Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible

satellites.ham-amplifiers.com is a non-commercial hobby project run by the radio amateur Nikolay, LZ1ADJ (Bulgaria, EU), the controller of your personal data under the GDPR. Write to us at ham.amplifiers (at) gmail (dot) com or with the contact form below.

This policy covers satellites.ham-amplifiers.com only. The amplifier portfolio on ham-amplifiers.com is a separate, non-commercial site of the radio amateur UR5FJO. Its Google Analytics data are kept apart from ours, and only LZ1ADJ has access to the analytics of satellites.ham-amplifiers.com. The one thing the two sites share is the Telegram chat their feedback forms deliver to, which LZ1ADJ and UR5FJO both read (see section 4).

2. What we process and why

• Server logs. Every request to our server leaves your IP address, browser (user agent), the page requested and the time in the logs. We need them to keep the site running and to stop abuse, which is our legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). The logs are deleted after at most 14 days.
• Feedback form. Your email address and message, used only to answer you (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). They are not stored on our server: the form passes them to the operator through Telegram, only if you tick the consent box (see section 4). We delete them within 12 months of the last exchange, or sooner on request.
• Google Analytics, only if you click "Accept". With your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR) we use Google Analytics 4 to see how the site is used: pages viewed, clicks, device, browser, approximate location derived from the IP address. Google Signals is on: for visitors signed in to a Google account who allowed ad personalisation, Google links the visit to that account and gives us aggregated reports on demographics and interests; Google may also use these data for its own purposes as described in How Google uses information from sites that use its services. The cookies _ga and _ga_* are kept for up to 2 years; Google keeps the analytics data for 14 months. If you click "Decline", Google Analytics is not loaded at all.
• Your station location. The location you enter or let the browser detect stays in your browser (local storage). It is used there to compute passes and is never sent to our server, except in a pass calendar link if you use one: that link carries your 6-character locator (a square of about 5 by 2.5 km), which our server uses only to compute the passes, keeps in memory only until the end of the current hour (cleared within a minute after) and does not store, though like every requested address it is in the server logs, deleted after at most 14 days. The "Google Calendar" button hands that link, locator included, to Google Calendar, which then fetches the calendar from our server under Google's own privacy policy; if you accepted analytics, Google Analytics may also record the link you clicked.
• Settings in your browser. Local storage also keeps your choices: selected satellites, map style, layers, filters, sound, collapsed panels and your cookie decision. None of it leaves your device.
• Administrator sign-in. Only the site administrators sign in, with Google; a signed session cookie keeps them signed in. Visitors never get this cookie.

3. Satellite data and reports

The satellite data come from third parties, who own it: orbital elements from CelesTrak, statuses and reports from AMSAT, frequencies from the SatNOGS DB under CC BY-SA 4.0 (filtered to the working amateur transmitters and converted to MHz). Maps: OpenFreeMap, © OpenMapTiles, data © OpenStreetMap contributors; imagery Sentinel-2 cloudless by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016 & 2017); CQ and ITU zones © HB9HIL, MIT License, simplified.

The AMSAT reports we show carry the callsign and grid locator of the reporting station, as published by AMSAT. We show them to tell other operators whether a satellite works (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). We keep them for 30 days and show the last 3. If you do not want your reports on satellites.ham-amplifiers.com, tell us your callsign: we delete the reports we hold and stop storing new ones. To remove them from the source, contact AMSAT.

4. Who else receives data

• Our hosting provider in the EU, which runs the server and its logs on our behalf.
• UR5FJO in Ukraine, who runs the amplifier portfolio on ham-amplifiers.com, reads the same feedback chat as the operator and helps answer it, using your email address and message only to answer you. This is a transfer outside the EU as well, made on the same consent as the one to Telegram below.
• Telegram (Telegram FZ-LLC, Dubai, UAE) delivers feedback messages to the operator and UR5FJO. This is a transfer outside the EU to a country without an EU adequacy decision and without other safeguards; we make it only with your explicit consent (Art. 49(1)(a) GDPR), given by the tick box under the form. Without it, write to the email address in section 6 instead (see Gmail below).
• Google (Google Ireland Ltd.) for Google Analytics, only with your consent. Google may transfer data to the USA under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
• Gmail (Google) holds the mailbox of our email address, which only LZ1ADJ reads; UR5FJO has no access to it. Google may process emails in the USA under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, an EU adequacy decision, so writing to it needs no consent from you.
• Google Drive (Google) of LZ1ADJ holds a daily backup of our database for 30 days: the satellite catalogue, the administrators' email addresses and the callsigns of stations that asked to be hidden, so that they stay hidden after a restore. The AMSAT reports are left out of the backup. Google may store it in the USA under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
• Map servers of OpenFreeMap and EOX: your browser downloads the map tiles from them, so they see your IP address, as any website you load does.

We do not sell your data and do not use it for advertising.

5. Your rights

You may ask for access to your data, its correction or deletion, a restriction of its processing or a copy of it (Art. 15-20 GDPR), and you may object to processing based on our legitimate interest (Art. 21 GDPR). You may withdraw your consent to analytics at any time below; this does not affect the processing done before. You may also complain to a data protection authority: in Bulgaria the Commission for Personal Data Protection, or the authority of the EU country where you live.

6. Contact

For any question or request about your data: email ham.amplifiers (at) gmail (dot) com, or use the form. We answer to the email address you give.