Privacy Statement

QRZ LLC | PRIVACY NOTICE

We are QRZ LLC ("QRZ", "we", "us", or "our"). We operate an online amateur radio platform providing a callsign database, user profiles, forums, and related services. We are deeply committed to protecting the privacy of our users and to the responsible management of personal information, and we want you to feel confident when using our platform.

Much of the information we publish is obtained from open, public domain sources, primarily official amateur radio licensing records, and in some cases directly and voluntarily from users themselves.

Amateur radio address and contact information has been published in the public domain for many years. Before the internet, the same types of information were routinely available in printed directories known as Callbooks, which are of longstanding importance to the amateur radio community for contacting other operators and exchanging written communications.

This Privacy Notice explains what to expect when QRZ uses your personal data as a data controller when you use our services.

If you have any questions about this notice, please contact Privacy@QRZ.com.

This notice was last updated in June 2026.

WHY DO YOU PROCESS MY PERSONAL DATA?

• When you use our website we may collect:
  • contact information, such as your name, email address, phone number and address,
  • user account information, such as your username and profile picture,
  • demographic information, such as your age, gender and country, and
  • possibly other data that you may voluntarily provide
  to fulfil our contract with you to create and maintain your account, including to send you service messages.
• When you make a payment. Our payment processors will use your payment information, such as your bank details and billing address, to process your payment. We do not have access to your payment information beyond your name, email address, address, and details of what you purchased. We collect this personal data because it is in our legitimate interests to know what you have purchased, and to meet our legal obligations to hold proper accounting records.
• To send you marketing. Where you have previously expressed an interest in QRZ (and not opted out of marketing) we may use your name and email address to send you marketing because it is in our legitimate interests to promote our online amateur radio database and related services that we think you might be interested in.
  
  Where you have opted in to receive marketing, we may use your name and email address to send you marketing in line with the preferences you have provided and will only use your personal data in this way with your consent.
  
  You can unsubscribe from receiving marketing at any time by contacting us at Privacy@QRZ.com or, where relevant, by following the unsubscribe link in any marketing communication you receive from us.

• When you contact us with a query, either by email or one of the methods shown on our contact page (including on social media), we may collect your name, social media handle, contact details, and any other information you choose to share with us as part of your communication because it is in our legitimate interests to make sure we can properly respond to your query, including to provide technical support.
• When you provide us with feedback, we may use your feedback to make improvements to our website, our ways of communicating with you, and our wider offerings, because it is in our legitimate interests to make these improvements.
• When you use our website, we may collect information using essential cookies about your device and how you use our website. For example, we may collect your device identification number, browser type and version, operating system and platform, hardware used, browser plug-in types and versions, IP address (which may reveal your location), URLs, referrer URL, date and time of access, information about page response times, length of visits to certain pages, interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), error reports and performance data (Device Information). We may use your personal data contained within this Device Information because it is in our legitimate interests to ensure the proper use, functioning, maintenance and security of our website.
• When you use our website and consent to our use of non-essential cookies, we may use the personal data contained within your Device Information with your consent to improve our website and to better understand how people use it. Further information about the information we collect and how we do this is set out in our Cookie Policy below.
• When you attend one of our events or a third-party event we also attend (including virtual events via video conferencing providers), we will usually collect your name, address, email address and phone number. We collect this personal data because it's in our legitimate interests to promote our business and to know who is attending our events.
• Where you enter a competition we are running, we will collect your name, email address and any other personal data that forms a part of the competition entry (this may differ depending on the competition). We do this under our legitimate interests to run our competitions effectively and to award the prizes to the winner.
• If you are a supplier to us, we may collect personal data from you (or the individuals working for you) such as your name, email address, phone number, fee quotes, details of payments we make to you, your bank details and other details of goods or services we have purchased from you. We collect this in order to take steps to enter into a contract with you and to facilitate that contract going forwards.
• If you apply for a job with us we may collect your name, contact details, recruitment information (e.g. right to work documentation and references), test results, qualifications, accreditations and any additional personal data we may receive from our recruitment partners.
  
  We will use your personal data to assess your suitability for our available roles. We do this to perform our contract obligations or to take steps at your request, before entering into a contract. Where we process your right to work documentation, we will do so to comply with our legal obligations.

CHILDREN'S PERSONAL DATA

We do not knowingly collect personal data from children who are under the age of 13 (or the age otherwise defined under applicable law) without parental consent or unless permitted by applicable law.

WHO DO YOU SHARE MY PERSONAL DATA WITH?

