Privacy

Last updated 24 October 2026.

dxnode is a callsign database and logbook for amateur radio operators, run from New York, United States. This page says what we collect, what we show to everyone, who else is involved, how long we keep things, and how to get them removed. We don't sell personal information, we don't run advertising, and there are no tracking scripts on the site. The server counts visits, but not who made them.

Questions and requests go to [email protected].

Looking up callsigns

Anyone can look up a callsign without an account, and we don't keep a record of what you look up. To slow down programs that try to copy the whole database, the server counts how many lookups come from each internet address in the last minute. It keeps that count in memory only and never saves it.

Counting visits

The server counts how many times each page is opened each day, which websites sent visitors here, and which search engines' crawlers came by. To count how many people visited in a day without knowing who they are, it scrambles each visitor's internet address and browser name together with a random code that changes every day, and keeps only the scrambled result. Within an hour of the day ending (midnight UTC), those results and that day's code are deleted while the site is running, or when it starts again after downtime, so only the day's totals remain. They're never in a backup. Nothing is stored in your browser for this.

License records are public

The license records come from the government agencies that issue licenses: the FCC in the United States, and the licensing agencies of the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Japan, Poland, Finland, Czechia and Slovenia. They publish these records, and we show what they publish. For an FCC license that is the holder's name, mailing address, license class and dates. Anyone can see the town and state on a license record; only members who are signed in see the street and the ZIP or postal code. If something is wrong, correct it with the agency that issued the license, and dxnode shows the change after its next update.

On the map, a station is shown in the middle of its ZIP code or postal area, not at a house. The one exception: if you have verified your callsign and confirm your address on dxnode, on the form that tells you it places your pin, your pin goes at that address. Members who are signed in see it there; everyone else sees it rounded to within about half a mile.

Your account

When you make an account, you give us:

• your email address, to sign in and to get codes and notices from us. Members who are signed in can also see it on your callsign's page, unless you hide it on your account page;
• a password. We never store the password itself, only a scrambled version that can't be turned back into it;
• your name, phone number and mailing address, which every account needs. We encrypt the phone number and address before saving them;
• your callsign, which is also your username.

If you use an authenticator app, its secret is encrypted too. Sign-in codes, password reset links and logbook keys are saved only in scrambled form, so someone with a copy of our database still couldn't sign in as you.

When you sign in, we note your internet address and the kind of browser you used, like “Firefox on Windows”. Your account page lists every device that's signed in, and you can sign any of them out. We also keep a security log of sign-ins and account changes, with the internet address each one came from.

Proving a callsign is yours

To claim a callsign, you may send us a copy of your license. Only the server can open the file. A reviewer checks it, and then the file is deleted.

Anyone can challenge who holds a callsign. They send their name, email address, phone number, a short message and a copy of their license. We encrypt the phone number, and we delete the license copy once the challenge is decided.

Reviewers are dxnode administrators. They must use an authenticator app to sign in, and we log every time one of them opens a document.

Your page and your logbook

A page you publish for your callsign is public, and so are the photos on it. Photos you upload but don't use are deleted after a day.

Each callsign page shows a public total of profile visits, counted from when this feature was introduced. Your browser sends a count when you open the page, including on a reload, without a tracking cookie. For this public counter, we keep only the callsign and its running total, not a history of who visited it. These totals are retained indefinitely and included in backups. Known crawlers are excluded, and browsers with JavaScript disabled can see the total but don't add a visit. To limit repeated requests, the server uses memory-only per-address counters in one-minute windows, separate from the public total.

While you're signed in and using the site, the home page shows your verified callsign and the name and place on your license, unless you turn off “Show me on the home page when I'm signed in” on your account page.

Your logbook is private unless you make it public. A public logbook shows the date, time, callsign, band and mode of each contact, and whether it was confirmed. Frequencies, signal reports, grid squares, names, places and comments stay private. A logging program can reach your log only with a key you make for it, and you can remove that key at any time.

Who else is involved

A few companies help run dxnode:

• DigitalOcean rents us the server, which is in New York.
• Cloudflare passes every visit through to the server and delivers our emails, so it sees the address each email goes to and what it says.
• The US Census Bureau turns a US street address into a map position. We send it the street, city, state and ZIP code, and nothing else, only when a verified station saves an address for its pin.
• Have I Been Pwned tells us if a new password has shown up in a known data breach. We send it a small fragment of a scrambled form of the password. It never sees the password.
• QRZ.com, only when you ask us to copy over your own QRZ page.
• ZeusSDR, only when you sign in to Zeus with dxnode and approve it. Zeus gets the verified callsign you chose and an account number, and nothing else: not your email, password, name or address.

On some pages, your browser also loads things from other places:

• map pictures from OpenFreeMap, and hill shading from Amazon Web Services;
• YouTube or Vimeo, on a page with one of their videos;
• other websites, on a page that shows a photo stored there.

Like any website, those can see your internet address. The news and video pictures on the home page come through our server, so opening the home page doesn't contact Google.

Cookies

We use three cookies, only for signing in:

• Signed in: keeps you signed in, up to 30 days at a time.
• Trusted device: skips the sign-in code (emailed or from your authenticator app) on this device for 30 days, if you choose it.
• Sign-in step: remembers where you are while signing in, for 10 minutes.

No advertising or tracking cookies. Separately, your browser saves the frequency, band and mode you last logged, so the logbook can fill them in.

How long we keep things

• Your account, page and logbook: until you delete them.
• Signed-in devices: until you sign out, or after 30 days without a visit (90 days at most).
• Sign-in codes and reset links: 1 day after they stop working.
• Zeus sign-in requests: they work for 30 minutes at most and are deleted within 6 hours after that.
• The counts we use to slow down password guessing: 2 days. They include internet addresses and email addresses.
• The security log: one year. Internet addresses, and anything typed into a sign-in we slowed down, are removed from it after 90 days.
• Daily page statistics: the daily totals for 400 days. The scrambled visitor results within an hour of each day ending while the site is running, or at startup after downtime.
• Public profile visit totals: retained indefinitely. Their backup copies are deleted after 30 days.
• Callsign challenges: 1 day if never confirmed, otherwise one year after they're decided.
• Backups: an encrypted copy of accounts, logbooks, pages, public profile visit totals and license copies waiting for review, deleted after 30 days.

Your choices

On your account page you can change your details, sign out other devices, and delete your account.

Deleting your account removes your details, your logbook, your callsigns' pages and photos, any license copy still waiting for review, and any callsign challenge you sent. Your callsigns become free for their holders to claim. The security log keeps its record of what happened on the account, but with no internet addresses, name or email, until its year is up. Backup copies are deleted within 30 days.

You can download your whole logbook at any time. For a copy of anything else we hold about you, or to fix it, email [email protected] from your account's email address. We'll answer within 30 days.

Children

Children under 13 shouldn't make an account, and if we learn that one has, we delete it. A young ham's license record can still appear here, because the licensing agency publishes it. Parents can ask us to remove an account at [email protected].

Changes

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes. If a change affects what we do with information you already gave us, we'll email account holders before it takes effect.