What we collect and what we do with it

In short

You can read every page on this site without signing in, without an account, and without telling us anything about yourself. We use no advertising and no analytics product, we build no profile of any visitor, and we store no visitor's IP address in our database.

We do hold what you choose to send us: a message, a problem report, an answer to a consultation, a comment. This page says what happens to each one.

It describes what the platform actually does today. Where something is not yet automatic, it says so rather than promising it.

What we collect

When you send us something.

The contact form — your name, your email address, an optional subject, and your message.

A problem report — what you write about the problem, the state, district and locality you choose, and an email address only if you decide to give one. It is optional and the form works without it.

A consultation or questionnaire on this site — your answers, and nothing else. No name, no email address, no location and no device information is attached to them. They are stored as answers alone, which is why they cannot later be traced back to you.

A comment — the name you type and what you write. This one is published; see “What is public” below.

What happens automatically. When a page is opened, a counter goes up by one. The counters are totals for a page or an issue — views, supports, opposes, shares, downloads, poll choices. There is no row for you behind any of them: no identifier, no IP address, no device fingerprint. There is nothing to link back to a person and nothing for us to look up about you.

What we never ask for. Your date of birth, gender, caste, religion, income, voter identity, any government identity number, your phone number, or your precise location. We do not use advertising or analytics products and we do not track anybody across this site or any other.

A word about free-text boxes. Wherever you can type freely — a comment, a written answer, the description on a problem report — please put in only what is needed. Leave out your own contact details and anybody else's, and leave out anything sensitive you would not want read, or, where it is published, seen in public. We cannot take back what you have chosen to type into a box.

Why we collect it

Contact messages: to read what you sent and reply to you. Problem reports: to research what you raised, decide whether it becomes a numbered issue, and write back if you left an address. Consultation answers: to establish and publish how many people think what, before we take an issue anywhere. Comments: to publish them, because that is what a comment is for. Counts: to show honestly how much attention and support an issue has.

We use what you send only for the purpose you sent it for. We do not use any of it for membership, fundraising, canvassing, profiling or targeting, and we do not sell, rent or trade it.

Each form tells you what will happen to what you type, before you send it. Nothing on this site is locked behind giving us anything — if you would rather not, you can still read everything.

What is public, and what is not

Never published. Contact messages. Problem reports as you wrote them. The email address on a report. Those are read by us alone.

Published as a comment. A comment appears on the site with the name you type beside it, once a moderator has read it. Everything in a comment is public, so please do not put your address, phone number, email address or anybody else's details in one.

Published as counts. How many people supported or opposed an issue, how many chose each option in a consultation or poll, how many opened a page.

Published as a response report. When a consultation closes we may publish a report on it, and one is published now: the public survey report for Issue #003. It lists every response it received as a row — the state, the institution the respondent named, which group they said they belong to, their answers, and any comment they typed.

That report carries no names, no email addresses and no phone numbers. We are not going to call it anonymous on that basis: a written comment, or an institution with very few respondents, could still point to a person. Treat anything you write in a response as material that may be published in full, and see the note on free-text boxes above.

If you have a concern about a response of yours appearing in a published report, write to aarunyaswarajparty@gmail.com.

What your browser remembers

Some things are kept by your own browser, on your own device, and are never sent to us as a record about you:

which way you voted on an issue, so the buttons show your choice and you can change it; which consultation or poll option you chose, for the same reason; which pages you have already opened, so that a second visit is not counted as a new visitor; and small conveniences, such as a panel you have closed.

We cannot read any of it, and clearing your browser's site data removes all of it. We use no tracking cookies.

How support, polls and views are counted

Support and Oppose, the pulse figures shown beside an entry, poll options and page views are all counted the same way: a total goes up by one, and nothing about you is stored beside it. A consultation answer is stored as a row of answers, with nothing attached that says who gave it.

Because of that, we can keep one response per browser — not one response per person. Your choice is remembered on your device so that you can see it and change it. Somebody using a different browser, a different device, or the same browser with its data cleared can respond again, and we have no way to detect that. Detecting it would mean identifying people, which is precisely what we have chosen not to do.

So we will not describe these numbers as one per person. They indicate public feeling; they are not a ballot. Where we can see that activity is automated or fabricated, we exclude it from what we publish.

Responses collected on an outside service

Some issues collect responses on a form run by another company rather than on this site. Where that is so, the page says so and the button opens that service in a new tab.

Two issues do this today, using Google Forms. What you type into such a form is collected by that service, under its own privacy policy and terms, not ours. When the consultation is over we download the responses and use them to publish the results here.