• Other users and visitors to the QRZ platform. As our core service is a publicly accessible callsign database, certain information associated with your amateur radio licence (such as your callsign, name, and geographical location) is made available to any user or visitor who conducts a callsign lookup on our website or via the QRZ API. You can control what additional profile information is displayed to others through your account settings.
• Third-party partners and service providers, including payment processing companies, cloud storage and hosting providers, and analytics and advertising companies, to help us provide and improve the website and operate our business for the purposes detailed above.
• Amateur radio event organisers and community partners. We do not sell data for marketing purposes but may share your data with organisers of amateur radio events or competitions (including hamfests and contests) that we are involved in or co-promote. Where we do so, we will inform in advance (usually on the event registration form) and you will be given the chance to opt-out before we do this.
• Regulators/Authorities/Enforcement Agencies, if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements; or to protect our, our customers' and others' rights. This includes exchanging your personal data with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud prevention.
• Prospective buyers of our business under our legitimate interest to ensure our business can be continued by the buyer.

WHERE DO YOU STORE MY PERSONAL DATA?

We store your personal data on AWS servers located in the United States. When working with third parties, we may need to transfer your personal data outside of your home jurisdiction. Whenever we transfer your personal data outside of your home jurisdiction, we ensure it receives appropriate protection as required by law. To keep this notice as short and easy to understand as possible, we have not set out the specific circumstances in which each of these protection measures are used. You can contact us using the details above for more information about this.

HOW LONG DO YOU KEEP MY PERSONAL DATA FOR?

To determine the appropriate retention period of personal data, we consider the amount, the nature and sensitivity of personal data, the potential harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the purposes for which we process the information and whether we can achieve these purposes by holding the data for a shorter period.

Given the nature of our platform, the following specific retention periods are relevant:

• Callsign and licence data. Information derived from publicly available amateur radio licence records (such as your callsign, name, and location) may be retained on our platform until they are marked as Silent Key or expired status;
• Account information. If you hold a registered account with QRZ, we will retain your account data for as long as your account remains active, and for a reasonable period afterwards, after which it is securely deleted from our systems.

In some circumstances we may carefully anonymise your personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you, and we may use this anonymised information indefinitely without notifying you. We use this anonymised information to improve our website and the way we work.

WHAT ARE MY RIGHTS IN RELATION TO THE PROCESSING?

You may have various rights under applicable data protection laws, depending on your home jurisdiction. This may include the right to:

• access your personal data (also known as a "subject access request");
• correct incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you;
• ask us to erase the personal data we hold about you;
• ask us to restrict our handling of your personal data;
• ask us to transfer your personal data to a third party;
• object to how we are using your personal data; and
• withdraw your consent to us handling your personal data.

We do not make any automated decision making using your personal data.

Opt-out Procedure

If you would like to opt-out (i.e. to prevent any non-FCC data from being displayed by QRZ about you), please notify us by email. Please contact us at Privacy@QRZ.com and simply state your amateur radio callsign and that you would like your information removed from QRZ.

Please be aware that, with the exception of your street address, information that is published by the FCC in the public domain will continue to be displayed by QRZ even after you opt out. Opting out affects only that data that the FCC does not provide. Non-FCC data includes your birth date, your biography, your picture, your email address, and your home page address.

Note that street address de-listing by QRZ will not change the FCC's records in any way. Your information will still be available to anyone who wants it at the FCC's official website. Your information will also very likely continue to be available on other non-QRZ amateur radio websites and callsign servers.

Right to lodge a complaint: You have the right to make a complaint to us about how we handle your personal data. If you would like to make a complaint, please contact us using the email above. We have procedures in place for reviewing and handling complaints. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days and will respond to it without undue delay to inform you of the outcome of your complaint. We may need you to provide further information so that we can verify your identity before we can handle your complaint – we will inform you at the time if we require further information.

In the UK, the supervisory authority is the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). Individuals have a right to make a complaint at any time to the ICO for data protection issues (Information Commissioner's Office). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with any complaints before the ICO is approached, so please contact us in first instance.

As QRZ is a US-based company, individuals located in the US may also have rights under applicable state privacy laws and may be able to contact their state regulator or attorney general if they have concerns about how their personal data is handled.

Please keep in mind that privacy law is complicated, and these rights will not always be available to you all of the time.

COOKIE POLICY

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you use our website and also helps us make improvements.

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or in your device's storage. We only use (and store) non-essential cookies if you provide your consent.

Cookies used on our website consist of a unique random number generated by our system and provided to your browser. As you move between pages on the QRZ site, this allows us to verify your login identity without requiring you to re-enter your password each time. This ensures that only you can update your callsign information, biography, or photo, and that only you can post messages in your name.

The cookies assigned by QRZ do not contain personal information.

Cookies are only required if you intend to update callsign-related information, post content, or use interactive features (such as ads) of the web site. If you are using the website as a reader or observer only, cookies are not required.

You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our website.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE

We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Notice on this page and updating the "Last updated" date. We recommend you review this Privacy Notice periodically for any changes.