PRIVACY POLICY

Effective: October 19, 2026

This Privacy Policy describes how HAM-HQ LLC, an Ohio limited liability company ("HAM-HQ," "we," "us," or "the Service"), collects, uses, and protects your personal information.

1. INFORMATION WE COLLECT

When you create an account, we collect:

  • Email address (required)
  • Amateur radio callsign (optional)
  • Password (stored as a one-way cryptographic hash)

During your use of the Service, we also record:

  • Login timestamps
  • Account creation and modification dates
  • User-generated content you choose to store (contacts, scratchpad notes, NTS traffic records, preferences)

2. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

Your information is used to operate and maintain your account, send transactional emails (account verification, password resets, security notices), and provide the features of the Service. We do not sell your personal information. We do not send marketing emails.

3. PAYMENT PROCESSING

Voluntary support payments ("SUPPORT HAM HQ" in the site footer) are processed by Stripe, Inc. on a Stripe-hosted checkout page. Stripe collects your payment method details and governs that data under its own privacy policy. HAM-HQ never receives or stores your card number.

For each completed payment, Stripe sends us and we store: the amount and currency, the date, the email address you entered at checkout, Stripe's transaction identifiers, and, if you were logged in when you clicked the link, your HAM-HQ account. These records are kept for accounting and tax purposes, including after account deletion.

If paid features are introduced in the future, payment processing will be handled by a third-party payment processor, and that processor's own privacy policy will govern your payment data.

4. DATA RETENTION

Your account data is retained for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, your personal data (email, callsign, password hash, contacts, scratchpad, NTS traffic, and preferences) is permanently removed. A minimal anonymized record is retained solely to prevent re-use of deleted account identifiers and to support potential fraud or abuse investigations.

If you re-register after deleting your account, a new account is created with a new identity. Previous account data is not recoverable. This behavior is intentional by design.

Like most web servers, ours keeps access logs of requests to the Service, including your IP address, the page requested, your browser's user-agent, and the referring page. These logs are used for security, abuse prevention, and understanding site traffic, and are automatically deleted after 14 days.

5. COOKIES AND LOCAL STORAGE

The Service uses an HTTP-only secure cookie to maintain your login session. We also use browser localStorage to store your preferences and cached UI state. No third-party tracking cookies are used. Cloudflare Turnstile is used for bot protection during registration and may set its own cookies as described in Cloudflare's Privacy Policy.

6. DATA SECURITY

Passwords are hashed using Argon2id. All traffic is encrypted via HTTPS. Access to the production database is restricted. While we take reasonable measures to protect your data, no system is perfectly secure.

7. YOUR RIGHTS

You may view, update, or delete your personal information at any time from your account settings. You may also contact us with questions or requests regarding your data.

8. CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Continued use of the Service after changes constitutes acceptance. Material changes will be communicated via email or a notice on the Service.

9. GOVERNING LAW

This Privacy Policy is governed by the laws of the State of Ohio, without regard to its conflict-of-law principles.

10. CONTACT

Questions about this Privacy Policy? Contact us.