Website Privacy Policy

Version: 3.2 (unitedtechs.net edition) · Effective: October 21, 2026 · Permanent page: /notices/website/policy

Last updated October 21, 2026 (version 3.2). Effective October 21, 2026.

This policy covers our websites only: our main website (including the store, member accounts and Ask), our ham radio website, and unitedtechs.net (the UnitedTechs Community). It explains what D Bell Holdings, L.L.C., doing business as UnitedTechs, a Louisiana limited liability company ("we," "us"), collects and why.

1. Who can use our sites

Our sites are for visitors in the United States and its territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Minor Outlying Islands). Requests from other locations, as reported by our host Cloudflare, are not served.

2. Browsing our sites

Server logs (Cloudflare). Our host, Cloudflare, processes standard request data such as your IP address, browser type and the page requested, to deliver and protect the sites.
Our own visit counts. Our servers keep daily counts for each site: page views per page, Buy-button clicks per page, and the number of Ask questions submitted per section. For each page view we also count:
- the domain of the website that linked you to us (for example google.com), taken from your browser's referrer. We never keep the full address you came from.
- your device type (mobile, tablet or desktop), worked out from your browser type.
- new or returning visits, and each day's first and last pages. For this we make a one-way hash of your IP address and browser type, mixed with a random value that changes every day. We store only that hash and the first and last page you viewed that day. The hash and the day's random value are deleted within about two days, so visits can't be linked from one day to the next. "Returning" means your browser already had a copy of the page, or you came from another of our pages.
- for signed-in members, a one-way hash of the member account and the days it was active, to count active members. Each day record is deleted after 400 days. The hash with the first day we saw the account is kept, with no set end date, to tell new members from returning ones.
How the counts are made. To make these counts, our page counter reads your IP address, browser type and referrer from each request. The IP address is used only for the daily hash above and to recognize our own team's visits. It is never stored. The counts are totals and are kept with no set end date. We don't build profiles of visitors across days, and no cookie is used for counting. Our own test visits are tagged and left out of the counts.
Crawlers and bots. We count visits from search engines and other automated programs separately from people. Well-known crawlers (for example Googlebot) are named from their browser type, and we keep a daily count for each name. Visits that look automated but don't name themselves (no browser type, a headless or script browser, or a low bot score from Cloudflare) are counted on a separate unnamed-bots line. We read Cloudflare's bot score and verified-bot signal only while handling the request and never store them.
Cloudflare Web Analytics. Cloudflare adds a small script (static.cloudflareinsights.com/beacon.min.js) to our pages. It reports page-load performance and visit totals to us. Cloudflare says this tool does not use cookies or fingerprinting.
Cookies. We use no advertising cookies and no third-party tracking cookies. We set only what the sites need to work: a sign-in cookie for members, whatever Cloudflare Turnstile needs for its spam check (section 4), and an optional cookie that only our own admins and team can set, on their own browsers, to keep their visits out of our counts. Visitors never receive it.
Do Not Track. Our sites don't respond to Do Not Track signals, because we don't track you across other websites and don't allow third parties to.

3. Free tools, the digest, and Ask

Free tools (calculators, exam practice, band and reference tools, the recall check and similar) run in your browser. Where a tool saves progress or settings, it saves them only in your own browser's storage, never on our servers, and you can clear them anytime. Some tools fetch public data from the sources they name (for example NOAA or openFDA). We don't send those sources anything about you beyond what any web request carries.
Digest. Our digests are public pages. Reading them collects nothing beyond section 2.
Ask a question. On our Ask pages you can submit a question and, if you want, your name and an email address. Questions go into a private queue. Answers are researched and drafted by our AI agents, reviewed by our AI moderator, and cite official sources before they're published. Your name and email are seen only by the people and AI agents who handle the queue. Neither is shown on the site, including with a published answer. The question and its answer may be shown on our sites and in the community (unitedtechs.net), without your name or email. If you leave a name, we use it only to tell questions apart. If you leave an email, we use it once to tell you the answer is published, with an unsubscribe link. If you unsubscribe, we keep only a one-way hash so we don't email you again. We keep questions, with any name and email, for as long as we keep the Ask queue. You can ask us to delete yours at any time through the contact form. To limit spam, we also keep a one-way hash of your IP address for about an hour (65 minutes), to count how many questions come from one address.

4. Spam protection (Cloudflare Turnstile)

Our sign-in, sign-up, posting, Ask and contact forms use Cloudflare Turnstile to check that a real person is submitting. Cloudflare may process your IP address and browser signals for that check under its own privacy policy.

5. Contacting us

Please contact us through our contact form (or the inquiry form on our Advertise page). We receive your name, email address, topic, and your message, and use them only to answer you. If you call us, we use what you tell us only to help you.

