Privacy Policy VHF-DSC app

What type of data is the VHF-DSC simulator app storing?

1/
VHF-DSC Radio’s MMSI (and hence phone):
The VHF-DSC app is a simulator application built to perform the same set of functionalities performed by a real marine radio; as any real VHF device, each app instance is identified by a unique identifier called MMSI which is assigned to the app at the first execution.

Although this MMSI identifies uniquely your app and hence your phone, it is not reasonably possible to re-associate this information with a specific user hence to trace you back.

Even if the MMSI is stored in an external database, there is no information allowing a re-association with you as a user.

Notice that you can, at any time, change your MMSI in the Settings page in the app. A changed MMSI is not persisted in the external database.

2/
VHF-DSC alerts:
Broadcasting and receiving DSC Alerts is one of the major facilities on a VHF radio. DSC alerts are used to “switch people on” to follow on with voice communication.

The app has two modes: On-Line and Off-Line. It is possible to switch between these modes in the settings page.

When the app is On-Line, each alert is saved in an external database and from there it is broadcasted to all the other users working with the app in that moment.

If the app is Off-Line, the message is kept locally in the phone storage and is not shared with other users.

A DSC alert is composed of multiple information:
a) Message type
b) Channel on which the receiver should answer
c) For “routine to” message, the message’s receiver d) The sender MMSI
e) The sender position (automatically or manually set)
f) A timestamp

DSC Alerts are deleted at regular intervals; only the most recent messages are present in the external database.

It is important to notice that the sender positions can either be:
a) entered manually in the DSC->Menu->Posn screen
b) automatically retrieved from through the phone’s GPS if the user has activated the functionality in the app settings page. Please notice that the app can access the GPS position only if the user accepts either the ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION or the ACCESS_COARSE_POSITION permission. This functionality can be turned off anytime by accessing the settings page.

In any case, the external database does not contain enough information to re-trace an alert to a specific user and hence a specific position to the corresponding user.

The app is not sharing any information with any third party!

The app stores the pieces of information listed above to provide the user with its set of functionalities. The external database is located in western Europe.