This is the privacy policy for the YAAC (Yet Another APRS Client) program and the ka2ddo.org website.
Each time you access a page on the ka2ddo.org website, the webserver collects and logs the following information in order to serve your request:
This same information will be sent to any third-party websites you may access through YAAC or from links on the ka2ddo.org website; any information these third-party websites collect and usage thereof is controlled by their privacy policies. An example is the US Geological Survey website used to obtain elevation/terrain data for YAAC.
Any additional personal data you enter into YAAC, such as your government-issued radio station callsign, geographical position, etc., is used only to support your access to the APRS amateur radio RF networks and the APRS-IS Internet backbone, as specified in the APRS Protocol Specification. As these networks are public and unencrypted (as required by international and national law for the Amateur Radio service), such additional information, once transmitted, cannot be kept private and may be saved in third-party databases indefinitely. If you do not want such information shared with the world, do not enter it into YAAC or transmit data using YAAC or any other APRS program.
The author may also request that you email a data report from YAAC to assist in resolving any problem report you may make; you may inspect such data files prior to transmission to ensure data you do not wish to release is not sent. Note that removal or modification of such data may impair the author's attempts to resolve your reported issue.
If you are requesting a passcode from the YAAC author for accessing the APRS-IS network, please note that this network may only be used by licensed amateur radio operators. As such, you will need to provide evidence that you are licensed in the Amateur Radio service, such as a scan of your government-issued license document or sufficient information (such as name, address, and callsign) to verify your license in public government databases (for example, the United States Federal Communications Commission's Universal Licensing System database), before a passcode will be issued to you. Such evidence of licensing will only be used for this purpose.
The ka2ddo.org website uses commercially standard data protection, such as SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and TLS (Transport Level Security) and HTTPS (secure HTTP), to protect your access to the website. However, anything on the website is also accessible using non-secure HTTP. If you do not use HTTPS, your requests to the website may be visible by third parties. Note that the YAAC program normally uses HTTPS for its web queries, but may be downgraded to non-secure HTTP, as it is possible to download updates to YAAC and its datasets over amateur radio TCP/IP networks (for example, the High-Speed Multi-Media networks based on using WiFi equipment under amateur radio regulations instead of unlicensed radio regulations); these networks prohibit encryption by law. Forced use of non-secure HTTP by YAAC is configurable by the user for such environments prohibiting encryption; some services accessible only by HTTPS will not be available in this mode.
Information entered into the YAAC program is collected for the following purpose:
Any such information entered into the YAAC program may be shared across the APRS networks without any expectation of privacy whatsoever, in compliance with the laws and regulations pertaining to and the general intent of the Amateur Radio service.
Additionally, information provided to the YAAC program, to the ka2ddo.org website, or by email to the author may also be used for the following purposes:
As such, the information will only be used by the author of YAAC and the ka2ddo.org website, except when forwarding to other Internet websites as mentioned above, or for the last 2 purposes, where the data may be shared with law enforcement or other government agencies. Data intended for these other purposes will not be voluntarily released to other parties not mentioned above.
Note that third-party email and Internet service providers involved in delivering any of the above information could monitor any information sent to and from the ka2ddo.org website or its author's email account. The ka2ddo.org author has no control over such third parties' monitoring practices and privacy policies, and accepts no responsibility for third-party actions.
Webserver logs are kept indefinitely to support historical analysis of website usage, but typically not longer than 2 years. Similarly, data supporting requests for APRS-IS passcodes are stored indefinitely to protect the author against possible illegal usage of the issued passcode.
You may request that we delete your data prior to our normal disposal time by emailing ka2ddo@arrl.net with the date and approximate UTC time of your access, and sufficient other information to identify your specific requests (such as the public IP address from which you made the requests, or the callsign for which you requested a passcode).
The yaac-users mailing list is served by Groups.io as one of their groups, and as such is covered by the Groups.io privacy policy.
The now obsolete yaac-alpha-testers mailing list was served by Yahoo as one of their groups, and as such is covered by the Yahoo/Oath privacy policy. Historical data from this group was kept for archival purposes by the YAAC author; this privacy policy applies to that copy, but not to the copies kept by Yahoo/Oath.
Privacy policy last amended 2020 June 11.