Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

CopyCall (copycall.org) and CallWatch (callwatch.org) — together, "the Services" — are operated by Kameron Gasso ("we," "us," "our"). One account works across both, so this single policy explains what information the Services collect, why, and what happens to it, regardless of which app you're actually using. It applies to everyone who uses either site, whether you have an account or you're just viewing a public shared map link someone sent you.

Questions about this policy: kameron@copycall.org.

2. The short version

• We collect the account info you give us, the radio-logging or saved-search data you enter, and a small amount of technical/security data (session, IP, user agent).
• We never sell your data or share it with advertisers. There are no analytics or ad-tracking cookies anywhere on the Services.
• Public FCC license data is public by law; we cache a copy of it so lookups are fast, we don't collect anything extra about you to do that.
• If you turn on CopyCall's map sharing for an operation, that link exposes certain contact-level details to anyone who has the link — but never your private "Operator" labels, never notes, and never an exact location (only an approximate area) — see §5 for the exact list. CallWatch has no equivalent public-sharing feature.
• One account, but not one cookie: CopyCall and CallWatch are different websites and each sets its own separate session cookie for its own domain — see §6 for how signing into one carries over to the other.
• For troubleshooting only, a CopyCall Admin can view and use CopyCall as you would see it ("impersonation"). It is time-limited, restricted, and logged — see §5.
• There's no self-service "delete my account" button yet. Email us and we'll do it by hand, across every app at once — see §7.

3. Information we collect

3a. Information you give us directly

• Account info: username, email address, password (stored as a bcrypt hash — we never store or can see your actual password). Shared across the Services — one account, not a separate one per app.
• Your own default settings: on CopyCall, a default location, timezone, unit preference, and logging defaults (frequency, mode, signal report, service type, power); on CallWatch, your saved-search subscriptions (see 3b) and per-account subscription limit. All optional, set from each app's own Settings page.

3b. Information you enter about other people (third-party stations/operators/licensees)

Both Services are fundamentally about other people's radio activity, so most of the data in the system is information you enter (CopyCall) or search for (CallWatch) about someone else, not about you:

• Callsigns/handles, service type, and locations of stations you've heard (CopyCall) or searched for (CallWatch).
• CopyCall-only: optional "Operator" labels — a private name/notes grouping someone's callsigns together (e.g. "Bob — my neighbor"). This label is private to you and is never shown to any other user, on any public share link, or to us for any purpose beyond running the service.
• CopyCall-only: free-text notes fields on stations, locations, and individual contacts. These are exactly what you type — if you put someone's real name or other identifying detail in a notes field, that's information you chose to record, and (per §5) it can appear on a public share link if you turn sharing on. We'd ask that you only log information about others that you have a legitimate reason to keep, the same courtesy you'd expect if someone else were logging you.
• CallWatch-only: your saved-search criteria — a label you give it, plus any of callsign, FRN, name, city/state/ZIP, and radio service you chose to filter on — and the license records it's matched against over time (stored in callwatch_subscription_matches so a match is never re-notified twice).

3c. Location data

• Locations you manually enter or search for on CopyCall.
• If you click "Use my current location" on CopyCall, your browser's GPS/location (via the W3C Geolocation API) is used only after your browser's own permission prompt — we never access device location without that browser-level consent, and it's a one-time read, not continuous tracking.
• CopyCall's map displays can "fuzz" a location to a lower-precision grid square for privacy on the map itself, but the underlying exact coordinates you entered are always what's stored in the database.
• CallWatch independently geocodes (address text only, via the same U.S. Census API described in §11) the licensee addresses its own map feature plots — cached in callwatch_geocode_cache, keyed by a hash of the address, not linked to your account.

3d. Public government data

CopyCall maintains a local cache of FCC Universal Licensing System (ULS) data — licensee names, addresses, and callsign records — downloaded in bulk from the FCC's own public data files on a regular schedule. CallWatch reads that same cache read-only rather than maintaining its own copy. This is already-public government data; we don't call any live third-party lookup API per search, and this cache isn't linked to your account.

