Privacy policy

The short version

No analytics, no advertising, no tracking of any kind, in the program or on the site.
The program works on your computer. Your log, settings and recordings stay there.
Data leaves your computer only to services you choose to use, and this page lists every one of them.
The site sets a cookie only when you sign in, and only to keep you signed in. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to.
Data about your callsign is deleted on request.

The application

What stays on your computer

Your log, settings, favourites, station bookmarks, the receiver lists, cached satellite orbits, maps, recordings and screenshots are files in the program's folder on your disk. If you enter your QRZ.com, HamQTH, LoTW or eQSL credentials, they are kept in that same local database, in plain text; protect your computer account accordingly. ShackDeck sends no crash reports and no usage statistics, and it does not check for updates on its own.

Connections the program makes

Every server you connect to sees your internet address, as any website does. ShackDeck sends nothing else about you unless it is written here.

Receivers. When you listen, the program connects to the public receiver you chose (KiwiSDR, OpenWebRX or WebSDR). Its operator sees your address, the frequency and the time, as with any listener.
Receiver lists. The list of public receivers comes from the KiwiSDR directory (rx.kiwisdr.com, served through rx.linkfanel.net) and the OpenWebRX directory (receiverbook.de).
Your approximate location. At start-up the program asks ip-api.com or ipwho.is for the rough position of your internet address, to sort receivers by distance and to centre the map. Nothing but the request itself is sent.
Satellites. Orbit data comes from celestrak.org.
Spots and propagation. Parks On The Air spots from api.pota.app, solar data from hamqsl.com, propagation maps from prop.kc2g.com and dxmaps.com.
Map imagery. The default map is drawn from files inside the program. If you switch the satellite map to streets, relief, imagery or night view, tiles are fetched from OpenStreetMap, OpenTopoMap, Esri and NASA GIBS, and those servers see which area you look at.
Callsign lookups. Only if you entered your own QRZ.com or HamQTH account: the program looks up callsigns from your log with that account. LoTW and eQSL confirmations are fetched the same way, only with your own credentials.
PSK Reporter. Off by default. If you switch it on, the stations you decode are reported to pskreporter.info under your callsign and locator, as any FT8 program does.
DX cluster. If you connect to a cluster, the cluster you chose receives your callsign.
ShackDeck.com. Off by default. See the next section.

If you switch on "Share with ShackDeck.com" in the settings, the program sends to this site, every few minutes and under your personal token:

hourly summaries of what you heard: the callsign heard, band, mode, which receiver you listened through, the hour (UTC), how many decodes in that hour, the best signal-to-noise ratio, the locator the station sent and the dial frequency, reported under your callsign;
contacts from your log: the two callsigns, date and time, band, mode, and the reports and locators recorded with the contact.

Single decodes, messages, audio and recordings are never sent. Switching sharing off stops the sending at once; what was already sent stays on the site and is covered by the section on the website below.

The website

Data from the air

Callsign pages are built from the summaries described above. An amateur radio callsign is a public identifier issued by a national regulator and transmitted openly on the air, which is why we show what was heard without asking first; our legal ground is a legitimate interest in letting operators see where their signal reaches. We do not take data from other databases. A page that holds only a few observations is marked so that search engines do not index it.

Summaries are kept as hourly totals, not as individual decodes, until deleted on request.

Contacts

A contact from your log is shown only after the other operator has shared the same contact from their log: then both sides have confirmed it. A contact that only one side has shared waits for the other side and appears on the site the moment both have shared it; it is deleted on request like everything else.

Accounts

To edit a page you register with your callsign, an e-mail address and a password. The password is stored only as an Argon2 hash. The e-mail address is used to contact you about your account and for nothing else. Profile fields you fill in (name, QTH, locator, text, website, QSL information) are shown on your public page.

Cookies

When you sign in, the site sets two cookies: sd_session, which keeps you signed in for up to a year, and sd_user, which holds your callsign so the page header can show it. Both are needed for signing in to work and for nothing else. Visitors who do not sign in get no cookies at all. There are no analytics, advertising or third-party cookies.

Server logs and delivery

The web server keeps the usual access log: the address a request came from, the time, the page requested and the browser's identification string. Logs are rotated daily and deleted after 14 days. The site is delivered through Cloudflare, which sees your address to filter attacks; Cloudflare's own privacy policy applies to that. Fonts, map scripts and every other file the pages use are served from shackdeck.com itself; nothing is loaded from Google or other third parties.

Your rights

You may ask what we hold about your callsign, have it corrected or deleted, or object to it being shown. Write to Dmytro Hoidenko through his QRZ.com page and name the callsign; we answer within 30 days, and sooner when we can. If you believe your data is handled unlawfully, you may complain to the data protection authority of the country you live in.

Changes

When something in the program or on the site starts to send or store new data, this page is updated first, and the date at the top changes.