Meteorological Radiosondes Database

Terms and conditions of use radiosondy.info:

In force since: 2026-01-01

1. #1: The use of the Service is free of charge, as a public service, managed by one person, as his hobby, in his free time.
2. #2: The Service does not guarantee permanent access to the resources and does not provide guaranteed availability within a specific time range.
3. #3: If you decide to donate money, your time or the computing power of your devices to the Service, you are not entitled to receive additional rights and benefits from this, also including if the service becomes permanently unavailable.
4. #4: The software of the Service is not open-source and is protected by copyright - this covers the code, the design of the Service and the analytical tools. The collected telemetry, radiosonde information and the publicly visible contributions of Users are made available by the Service under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 licence; telemetry received from SondeHub remains under the CC BY-SA 2.0 licence. Those licences do not cover personal data, which under the privacy policy is not published.
5. #5: The licence granted for the data is not a permission to access the Service in any manner whatsoever. The automatic retrieval of content from the Service's pages places a load on the infrastructure and is not permitted - the Service's public API, available after requesting a key, is intended for machine use. Use of the API is subject to a limit on the number of requests, and the key may be blocked in the event of exceeding the limit, attempting to circumvent it, or acting to the detriment of the Service. In special cases exceptions to the above rules are possible, after prior contact and with the consent of the Service's owner.
6. #6: The Service publishes data in real time and collects acquired telemetry information from the meteorological radiosondes and the user stations involved in their transmission. The station's call sign, its position and the information about who found a given radiosonde and who changed its status are public in the Service and available to everyone, also through the API. The detailed use of users station location data is described in the privacy policy below.
7. #7: The Administrator reserves the right to block and delete content posted in the Service, as well as to block access to an account or delete it, if the Administrator considers it offensive, in breach of netiquette standards or of these terms and conditions, or harmful to the Service and its users. Where possible, the Administrator gives advance notice of such an intention by a message sent to the e-mail address assigned to the account; in cases requiring an immediate reaction the notice may be sent after the fact. An account deleted by the Administrator is handled in the same way as one deleted at the User's request: the account data is erased and the call sign in the sonde history is permanently replaced with the marker [DELETED USER].
8. #8: Creating an account requires providing truthful data and being at least 16 years old. An e-mail address and a user name or call sign are required; the first name is optional. The account becomes active after verification by the Administrator, usually within 24 hours - logging in is not possible until then. The User keeps the provided data up to date, in particular the e-mail address and the coordinates on which the operation of notifications depends. The Administrator may refuse registration without giving a reason.
9. #9: An account that nobody has logged in to for 2 years is deleted together with its data. 30 days before deletion the Service sends a warning to the e-mail address provided; logging in before the indicated date keeps the account. The User may also delete the account themselves at any time, in the user panel.
10. #10: The User is responsible for the content they place in the Service and declares that they have the right to do so. By placing it, they grant the Service and the recipients of the data a free of charge, non-exclusive and territorially unlimited Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 licence to publish it, to provide it through the API and to reuse it - also after the account is deleted, in a form with no link to their call sign. As regards copies already distributed, the licence is irrevocable, which follows from the nature of Creative Commons licences.
11. #11: Telemetry data, landing points and predictions are estimates and may be incomplete, delayed or incorrect. They must not constitute the sole basis for decisions affecting safety, navigation or property. To the extent permitted by law, the Administrator is not liable for the consequences of decisions taken solely on the basis of this data.
12. #12: Searching for and recovering radiosondes is carried out at the User's sole responsibility, with respect for the law, property rights and the rules in force in protected areas. The Service does not organise searches and, to the extent permitted by law, bears no responsibility for their course or consequences.
13. #13: The Administrator has the right to make changes to the terms and conditions. Information about the changes will appear in the form of updated terms and conditions, together with their in-force date and a change log giving the date of each change and a description of what it concerned.
14. #14: Using the Service means accepting these terms and conditions. The terms and conditions are made available in several language versions; in the event of any discrepancy between them, the Polish version prevails. In matters related to their application you can contact at the e-mail address sq6kxy@sq6kxy.info.

Privacy policy of the radiosondy.info website

In force since: 2026-01-01

1. #1: Who is the administrator of your personal data?

   This Privacy Policy applies to the radiosondy.info website together with subordinate subdomains (e.g. s1.radiosondy.info)
   The Privacy Policy specifies how Users' personal data necessary for the provision of services electronically through the radiosondy.info website are collected, processed and stored.
   The website collects only personal data necessary for the provision and development of the services offered therein.
   The administrator of your personal data is the sole owner of the radiosondy.info service - Michał Lewiński (SQ6KXY).
   The Administrator has not appointed a data protection officer.
   In matters related to the protection of personal data and privacy in general you can contact at the e-mail address sq6kxy@sq6kxy.info.