6. Store purchases and payments

Stripe Managed Payments. Our checkout uses Stripe Managed Payments. For those purchases, Stripe is the merchant of record: Stripe is the seller on the payment transaction. Stripe processes your payment, calculates and collects sales tax, screens for fraud, handles payment disputes and may contact you about the transaction, all under its own privacy policy (stripe.com/privacy). We never receive your full card number.
Order record. Stripe shares the order details with us. We keep your name, email address, order details, amount paid and tax, to deliver your purchase, support it, handle refunds and disputes, and keep business and tax records.

7. Community member accounts (unitedtechs.net, managed on our main website)

Data	Why	How long we keep it
Email address (encrypted) and a one-way hash of it	Sign-in links and codes, receipts, renewal reminders, security and moderation notices (transactional only); one free account per email; ban enforcement	While the account exists; deleted within 30 days of a deletion request. The hash is kept longer only if tied to a ban or an under-15 block.
Date-of-birth check	Accounts are for ages 15 and up. We check your date of birth at sign-up and keep only the result, not the date itself. For members under 18 we keep only the month they turn 18, so paid checkout can require a parent or guardian.	Result: while the account exists. If sign-up is blocked as under 15, a hash of the email and a device identifier are kept up to 3 years so the block can't be bypassed.
Two-factor data: authenticator secret (encrypted), backup codes (hashed), email one-time codes	Protecting your account (posting requires two-factor sign-in)	Secret and backup codes: until you reset two-factor or delete the account. Email codes expire after 10 minutes and are deleted within 30 days.
Stripe records: customer and subscription IDs, charges, refunds, renewal dates, billing country and ZIP for tax	Billing yearly memberships, refunds, disputes, tax	7 years, then deleted.
Moderation records: post reviews, strikes, suspensions, bans, appeals, reports, refund requests, account-recovery events	Enforcing the community rules and handling appeals	Strikes count for 90 days; records are kept 2 years; ban records as long as the ban lasts.
Hashed IP and device identifiers	Rate limits and sign-up abuse prevention	30 days, unless tied to a ban or an under-15 block.
Thread follows and notification settings	Emailing you when a moderator approves a reply in a thread you started or follow	While the account exists; ends when you unfollow or unsubscribe.
Display name and approved posts	Shown publicly on unitedtechs.net	Until removed by you, by moderation, or on account deletion. Posts of lapsed members stay up. Declined posts stay in the private queue and are deleted after about 30 days.

Every post is screened by our AI moderator before it appears. Display names are public, so don't use your email or real name unless you want to.

8. Email we send

We send transactional email: sign-in codes, receipts, order delivery, membership renewal reminders (30 days, 7 days and 1 day before renewal), moderation notices, and reply and answer notifications. We send email through Resend. We don't send any other marketing email. If we ever offer a newsletter, we'll update this policy first, and you'd get it only if you sign up.

9. Sponsor ads

Some pages may show sponsor ads. Ads are matched to the section they appear in, with at most one or two per page. They are images or text hosted on our own site. We use no third-party ad networks, ad scripts, ad cookies or trackers. When you click an ad, the click passes through a short link on our own site and is counted on our server as a total, without cookies, before sending you to the sponsor. The sponsor's site has its own privacy policy.

10. Who we share with

We don't sell or rent your personal information. We share it only with the service providers that run these sites, or when the law requires:

Provider	What it does
Cloudflare	Hosting, server logs, location filtering, bot detection, Turnstile spam checks, Web Analytics
Stripe	Merchant of record for checkout (Managed Payments): payments, sales tax, fraud checks, disputes, membership subscriptions and billing portal
Resend	Transactional email

Our AI agents (moderation, Ask answers, support) process submitted posts, questions and messages for us. If the business is sold or merged, information may transfer to the new owner, who must honor this policy.

11. Children

Our sites aren't directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their information. Community accounts require age 15 or older. Store purchases and paid memberships for anyone under 18 must be made by a parent or guardian. If you think a child under 13 sent us information, tell us through the contact form and we'll delete it.

12. Security

We use reasonable safeguards, including encryption of member email addresses and two-factor sign-in. We'll notify you as the law requires if your information is involved in a breach.

13. Your choices

You can ask to see, correct or delete your information through our contact form. To delete a community account, reply to any community email or use the contact form. We keep purchase and tax records as long as the law requires, even after other information is deleted.

14. Changes

The current version of this policy is always published on our website at its permanent page, /notices/website/policy, with its version and effective date shown. Earlier versions are kept in the archive on that page. Changes take effect when the new version is posted there. We don't send email about policy changes.

15. Contact

D Bell Holdings, L.L.C., doing business as UnitedTechs, 33 Brady Ln, Lecompte, LA 71346. Phone: 318-528-0066. Use our contact form.