3e. Technical / security information

• Session cookie(s): each app you're logged into sets its own cookie that keeps you logged in there. It's functional only — see §6 for how this actually works across two separate domains.
• When you log in, we record the IP address and browser user-agent string for that session, shown back to you under "Active Sessions" in Settings (CopyCall) so you can recognize (and revoke) your own logins.
• Basic server logs common to any web server (requests, errors) for operating and securing the Services.

4. How we use this information

• To operate the core services: on CopyCall, storing and displaying your logged contacts, operators, stations, and reach maps; on CallWatch, running your saved searches on a periodic schedule and emailing you a digest when a new license matches one.
• To authenticate you and keep your account secure (password reset, session management, letting you see/revoke your own active sessions on CopyCall) — including the short-lived, single-use handoff token used to carry a login from one app to the other (see §6).
• To respond to support requests you send us, including, where needed to reproduce or fix a problem, by viewing CopyCall as you would see it (see "Administrator impersonation" in §5).
• We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not sell, rent, or trade it to anyone.

5. When information is shared

By default, nothing you log or search for is visible to any other user. A couple of things change that, both of which you control (CopyCall only — CallWatch has no public-sharing feature of its own):

• Public map-share links (CopyCall). If you turn on sharing for an operation (or your whole account) in Settings, anyone with that link — logged in or not — can see: callsign/handle, service type, frequency, mode, signal report, distance/bearing, the operation's name, and the contact's timestamp. Locations are shown at an approximate area only, never finer than roughly a 2-3 mile grid square, regardless of what precision you've set for that location — if you've logged a station's exact coordinates for your own reach calculations, a share link still only ever shows the coarser area, not the exact point. Two things are deliberately left off a public link entirely: your private "Operator" name, and any free-text notes you've written on a contact — both are about a real person who never agreed to appear on a public, unauthenticated page, so neither one rides along just because the rest of the contact does. Share pages also carry a noindex tag so search engines don't crawl or cache them. You can turn sharing off, or generate a new link (invalidating the old one), at any time.
• Site administrators. A small number of trusted roles can access account and data information to operate the Services — for example, to help with account recovery or investigate abuse. On CopyCall that's three tiers (Admin, User Manager, Data Manager); CallWatch has a single, simpler Admin role. Because role is part of your one shared account, a CopyCall Admin is automatically a CallWatch Admin too. Every such action is logged. Today that's solely the site operator, but this policy is written to also cover anyone else who's ever granted one of these roles.
• Administrator impersonation. Admins can use an "impersonation" feature to view and use CopyCall as a particular account would, solely to troubleshoot a problem with that account — for example, to reproduce something you've reported. While doing so, the administrator can see what you can see in CopyCall (your operations, contacts, stations, and settings) and can act in the app as you to diagnose issues. It is not used for any other purpose. The safeguards are: it ends automatically after 60 minutes; the administrator sees a prominent banner the whole time; and while impersonating, the administrator cannot change your password or email address, revoke or manage your login sessions, change your public map sharing, switch to another app on the platform, or use Offline Mode (which would store a copy of your data on the administrator's device). Every impersonation — when it started, when and how it ended, and which account — is recorded in an administrative log under the administrator's own account, and each page request made during it is recorded in the request log, under the administrator's account, together with the account being viewed. We do not currently notify the account holder when this happens as the feature is used only for diagnostics when investigating accountholder-reported issues.

We also share limited information with the third-party services that make the Services work:

• U.S. Census Bureau geocoding API — when you (CopyCall) or the system on your behalf (CallWatch's own map feature) look up an address, only the address text itself is sent, never your name, account, or callsign.
• OpenStreetMap — map tiles are requested directly by your browser when you view a map on either app; that's a normal request to a public tile server, not something that passes through our servers.
• Our hosting provider — like any website, our host has access to the servers the Services run on.

