Privacy Policy — Jyotim
Jyotim ("we", "us") is a devotional app that guides you through pujas, mantra and paath practice, and — if you choose — prepares a personal Vedic astrology (kundali) reading.
This policy explains what we collect, why, and what control you have.
1. The short version
Your birth details never leave your phone.
Your birth details, your name (if you choose to add it), and the puja dedications you set are stored only on your own device, in encrypted form. We do not upload them. We do not have a server that holds them. We cannot read them, and neither can anyone who obtains our systems, because we never receive them in the first place.
Two things do leave your phone. Your phone number, when you sign in — it is stored in our database in India and used only to sign you in (Section 3). And anonymous usage and crash data — which screens were opened, which pujas were completed — none of it tied to your name, your phone number, or your birth details.
2. What we collect, and where it goes
2.1 Stays on your device — never transmitted
| What | Why we ask for it |
|---|---|
| Birth date, birth time, birth place | To calculate your kundali and personalise remedies. The calculation runs on your phone, not on a server. |
| Your name, if you choose to add it in your profile | To address you personally in the app. It is optional — the app works without it. |
| Your relationship to the person a puja is for — for example, your husband or your daughter | So the priest's voice can dedicate the puja to them. We ask for the relationship only, never their name. |
| Optional profile details (email, date of birth, profession, address), if you fill them in | Convenience only — to pre-fill forms. They are not required to use the app. |
| Your practice history, streaks, reminders, and puja progress | To resume where you left off and to send the reminders you asked for. |
All of the above is encrypted at rest on your device using AES-256-GCM, with the encryption key held in your phone's hardware-backed secure storage (Android Keystore). It is not included in device backups in readable form.
2.2 Leaves your device
| What | Who receives it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Your phone number, when you sign in | Our database (Supabase, Mumbai, India) | To sign you in, keep your progress if you change phones, and make sure each introductory offer is taken once per person |
| The one-time sign-in code, sent to your number | Our SMS delivery provider | To deliver the code — it receives your number only to send that message |
| Anonymous usage events (screens viewed, puja started/completed, feature used) tied to a random install identifier | PostHog | To understand which parts of the app help people and which confuse them |
| Crash and error reports | Sentry | To find and fix bugs |
| Your device's advertising identifier — only in the free version, and only when an ad is shown | Google AdMob | To show ads and to avoid repeating the same ad |
| Requests for puja audio and images | Our content delivery network (Bunny.net) | To deliver the puja content to your device |
Where this is processed. Your phone number is stored in India (Supabase, Mumbai region). PostHog and Sentry process the anonymous data on servers outside India (the United States); Bunny.net serves content from a global network, and Google's advertising systems operate globally. None of that anonymous data contains your name, phone number, birth details or astrological readings — your birth details never leave your device (§2.1), and your phone number goes only to our own database. Indian law permits transfers of this kind: the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 allows personal data to be sent to any country except those the Central Government has specifically restricted, and no such restriction applies to these services.
We enforce this technically, not just by promise. The app contains an automated guard that inspects every analytics event before it is sent and blocks any property that looks like personal data — a name, a phone number, birth details, or astrological output. In development this raises a loud error; in the released app the value is dropped and never transmitted.
As with any internet request, our content delivery provider necessarily sees your device's IP address and which files were requested. We do not use this to build a profile of you.
2.3 What we do not collect
- We do not collect your contacts, photos, location, microphone, or call logs.
- We do not sell or rent personal data to anyone. Ever.
- We do not use your birth details for advertising, and we do not share them with any third party.
- We do not use your phone number for advertising, and we do not share it with advertisers or sell it.
2.4 Advertising and payments
The free version of the app is supported by ads served through Google AdMob. AdMob uses your device's advertising identifier — a resettable ID that Android provides, not your name and not your birth details — to show ads, to limit how often the same ad repeats, and to show ads chosen for you based on your activity across apps (personalised ads). Where the law requires your consent first, the app asks before doing so. You can switch personalised ads off at any time in the app's Settings — you still see ads, just not personalised ones — and you can reset the identifier or switch them off for your whole device in Settings → Google → Ads. Subscribers to Jyotim Select are shown no ads at all.
Your birth details and your kundali are never used for advertising, and are never shared with any advertising provider. They cannot be — they never leave your device.
When you subscribe, the payment is handled by the provider you pay through: Google Play, or our payment partner for UPI AutoPay, cards and net banking. They receive your payment details; we do not. What reaches us is only whether a subscription is active, which plan it is, and when it renews — never your card number, UPI ID, or bank credentials.
