HamQSO Pro) calls CQ in CW with your radio and shows which Reverse Beacon Network skimmers hear you, against a propagation forecast. When you save a test, we store it on your account and sync it to your devices, like your radios. No other user can read your tests.

• What we store for each test: callsign, band and frequency, date and time, the radio and antenna used (name, type, gain and height), power, the 6-character station locator and where it comes from (your profile, the operation or, if you ask for it, GPS rounded to the locator: never coordinates), the skimmers listening and those that heard you (public callsigns of Reverse Beacon Network nodes), the forecast and the conditions of the moment, the test’s titles and the name you give it.
• To run the test: your callsign goes to our spot server, which listens to the Reverse Beacon Network; band and locator go to our function that computes the forecast. The “right now” forecast, on the test’s home page, uses only the 4-character locator square and is the same for everyone in that square.
• Test forecasts stay on our servers as long as their test exists, and for 30 days at most if no test uses them; the “right now” forecast is kept for one day.
• Usage statistics: when you start, finish, save, compare or share a test we send only codes, numbers and yes/no (for example the band, how many skimmers heard you, whether you are above or below the forecast, the format shared, whether you showed your location); never callsigns, locators or positions, and nothing from simulated tests.

The public page of a test

A test becomes public only if you create the link from the app: the page hamqso.app/t/<code> is visible to anyone with the link and is not indexed by search engines. The images you create in the app to share follow the same rules.

• What it shows: your callsign, band, frequency, date and time, the test’s title, radio, antenna and power, the skimmers that heard you with their country and distance, and the main conditions of the moment.
• Your location: with “Show location” on, the 4-character locator square (about 200 × 100 km) and distances from that square; off, only the centre of your callsign’s country and distances from there, rounded to 1,000 km.
• What it never shows: the 6-character locator, the name you gave the test, the skimmers that did not hear you, the forecast for your station.
• You can remove the link at any time from the app: the page goes away within a minute. It also goes if you delete the test or your account. Whoever saw it may have kept a copy, and social networks keep the link preview under their own rules: we cannot delete those copies.

Purpose and legal basis: providing the service you chose to use, that is saving, comparing and sharing your tests.

How we use the information

1. To provide the features you use (legal basis: performance of the requested service)
2. To send the notifications you turned on
3. To manage your Pro subscription
4. To fix errors and improve the apps, including with HamQSO usage statistics and error reports (legitimate interest, see below)
5. To prevent abuse of the HamQSO invite program (legitimate interest, see below)

We do not sell personal data, do not show targeted advertising and do not track your activity across other apps or websites.

Usage statistics (HamQSO)

To understand where the app is hard to use and what to improve, HamQSO sends our servers a few moments of its use. The statistics stay with us: we do not use any outside analytics service.

• What we send: when you open the app and how long you use it; which steps of the introduction you see and whether you finish it; the first time you open a spot and log a QSO, and how many spots you open and QSOs you log each day (the number only); when you sign in, save an alert, send a spot, connect your radio, run a coverage test, import a log, open a notification or use an invite code; when you see HamQSO Pro, which feature brought you there and how the purchase goes.
• With each moment: app version, system (iOS, Android, web), kind of device (phone, tablet or computer), language and whether you have Pro.
• What we do not send: your callsign or anyone else’s, your location or locator, the QSOs in your log, comments and notes, passwords or any text you type.
• What they are tied to: a random code the app creates on this device and, if you are signed in, your HamQSO account, so we can also see when you use the app on more than one device (for example phone and web). They are not tied to your name or email. If you delete your account, the app creates a new code.

Purpose: understanding where people stop (first launch, introduction, features, HamQSO Pro) and improving the app. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in improving the service. Only we see the statistics, in an analytics tool hosted on our own server with restricted access; we do not use them for advertising or to track you across other apps or websites, and we do not share them with third parties. You can object at any time by writing to info@auroradigital.it: we delete the statistics linked to your account.

Errors and crashes (HamQSO)

To fix problems, when HamQSO runs into an error it sends it to our servers. If instead the app closes because of a crash on the phone (for example in the USB or Bluetooth connection to the radio), the report goes to Firebase Crashlytics, a Google service.

• What we send for each error: its type, message and the place in the code where it happened, the last lines of the app log, the device system and model (no device identifiers), whether you were online, the connected radio (model and kind of connection) and the same data that comes with the usage statistics (version, language, screen, the random device code and, if you are signed in, your account).
• Before sending, we remove passwords, tokens, session keys, email addresses, coordinates and locators.
• To Crashlytics, for crashes only: the place in the code, device model and system, app version and a random installation identifier created by Crashlytics. Crashlytics is not used on the web.
• If you send a report from the app, it includes the codes of the latest errors on the device, so we can link it to the problem.