2. #2: For what purposes and on what legal basis are personal data processed?

   • Account registration, its verification and activation by the Administrator, and enabling login - the basis is the performance of the service agreement (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR)
   • Sending sonde notifications and statistics by e-mail, Signal or Telegram - only after you enable this feature in your profile, on the basis of your consent (Article 6(1)(a))
   • Personalising the messages we send you, if you provide your first name - legitimate interest consisting in more direct communication with the User (Article 6(1)(f))
   • Running and providing the service: coverage maps, hunter rankings, sonde history and reception statistics - on the basis of the legitimate interest of operating a community service (Article 6(1)(f))
   • Archiving data on activity in the service, and research and development of further functionalities - legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f))
   • Ensuring security: limiting the number of login attempts, protection against automated registration, keeping event logs - legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f))
   • Demonstrating accountability, including documenting the handling of account deletion requests - legal obligation and legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(c) and (f))

3. #3: What information is collected about you?

   Data you provide yourself:
   • First name, if you provide it - an optional field
   • Email address
   • Telephone number (if you use Signal notifications)
   • Telegram identifier (if you use Telegram notifications)
   • Your location - geographical coordinates entered in your user profile
   • User name, alias or amateur call sign
   • Notification settings: radii, delivery hours, selected channels
   • Content you enter yourself: sonde recovery reports, information about a find, descriptions of receiving equipment together with the content of the beacon and frame
   Data collected automatically:
   • IP address and HTTP stream data (log of access to resources on the Service), as well as information about your browser
   • Date and time of registration and of every login, together with the IP address
   • API access key, if you request one, together with its request counter
   • Data sent within the APRS-IS network, including the call sign of your receiving station, its geographical position, the content of the beacon and information about received sondes
   • Station alias - a six-character identifier created automatically from your user name, under which your station can also be recognised in the Service
   • Data derived from the above: reception ranges, counters of received sondes, position in the hunter ranking together with the nearest city, authorship of sonde status changes
   The Service does not collect special categories of data and does not profile Users in a way that produces legal effects concerning them.

4. #4: Which of your data is publicly visible?

   The Service is open in character and some data is available to everyone, also without logging in - including through the public API. This concerns:
   • The call sign or name of your receiving station
   • Information about who found a given sonde and who changed its status, together with the date of the change
   • Planned sonde recoveries - your call sign, the text of the comment you enter yourself, and the period for which the announcement is valid
   Visible only after logging in are:
   • The geographical position of the receiving station, shown on the coverage map
   • Reception ranges, the number of received sondes and station statistics
   • Your position in the hunter ranking together with the nearest city calculated from your coordinates
   If you put your own e-mail address or telephone number into a comment or an announcement, they become public - that is your decision and the Service does not alter it.
   Your first name, e-mail address, telephone number, Telegram identifier, the exact coordinates from your profile and your IP address are never published - neither logged-in nor logged-out Users can see them.
   Please remember that data transmitted by your station within the APRS-IS network is public by nature - it reaches this service and other systems regardless of your account.

5. #5: How long will your personal data be stored?

   Account data is stored for as long as the account exists.
   After 2 years without a login we send a warning with the account deletion date to the e-mail address provided - logging in before that date is enough to keep the account. If nobody logs in, the account together with its data is permanently deleted 30 days after the warning.
   You can also delete your account yourself at any time, in the user panel. The deletion is immediate and irreversible.
   After the account is deleted:
   • Profile data, settings, API keys, login history, reports and the data of your receiving station are removed
   • Entries in the sonde history remain, but your call sign is permanently replaced in them with the marker [DELETED USER] and cannot be recovered
   • Data received from the APRS-IS network remains in technical records; this is data publicly transmitted by your station
   Other periods:
   • Logs of failed login attempts: deleted after 24 hours, during the next automatic clean-up
   • Record of handling an account deletion request, covering the call sign and the date only: up to 24 months
   • Database backups: up to 30 days
   • Access logs and technical logs: no longer than 12 months, for the time necessary to ensure security and diagnostics
   Database backups are made on infrastructure belonging solely to the Administrator, located in Poland, and are not entrusted to any external entity. They serve only to restore the Service after a failure, and the data of a deleted account disappears from them within 30 days at the latest.
   Ending the processing for one purpose, for example resigning from notifications, does not mean the deletion of the remaining data.