If you would rather not use an outside service, you do not have to respond.

Embedded video and posts

Some pages embed a video or a post hosted by somebody else — YouTube, Vimeo or Instagram. When you open such a page, your browser fetches that material from them directly, and they can see the request.

We choose the most private option each of them offers: YouTube is embedded through youtube-nocookie.com, and Vimeo with do-not-track requested. We send them nothing about you. We cannot promise that they record nothing, and we are not going to claim otherwise. Nothing is embedded unless the page you opened actually contains it.

Administrator accounts

A small number of administrator accounts can publish and edit what is on this site. This concerns them rather than you — but it is the largest holding of personal data on the platform, so it belongs in this notice.

For an administrator we record sign-in attempts, the address their device connected from and which browser it was, their active sessions, and a log of every change they make to published content. Sign-in is limited to named accounts and takes more than a password.

Visitors never sign in, and none of this applies to a visitor.

Where it is stored

Supabase runs the database and stores uploaded files. Its servers for this project are in Tokyo, Japan.

Vercel hosts the site. Pages are served from whichever of its locations is nearest you — for most visitors in India, Mumbai — while the application itself runs in Washington DC, United States. Like any web host it processes the requests your browser makes, including the address they come from, and keeps short-lived operational logs. We do not store that address in our own database.

Google provides sign-in for administrator accounts only. Google Forms collects responses for those issues that use an outside form. YouTube, Vimeo and Instagram serve embedded material, and only on pages that contain it.

This means data is stored and processed outside India. We say so plainly rather than leave it to be worked out. We do not sell, rent or trade any of it, and we do not pass it to anybody else for their own purposes.

How long we keep it

Deleted automatically. Administrator sign-in logs after 90 days. Administrator sessions 30 days after they have ended — a session still in use is never deleted. Hour-by-hour view figures after 24 hours, leaving only daily totals. These are enforced by the database itself, not by somebody remembering to do it.

Kept until we delete them. Contact messages and problem reports. A report can take a long time to research. There is no automatic expiry on either, and we are not going to publish a period we do not enforce. Ask us and we will delete yours.

Kept as part of the public record. A published comment stands until you ask us to remove it, or we remove it under the Terms. Consultation answers are kept as the record of what people said; they hold nothing identifying. Daily totals are kept indefinitely. The log of administrator changes is kept, because it is what allows a change to a public record to be traced to a person.

Asking to see, correct or delete something

Write to aarunyaswarajparty@gmail.com and tell us what you want. You can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to remove it — a contact message, a problem report, or a comment. You do not have to give a reason. We will do what we can, and what is required of us where applicable under law.

We handle these ourselves. This is a small team: there is no rights portal and no separate department to go through. If you are not satisfied with how we have dealt with it, say so in reply and it goes to the person responsible for the site.

Two honest limits. An answer you gave to a consultation on this site cannot be singled out and deleted, because it was never stored with anything that ties it to you — that is the point of collecting it that way. And anything you typed into an outside form is held by that service: ask them, or ask us and we will do what we can.

Children and young people

This site is about public policy and is written for adults, but anybody can read it and we do not verify anybody's age. There is no account system and no age check. We are not claiming that a young person is prevented from using the site, because they are not.

What we can say is what we do not do. We build no profile of any visitor, we track nobody across this site or any other, and we run no behavioural advertising — for children or for anybody else. Almost nothing we collect from a visitor is tied to an identity in the first place.

If you believe a child has sent us something through the contact form, a problem report or a comment, write to aarunyaswarajparty@gmail.com and we will delete it.

The law this sits under

We are in India and this notice is written against India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the rules made under it, which were notified in November 2025. The main obligations those rules place on organisations take effect in May 2027.

We would rather describe accurately what we do now than claim a compliance status we have not been assessed for. As those requirements come into force we will meet what applies to us, and this notice will change with them.

Keeping it safe

The database itself enforces who may read and write each table, rather than trusting the application to remember. Administrator access is limited to named accounts and takes more than a password. Every administrative change to published content is logged.

We collect as little as we can, which is the strongest protection of all: most of what this site handles has nothing attached to a person, so there is nothing to lose.

No system is perfectly secure and we will not tell you otherwise. If something goes wrong that affects data we hold, we will say so.

Changes to this notice

The platform changes and this notice changes with it. The date at the top is the date it last changed. When something material changes, we will say what changed rather than quietly reposting it.

Contact

Anything about this notice, or a request to see, correct or delete something: aarunyaswarajparty@gmail.com

Aarunya Swaraj Party