Purpose: finding and fixing errors. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the service working. Only we see the errors, in the same tool as the statistics and in the Firebase console; we do not use them for advertising or tracking, and we do not share them with third parties beyond the providers listed below. You can object at any time by writing to info@auroradigital.it.

Invite program (HamQSO)

If you use “Invite a radio amateur” (invites by link or code, which give days of HamQSO Pro to both the person inviting and the person invited), we also process this data:

• Program data: your personal invite code, who invited you and whom you invited, the status of each invite (pending, completed, expired), the days you opened the app while your invite was pending, and the rewards you received (days of Pro, added to your account through RevenueCat).
• A salted SHA-256 hash of your device identifier: the Android ID on Android, a random identifier stored in the Keychain on iOS. The identifier itself never leaves your phone. The app sends the hash only when you use an invite code, when you open the Invite friends screen and, if you were invited, while your invite is pending.

Purpose: running the program and preventing abuse (one reward per device, no self-invites, limits per code). Legal basis: our legitimate interest in preventing reward fraud; the program data is also needed to provide the feature you chose to use. We do not use this data for advertising or tracking, and we do not share it with third parties. If you do not use invites, the device hash is never sent.

Website statistics

We count visits to hamqrg.com and hamqso.app with Umami, an open-source tool running on our own server (stats.auroradigital.it). Umami uses no cookies, does not follow you across other websites, does not store your IP address and builds no visitor profiles: we only see aggregate numbers, such as the most viewed pages, which sites visits come from, country, language and the type of browser and device. This data is not passed to outside companies.

Purpose: understanding which pages are useful and improving the websites. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in knowing how the websites are used, in aggregate form only.

Third-party services

Tapping a callsign can open QRZ.com in your browser: from then on, the QRZ.com privacy policy applies.

How long we keep data

• Account (including the anonymous HamQSO account), profile, preferences and alerts: until you delete your account.
• HamQSO alert history: 30 days.
• HamQSO usage statistics: individual moments for 365 days, then only the totals for each day, until you delete your account.
• HamQSO errors: individual errors for 90 days, on our servers and on Crashlytics; after that only the counts per kind of error remain (how many times, on how many installations, in which versions).
• HamQSO invite program: code, invites and rewards until you delete your account; days of use only while your invite is pending; the device hash linked to your account is deleted after 12 months without use; the hash of devices that already used an invite, kept with no link to any account, is deleted after 24 months (it stays even if you delete your account, so the same device cannot earn the reward more than once).
• HamQSO activations: until you delete your account. The live page shows only the latest public activation.
• HamQSO coverage tests: until you delete them or your account; deleted tests stay in the trash for 30 days. The public link works until you remove it.
• HamQSO operation photos: until you delete them, the operation or your account. The file is normally deleted from our servers within a few days.
• Photo reports: as long as the photo exists; if a photo is put back online, its reports are deleted.
• HamQSO logbook: until you delete your account; QSOs and other logbook items you delete stay in the trash for 30 days and are then deleted for good, from our servers too. LoTW certificate: until you remove it or delete your account.
• Published spots and QSOs uploaded to QRZ.com Logbook, eQSL, HRDLog or LoTW: they stay on those services according to their own rules.

Your rights

1. Access your data and receive a copy
2. Request correction, deletion or restriction, and object to processing
3. Delete your account from the app: in HamQRG from Settings › Delete account, in HamQSO from Profile › Delete account. Your profile, preferences, alerts, activations, logbook (QSOs, operations, photos and upload statuses, from our servers too), coverage tests with their public links, LoTW certificate, notification tokens, usage statistics, errors and invite program data are deleted too (except the hash of devices that already used an invite, described above).
4. Lodge a complaint with the Italian data protection authority (garanteprivacy.it) or your local one

The apps are not directed at children under 14.

Contact

For privacy questions or to exercise your rights, write to info@auroradigital.it.

Data sources

HamQRG: Italian repeater data is provided by IZ8WNH (iz8wnh.it); other data comes from national coordination bodies, network registries and corrections submitted by operators. HamQSO: spots come from DXFun Cluster, HamQTH, POTA and SOTAwatch. We do not guarantee the accuracy of the data and are not liable for errors.