6. #6: With whom do we share your data?

   Your data may only reach entities without which the Service could not operate.

   Processors acting on behalf of the Administrator

   The server infrastructure and the e-mail service are provided by OVH Sp. z o.o., with its registered office in Wrocław, acting as a processor on the basis of a data processing agreement annexed to the terms of service (Article 28 GDPR). The Service's server is located in a data centre in Warsaw and the e-mail service in a data centre in France - in both cases within the European Economic Area.

   Separate data controllers

   The entities listed below receive data but process it under their own rules, described in their privacy policies. The Administrator does not conclude data processing agreements with them:
   • Telegram - if you enable notifications through that channel; we then pass on your identifier and the content of the message
   • Signal - if you enable notifications through that channel; we then pass on your telephone number and the content of the message
   • Google LLC - the registration page uses the reCAPTCHA mechanism protecting against automated registration; when it is opened, your IP address and browser information are sent to Google
   • Map providers - the map layer is provided by the OpenStreetMap Foundation and the satellite layer by Esri (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., based in the United States). The map tiles are fetched directly by your browser, so your IP address and information about your browser reach them. The satellite layer is loaded only after you select it in the map view switcher
   Some of these entities are established outside the European Economic Area. Google LLC and Esri participate in the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, covered by the European Commission implementing decision of 10 July 2023 finding an adequate level of protection (Article 45 GDPR). The transfer to the satellite layer provider is limited to the IP address and browser information necessary to fetch the map tiles, and takes place only if you select that view yourself. In the remaining cases the transfer takes place to the extent necessary to perform a service that you enabled yourself, or on the basis of your explicit consent (Article 49(1)(a) and (b) GDPR).

   Analytics

   For traffic analysis the Service uses its own tool operating within the radiosondy.info domain - this data is not shared with other entities, and the tool does not store cookies on your device.

7. #7: What are your rights?

   You have the right to: access your data, rectify it, delete it, restrict its processing, transfer it, and withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing carried out earlier.
   You can exercise most of these rights yourself in the user panel:
   • Access and data portability - the option to download a copy of your data, which we send to your e-mail address
   • Rectification - profile editing; changing the e-mail address requires confirmation at the new address
   • Withdrawal of consent to notifications - switching them off in the settings
   • Deletion of data - the account deletion form
   An e-mail address and a user name or call sign are required to hold an account in the Service - deleting them means deleting the account. Your first name is provided voluntarily; we use it solely to personalise the messages we send you and you can remove it from your profile at any time.
   For all other matters, write to the address given in point #1 - we answer every question and every request concerning data. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority, which is the President of the Personal Data Protection Office (ul. Stawki 2, 00-193 Warsaw, Poland).

   Right to object

   You have the right to object at any time to processing based on legitimate interest - that is, to presenting your station on the map, in the ranking and in the statistics, and to archiving data about your activity (Article 21 GDPR). You submit the objection to the address given in point #1; we consider it individually within one month. We may continue the processing only if we demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds - in particular we keep the record of the sonde reception itself, because removing it would distort the historical record of observations. An objection does not affect data transmitted by your station within the APRS-IS network, which is public independently of the Service.

8. #8: Where does the service get your personal data from?

   In most cases you provide it yourself - by registering an account, contacting us by e-mail and using the functions of the Service.
   Some data reaches us from the APRS-IS network, that is from transmissions sent by your receiving station, and from systems exchanging radiosonde data.
   Some data is created in the Service automatically, on the basis of the above - for example range statistics and your position in the ranking.

9. #9: Is my data safe?

   The service constantly takes care of the security of your personal data.
   Passwords are stored only as cryptographic hashes, the connection to the Service is encrypted, and access to forms that change data is protected against abuse, including by limiting the number of login attempts.
   The state of the technical infrastructure is monitored on an ongoing basis and improvements are made to enhance security.

10. #10: Final provisions

    The Service uses cookies necessary for its operation: keeping the logged-in User's session and remembering the selected colour theme. The traffic analytics tool does not store any cookies on your device. The registration page uses the reCAPTCHA mechanism, which may store its own Google cookies - this is described in point #6.
    The Administrator has the right to make changes to the Privacy Policy, but the Users' rights will not be restricted.
    Information about the changes made will appear in the form of an updated policy, together with its in-force date and a change log giving the date of each change and a description of what it concerned.
    The policy is made available in several language versions; in the event of any discrepancy between them, the Polish version prevails.

Document change history

The change log is kept from the date given with each document. Earlier versions of the terms and conditions and of the privacy policy were not archived and are therefore not available.