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Comment by GJim | Hacker News Reader

> I'm not sure I like exposing my home address by providing my callsign with my HN account

Please explain. Surely one simply opts out of having ones address published in your countries call book?

In the US it's a public database, and you don't get to opt out of providing your name and a mailing address (mailing, needs to be valid but doesn't need to be your home address, PO Boxes work).

https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchLicense.jsp

Wow!

I know American data protection law is pretty poor, but that really is shocking; such data should not be made public without the users explicit opt-in consent.

A lot of information is out there for a lot of people in the US. Here you can find salary information for GA state employees by name: https://open.ga.gov/openga/salaryTravel/index. If you don't know their name, you can search by organization and get a big list of people and how much they make each year.

They have opt-in consent: it’s a known part of the US ham licensing process that the database is public and searchable, and nobody is forced to get a ham license.

In fact, several of the questions on the ham test involve the fact that you can look up operator info online.

Your amateur radio license is only active when:

That isn't opt-in consent!

If you type your name and address into the HN comment box and hit submit, you have opted in to having your address visible in a comment on HN.

The ham registration is the same. Before you can take the test to get licensed, you have to go to the FCC website and enter your information into their public database. It’s clear what you’re doing, you have to actively choose to do it, and it’s the direct outcome of the action you take.

I put my office address for anything where I need to provide a mailing address but I don't want to provide my home address.

While PO boxes work, you would have had to set one up prior to getting any licensing since past addresses are retained in the system as well. And then you are paying an unending fee to maintain a PO box just to try and maintain some slight privacy online.

It really is baffling they are so stuck on having full address available to the world. City/state, zip code, Maidenhead locator squares, or a number of other options would be more than enough to place one into a local area without an exact address listed publicly. Until that happens, I definitely will continue to refrain from mentioning it on any online accounts to help keep all the data miners a little more at bay.

In Canada because of our privacy rules we have the ability to opt out of having our address published in the official government ham database. American hams don't have that option which complicates things for them.

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