We may also disclose information if required by law (e.g., a valid legal process), or to protect the rights, safety, or property of the Services, our users, or others.

6. Cookies

Each app you use sets exactly one cookie of its own: a session cookie that keeps you logged in on that domain, lasting up to 90 days (CopyCall) or 30 days (CallWatch) from your last activity there (a sliding window — using the site resets the clock). It's strictly necessary for the site to function; there is no cookie-consent banner because there's nothing optional to consent to. There are no analytics, advertising, or third-party tracking cookies anywhere on the Services.

Because copycall.org and callwatch.org are different websites, a cookie set by one is never readable by, or sent to, the other — logging into CopyCall does not, by itself, log you into CallWatch. What actually carries a login across is a short-lived (60 seconds), single-use signed token: when you're sent from one app to the other already logged in, that token — not a cookie — is what the second app uses to start its own separate session (and its own separate cookie) for you. The token proves who you are for a few hundred milliseconds during that one redirect and cannot be reused, replayed, or read to reveal your password or anything else about your account.

Offline Mode (on-device storage). If you open CopyCall's Offline Mode (/pwa/), your browser also stores a copy of your own CopyCall data — operations, contacts, known stations, operators, saved frequencies and your logging preferences — in its on-device database (IndexedDB), along with any changes you've made offline that haven't synced yet. This is what lets the app work with no connection. It stays on your device, is only readable by this website in that browser, is never sent anywhere except to your own account when syncing, and is removed from the device when you sign out (signing out is held back while unsynced changes remain, so they aren't lost). It is not a cookie, and no analytics or tracking is involved. Offline Mode can also save a backup of your unsynced changes as a file you download to your device; that file contains your contacts' details and is yours to keep or delete — we don't receive it. On a shared or public computer, sign out when you're done.

7. Data retention & deletion

• CopyCall: deleting an Operation, Operator, or Known Station moves it to a "Recently Deleted" list for 30 days, with a one-click Restore, before it's permanently purged.
• CallWatch: deleting a saved search removes it (and its match history) immediately and permanently — there's no "Recently Deleted"/undo window for CallWatch data today.
• Administrative records: the log of actions administrators take on other people's accounts is kept as a record of what was done and by whom. The per-request troubleshooting log is kept for 15 days.
• There is currently no self-service "delete my account" feature. To request deletion of your account, email kameron@copycall.org. We'll verify it's really you and process the request by hand — since it's one account, this removes your data across every app on the platform (CopyCall's contacts/maps and CallWatch's saved searches alike), not just whichever one you emailed us about.

8. Security

Passwords are hashed (bcrypt), never stored or logged in plain text. Access to administrative functions is role-gated and logged. That said, no method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security.

9. Your choices

• You can review and edit most of your own data directly in each app at any time — stations, operators, contacts, and settings on CopyCall; saved searches and subscription settings on CallWatch.
• You can turn CopyCall's public map sharing on or off, or rotate the link, at any time in Settings.
• You can revoke your own active login sessions in CopyCall's Settings.
• To request a copy of your data, or deletion of your account, email kameron@copycall.org.

10. Children's privacy

The Services are not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, please contact us at kameron@copycall.org and we will delete it.

11. Third-party services & links

The Services link to or rely on third-party services (OpenStreetMap tiles, the U.S. Census geocoding API, and FCC public data). We don't control these services and aren't responsible for their content, availability, or privacy practices — check their own policies if you're curious.

12. Where your data is stored

The Services are operated from, and their data is stored in, the United States. If you're accessing the Services from outside the U.S., you understand your information will be transferred to and processed in the U.S.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the Services change. Material changes will be noted on this page (and, while the platform is small enough that this is practical, in each app's own in-app changelog). Continuing to use any Service after a change means you accept the updated policy.

14. Contact

Kameron Gasso — kameron@copycall.org