3. Signing in with your phone number
To use Jyotim you sign in with your mobile number. We send a one-time code to that number by SMS; entering the code signs you in.
What we store. Your phone number, in our database in India (Supabase, Mumbai region), linked to a random account identifier. Everything else in the app — and our analytics — uses that identifier, never the number itself. Your number is not sent to our analytics or advertising providers, and is not shared with anyone else.
Why we ask for it. To sign you in and keep your progress if you change phones, and to make sure each introductory offer is taken once per person. We do not send you marketing messages on it without asking you first.
Who else sees it. The SMS carrying your code is delivered by a messaging provider acting on our instructions; it receives your number only to send that message.
How long we keep it. For as long as your account exists. Deleting your account (Section 6) deletes it — apart from the coded marker described in Section 5.
4. Why we are allowed to process this (legal basis)
Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act), we process your personal data on the basis of your consent, which you give by entering the details yourself — your phone number when you sign in, your birth details when you ask for a kundali. You are told what each field is for at the point where you enter it. You may withdraw consent at any time by deleting your data (Section 6 below) or by uninstalling the app.
5. How long we keep it
Because your birth details and profile live on your own device, you control their retention. They are kept until you delete them in the app or uninstall the app.
Your phone number and account are kept for as long as your account exists, and deleted when you delete your account.
One coded marker is kept after deletion. Introductory offers are available once per person. So that a deleted account cannot claim the offer a second time, we keep a one-way coded form of the phone number — a keyed hash that cannot be turned back into the number without a secret key held only on our server — together with a note that the offer was used. It holds nothing else about you, is never shared, and is used for one purpose only: checking whether a number has already had an introductory offer.
Anonymous analytics and crash reports are retained by our providers under their own retention schedules — currently up to 12 months for analytics events (PostHog) and up to 90 days for crash reports (Sentry).
6. Your rights, and how to actually use them
Under the DPDP Act you have the right to access, correct, and erase your personal data, to grievance redressal, and to nominate someone to exercise these rights on your behalf.
- See or correct your data: open the app → Profile → Personal Details. Everything we hold about you is visible and editable there, because it is all on your device.
- Delete your account and data: open the app → Settings → Mera data delete karein. This deletes your account and phone number from our database, and on your phone removes your birth details, profile, sankalp, practice history and reminders, cancels any scheduled reminders, and destroys the encryption key so that anything remaining is permanently unreadable. It cannot be undone.
- Uninstalling the app also removes all of it.
- Anonymous analytics cannot be individually deleted on request, because they are not linked to your identity — we have no way to find "your" records. You can stop future collection by uninstalling.
Grievance Officer
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, contact our Grievance Officer:
- Email: support@jyotim.com
- Address: A-19, Ground Floor, FIEE Complex, Okhla Industrial Area Phase-2, Suite No. 1142, New Delhi, Delhi 110020, India
We will acknowledge your complaint within 7 days and resolve it within the period required by law. If you remain dissatisfied, you may escalate to the Data Protection Board of India.
7. Children
Jyotim is for adults. You must be 18 or older to create an account, and we ask you to confirm this when you sign in. Under India's DPDP Act anyone under 18 is a child, and processing a child's personal data requires verifiable parental consent — so rather than collect it, we decline: the app is not offered to anyone under 18.
The kundali reading checks again. It is the one part of the app that asks for a birth date, and if the date entered shows the person is under 18, the reading is not generated and the details are not saved.
We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us at support@jyotim.com and we will delete it.
8. Security
Personal data on your device is encrypted with AES-256-GCM; the key is stored in your device's hardware-backed keystore and never leaves it. Puja content downloaded to your device is also stored encrypted.
Your phone number is stored in our database in India behind row-level access controls, so only the sign-in system can read it; it is never written to logs or analytics.
No system is perfectly secure, and we will not claim otherwise. The strongest protection here is architectural: we never receive your personal data, so it cannot be exposed by a breach of ours.
9. Changes to this policy
If we change what we collect or how we use it — for example if online accounts are introduced, or if we add a new provider — we will update this policy and the "Last updated" date above, and where the change is significant we will tell you inside the app.
10. Contact
Email: support@jyotim.com Address: A-19, Ground Floor, FIEE Complex, Okhla Industrial Area Phase-2, Suite No. 1142, New Delhi, Delhi 110020, India