What DSM Radar publishes
The service publishes restrained summaries of public radio traffic from the Greater Des Moines area. Unreviewed raw machine transcripts stay in private review tools. Public summaries withhold civilian names, identifying details about minors, phone numbers, license plates, and other sensitive identifiers. Automated summaries may still contain mistakes. DSM Radar is not an official police, fire, EMS, government, or court record.
Information you choose to provide
Morning Brief signup. If you join the launch list, we store your email address, subscription status, signup time, and source. It is kept separately from anonymous browsing analytics, is used only for DSM Radar email, and is not sold as a mailing list. Any marketing email will include an unsubscribe method.
Contact form. Your name, reply address, topic, and message are privately forwarded to the operator through an email provider. They are not displayed publicly or added to browsing analytics.
No public accounts or payments. DSM Radar does not currently offer public user accounts or paid subscriptions, and it does not collect payment-card information.
Operational and audience data
To run and protect the service, HTTP logs can include the requested path, method, response status, timing, a truncated browser user-agent, a truncated referrer without query strings, and coarse country or region supplied by the host or CDN. Routine analytics use a hashed visitor identifier derived from IP address, user agent, and a private server secret rather than storing raw IP addresses in the analytics database.
First-party page measurement can include the page path without its query string, anonymous session and page-view identifiers, cumulative visible time, maximum scroll percentage, total click count, time zone, language, broad device class, and screen width.
We do not record click targets, typed searches, form contents, precise GPS location, advertising fingerprints, or a person's inferred identity. Browsers sending Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track are excluded from first-party page measurement.
Abuse prevention
When a request is blocked or rate-limited, its source IP may be held in server memory for up to one hour to investigate active abuse. These short-lived records are not written to the routine analytics database and disappear when the process restarts.
Third parties
If enabled, Plausible Analytics counts page views using its privacy-oriented script. The live audio player can connect directly to third-party public scanner providers, which may apply their own logging and policies.
Storage and retention
Anonymous page measurement uses a random identifier in session storage. An operator-only secure cookie can exclude the operator's browser from audience counts. First-party HTTP and engagement rows are normally pruned after 90 days. Incident records are retained while operationally useful; archived audio is selective and may be rotated.
How information is used
Information is used to operate and secure DSM Radar, understand whether pages are useful, diagnose failures, answer messages, and deliver email only when requested. Personal information is not sold to data brokers. Sponsorship placements are contextual and clearly labeled, not behaviorally targeted.
Children and requests
The service is not directed to children under 13. To ask a privacy question, request deletion of information you provided, or report a concern, contact the operator privately.