Legal & Privacy

Privacy Policy

How this notebook handles information, contact form submissions, privacy-first analytics, Patreon authentication cookies, and edge security.

Notebook Scope

1. Notebook Scope & Purpose

OpenRF Note (“we,” “us,” or “our”) is an open-source technical notebook documenting unlicensed radio frequency systems, FCC Part 15 rules, Wi-Fi environment detection, LoRa mesh networking, and RF diagnostic engineering.

This site is published for educational, hobbyist, and engineering reference. We do not provide commercial client IT services, customer ticketing, or managed infrastructure, and this policy applies to your visits and communications with openrfnote.com.

Information Collected

2. Information We Collect

We collect minimal information necessary to deliver site content, authenticate supporters, prevent abuse, and communicate with readers:

Information you provide directly: When you submit a message through our contact form, you may provide your name, email address, radio callsign or handle (optional), topic, and message text. Please do not submit sensitive personal, financial, or confidential information through website forms.

Patreon early-access login: When you log in with Patreon to unlock early-access field notes, we receive your Patreon user ID and display name via OAuth. We do not receive, process, or store credit card numbers, billing addresses, or banking details.

Information collected automatically: When you browse this site, our edge hosting infrastructure automatically records standard technical data, such as your IP address, browser user-agent, referring URL, pages visited, timestamps, and diagnostic security logs.

Usage

3. How We Use Information

Information collected through OpenRF Note is used exclusively for legitimate notebook operations:

  • To read and respond to technical questions, feedback, and errata sent through our contact form.
  • To grant early access to draft field notes for eligible Patreon supporters.
  • To monitor, maintain, and optimize site reliability, rendering speed, and reader usability.
  • To detect, prevent, and mitigate automated spam, bot abuse, security threats, or malicious traffic.
  • To comply with applicable legal, regulatory, or technical obligations.

We do not sell personal data, do not rent email lists, and do not use your contact information for unsolicited commercial marketing blasts or advertising networks.

Cookies & Security

4. Cookies, Analytics & Cloudflare Turnstile

We use lightweight, privacy-respecting mechanisms to run the site:

Patreon Session Cookie: Logging in to read early-access entries sets a signed session cookie containing your Patreon user ID and display name. It expires automatically after seven days (or upon logout). Public reference guides and published notes require no cookie and set no session state.

Cloudflare Turnstile: Our contact form uses Cloudflare Turnstile to verify human submissions without invasive visual puzzles or cross-site tracking cookies.

Edge Analytics: Cloudflare provides privacy-first, aggregate metrics (bandwidth, HTTP status codes, top paths) without persistent tracking cookies or fingerprinting.

Third Parties

5. Third-Party Links & Services

This site connects with trusted platforms for infrastructure and community support:

Patreon: Supporter memberships are processed through the Patreon campaign shared with WSNY332 under Patreon’s terms and privacy policy.

External Reference Resources: Links pointing to FCC rules (eCFR Part 15), hardware datasheets, Semtech/TI silicon errata, or open-source repositories navigate to third-party domains whose privacy practices we do not govern.

Retention & Rights

6. Data Retention, Security & Your Choices

Contact submissions are retained only as long as needed to address your feedback or keep records of corrections. Edge server logs are kept on standard rolling retention schedules and purged regularly.

All traffic is encrypted in transit over HTTPS (TLS). To request deletion of a prior message or inquiry, contact us through our contact form or by email at info@openrfnote.com.

Updates & Contact

7. Updates & Contact Information

We may update this Privacy Policy periodically. Modifications will appear here with an updated revision date.

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