This is my project and someone pointed out that it might be good to jitter the points by some set amount to help with privacy concerns some people might have. I want to know what the ham community thinks.
At least here in the US, it’s very easy to look up someone’s location based on their callsign already, unless they’ve opted for a PO box. I don’t think jittering would affect the usefulness of the site in any major way as long as one can ascertain the general location of a node.
What does the community think? If so, how far out should the jittering me done?
If the operator is just giving their position with a Maidenhead locator there should allready be some inaccuracy (depending on how long the locator is).
In Germany it’s also fairly easy to find a ham’s address, unless they choose to not show it in the public database.Obscuring locations makes me feel better, but as you say, it means close to nothing. I wouldn’t bother.
I am trying to understand how the coordinates end up in the system. https://www.rwardrup.com/dynamically-mapping-amateur-radio-packet-stations/ suggests that it is an automated process by scanning the system. So, the coordinates must be collected from resources already publicly available, right?
But then I also found https://form.jotform.com/210773558931159 which seems to be a form to manually submit data where coordinates have to be added.
As a general rule: if the information is accessible just by decoding packages sent over the air, then there is no need to add a jitter (assuming some sort of metadata managed by the node owner). If this is not the case, then I see two options:
- Consent by the operator of the node: show real data.
- No consent: a jitter is in order.
I search the QRZ API for the call sign I found, which is precisely why I was thinking jittering would be good. How much do you think would be sufficient?
