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Privacy Policy

What we hold about you, why, where it lives, and what you can ask us to do with it.

Last updated 1 September 2026

This policy covers FT8 Hero and the account you use to license it.

1. What we collect

  • Your account: name, callsign, email address, and a password stored only as a one-way hash. We never store your password itself and cannot recover it.
  • Your licence: your licence key, which subscription you bought, when it renews, and an identifier for the computer it is activated on.
  • The computer identifier is a one-way hash of your machine’s hardware identifier. We cannot reverse it, and it tells us nothing about you, your files or your machine beyond being a stable name for “this computer”. It exists so one subscription runs on one computer.
  • Station activity, while you are using the remote: what WSJT-X or JTDX reports — decodes, your callsign, grid, frequency, mode, and contacts made. This is relayed so your own phone can see it, and a count of contacts is kept so the free five can be counted.
  • Ordinary server records: IP addresses and request logs kept briefly for security and to fix faults.

2. What we never collect

We never see or store your card details. Payment happens entirely on Stripe’s or PayPal’s own pages; we receive only confirmation that a subscription started and an identifier for it. We do not collect your location beyond the grid square your own software reports, and we do not track you across other websites.

3. Where it is stored

Account, licence and station data are stored on the qslworld.com servers, hosted on managed WordPress infrastructure in the United States. Files holding account data are kept outside the public web root with owner-only permissions.

If you are outside the United States, using the service means your data is transferred to and processed there.

4. Who else processes it

  • Stripe and PayPal — payment and subscription management. They hold your payment details under their own privacy policies.
  • Elastic Email — sending account email such as your licence key and password resets.
  • QSL World and QRZ — only if you switch on logging to them, and only the contacts you make.

We do not sell, rent or trade your personal data to anyone, for any purpose. We do not send marketing email and we do not pass your address to anyone who does.

5. Cookies

We set one cookie when you sign in, so that you stay signed in. It contains a signed statement of your email address and an expiry, nothing else. The site uses Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages are read; it sets its own cookies for that. There are no advertising cookies. You can keep Google Analytics from seeing your visits with Google’s opt-out add-on.

6. How long we keep it

Account and licence records are kept while your account exists and for a reasonable period afterwards for accounting and tax purposes. Station activity relayed to your phone is transient and is overwritten continually; decode data is not archived. Server logs are kept briefly.

7. Your rights

You can ask us to show you what we hold about you, correct it, or delete your account and its data. Where the law gives you additional rights — for example under the UK or EU GDPR — those apply, including the right to object, to restrict processing, to receive your data in a portable form, and to complain to your data protection authority. Write to support@ft8hero.com and we will respond within a month.

Deleting your account ends your subscription and your licence. Records we must keep for tax or accounting reasons are retained for that purpose only.

8. Security

Passwords are hashed, licence keys and account files are stored with owner-only permissions outside the web root, sessions are signed and cookies are marked Secure and HttpOnly. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you we will tell you.

9. Children

The service is intended for licensed amateur radio operators. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.

10. Changes and contact

If we change this policy materially we will tell you by email or in the app. Questions, requests or complaints: support@ft8hero.com.

11. Who is responsible for your data

FT8 Hero is made and run by an individual, not a company. The data controller is Andrei Ivanoff (KO4ZHL), trading as QSL World / FT8 Hero, 1535 Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Write to support@ft8hero.com for anything about your data; requests are answered by that person, not a department.