This policy describes our practices as to the information we process to support CWops activities and members.
- CWops (sometimes “we” or “us”) holds personal data to allow us to service members in connection with communication with our members, contests, awards, and our publication entitled Solid Copy which is distributed electronically and is also available publicly on our website at http://www.CWops.org. We also maintain and post on our website a membership roster, which contains information about members that is in the public domain because it can be obtained by listening on the public airwaves to CWops communications such as in the CWTs, and CW Open. (For definitions of and details about these, please see https://cwops.org/cwops-tests/cwops-test-cw-open/.)
- We store the following information about members:Information you provide us, including:Required:
- Full name
- Callsign(s) and previous calls
- Email address
- Street Address
- Location (Country or State)
- Membership status (life member or when next payment is due)
- CWops membership number
- Membership dates (beginning and end)
Optional / voluntary:
- Year licensed
- Birthdate
- Website
- Occupation
- Phone number
- Partner name
- Ham radio interests, clubs and misc.
In addition, each issue of Solid Copy beginning at least as early as 2017 (which are stored and available at CWops.org) includes biographical information and a photograph submitted voluntarily by new members for the respective month. The magazine also includes articles and photographs submitted by members that may contain personal information.
Additionally, we store information submitted by CW Academy students when they complete and send the Student Sign Up Form (which can be found at https://cwops.org/cw-academy/cw-academy-student-sign-up/). The CW Academy is operated and administered by CWops and some of its members who are Advisors; its aim is to provide excellent Morse code instruction for those who are beginning to learn the code as well as those who wish to increase their speed, accuracy and operating proficiency.
- This information may be used as follows:
- For CWTs and CW Open contests, we post call history information, including on our Groups.io page (https://cwops.groups.io), which is for members only. (The Groups.io privacy policy may be found at https://groups.io/static/privacy.) These call history files operate with various logging programs to provide operators with the following: Callsign, Name, SPC (state, province or country) and CWops #, and in some cases membership beginning and ending dates. In certain cases, power level, mobile operation, indication of a position as an officer or administrative volunteer and / or other similar information is also provided. This call history information is derived from the Membership Roster, data regarding members and non-members who have participated in the past, and data relating to members that have been provided by them.
- Regarding awards, Solid Copy lists callsigns of members who qualify for the CWT Gold, Silver and Bronze awards, as well as Callsigns of members’ standing in certain award categories such as DX, WAS, WAE, and WAZ. This information is generated by Contest Award Manager software for determining monthly, annual and cumulative admission scores. The CAM software uses information from a file maintained on Groups.io. This file includes member number, nickname, call sign, beginning and ending membership dates, DXCC and SPC codes, and membership status (Member, Life Member or Deceased (SK)). Groups.io’s privacy policies may be found at https://groups.io/static/privacy.
- Regarding new members, Solid Copy lists their Callsign, Number and Name.
- Solid Copy also lists other callsigns for members who have served as advisors in the CW Academy.
- Each month, Solid Copy also includes biographical information and photographs submitted by new members.
- The Membership Roster available to the public at www.CWops.org lists Callsign, Number, First Name, Last Name, DXCC entity, SPC and relevant blog or website link.
- Information stored regarding CWA students (see Paragraph 2 above) is used to administer training to the students and track their progress.
- Information such as street address, membership dates, birthdate, occupation, phone number and interests may be used by us to communicate with members by electronic mail or telephone as to our business.
- Members may send and access related emails, messages and files in the CWops group on Groups.io and or Facebook. Their privacy policies may be found at, respectively, https://groups.io/static/privacy; and https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy.
- We do not disclose, share, sell or distribute personal information we store to commercial third parties for economic gain.
- We store this information as follows:
- The membership roster information is stored and maintained in a Google Drive account by the Membership Secretary. It can be accessed by some officers and by some CWops members who are actively involved in running the club’s operations, most of who have edit privileges. Google’s privacy statement can be found at https://policies.google.com/privacy.
- The Membership Secretary also maintains the Membership Roster in a spreadsheet that is fetched by and available in view form only on CWops.org, and updated in real-time. The Website is under the purview of the CWops Webmaster.
- We also store and provide call history information in file form for various logging programs for download from the CWops Groups.io group webpage, as well as, in some cases, the website supported by logging program operators. See Paragraph 3(a) above for more details on the stored data.
- Information for awards, as well as members’ standing in certain award categories (see Paragraph 3(b) above) is generated by Contest Award Manager software. The CAM software uses information from a file maintained on Groups.io, MemberDataList2.csv. This file includes member number, nickname, call sign, beginning and ending membership dates, DXCC and SPC codes, and membership status (Member, Life Member or Deceased (SK)). Groups.io’s privacy policy may be found at https://groups.io/static/privacy.
- Solid Copy is edited and published by the CWops Editor / Publisher, and copies of past issues are stored and available on CWops.org in .pdf form. An email containing a link is also sent to members informing them that the latest issue of Solid Copy is available.
- Information as to CW Academy students is maintained in a database by the CW Academy administrators.
- We allow those whose personal data we keep to obtain a record of the personal data that we store in our Google Drive account, and to request that some or all of it to be updated or deleted. Only the individuals listed above in Paragraph 4(a) can delete data from the system. Whoever desires such access, updating or deletion should contact the Secretary of CWops with a request. While it is the right of any person to have their personal data deleted, removal of personal data that would result in our being unable to service a membership or which created a significant ongoing load on any of our volunteers may result in that person’s membership being suspended. This will only happen after a proper level of discussion has taken place and no reasonable arrangement could be found, or when the request could reasonably be deemed to be vexatious.
- We do not retain personal data longer than necessary for the reasons it was held in the first place:
- Members and Ex Members: All data is retained./li>
- Silent Keys: All personal data is retained for two years after cessation of membership, and a record of their callsign, name, and number is retained indefinitely along with the dates of the period of their membership./li>
- We have designated the Secretary of CWops as Data Protection Officer: The Secretary may be contacted at the address listed on our web site. You may contact the Secretary with regard to all issues related to processing of your personal data and to the exercise of your rights regarding these data.
- WordPress, which is the content-management software that our website runs, uses cookies to authenticate users who sign in to maintain the site (admins) or the pages (authors, editors). For the WordPress policy as to cookies, see https://wordpress.org/support/article/cookies.
- We rely on third party content delivery resources for your browser to prepare and render our pages, as follows: Cloudflare, Datatables CDN, Google, and Gstatic. Their privacy policies, including policies for tracking users and serving ads, may be found at, respectively: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/; https://cdn.datatables.net/privacy.html; https://policies.google.com/privacy.
- We also rely on PayPal for payment of membership dues, and provide links to CafePress and Land’s End for purchase of CWops-related items. Details of members’ payment information provided to PayPal, CafePress and Land’s End is not shared with CWops. PayPal’s privacy policy may be found at: https://www.paypal.com/va/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full. CafePress and Land’s End privacy statements may be found at, respectively: https://www.cafepress.com/p/terms-conditions#exhibitC; and https://www.landsend.com/customerservice/legal_policies/privacy/?cm_re=core-_-FT-_-privacy%20policy.
- We take no responsibility for the privacy policies of the third parties listed in, among other places, Sections 3, 4 and 8 – 10 above. Links have been provided to the privacy policies of each.
- We reserve the right to amend this privacy policy at any time.