Privacy Policy

Account data: mobile phone number (verified by OTP), display name, gender.

Birth data: date of birth, exact time of birth, place of birth including geographic coordinates and timezone. Because readings are computed from it, this is the core data the Service needs.

Third-party birth profiles: name and birth details of another person that you submit for compatibility matching — only to be provided with that person's consent.

Device location: if you grant the location permission, we collect your device's approximate location — city-level only; we never request high-accuracy or background location, and we do not track your movements. It is used while the app is open, and the location recorded at onboarding is stored on your profile as your current location until you delete your account. This is separate from your place of birth, which you enter yourself. Location is optional: you may decline the permission, or revoke it later in your device settings, and the Service continues to work — location-aware features such as local panchang timings simply fall back to a default reference location.

Palm photographs (biometric data): if you use Palm Reading, we collect the photographs of your palms that you capture with the camera or upload. Palm images are biometric data and are treated as our most sensitive category. They are stored on our servers, are never publicly accessible — every read is authenticated and ownership-checked — and are used solely to generate your palm reading. They are permanently deleted, not merely deactivated, the moment you delete your account. Palm Reading is optional; if you never open it, no photograph is ever collected.

Voice recordings: if you use Voice Chat, your microphone audio is streamed in real time to our AI inference provider so the AI astrologer can hear and answer you. The audio is processed for the duration of the call to produce a response and is not retained by us as a recording afterwards; the resulting conversation is stored as text in the same way a typed chat is. Voice Chat is optional, is off unless you enable it, and requires a separate microphone consent in addition to the consent described in Section 3.

Usage data: chat messages you send to the AI astrologer, feature usage, preferences (language, ayanamsa, house system), and technical logs (device type, approximate region, timestamps).

We process personal data to: compute your kundli, dasha, panchang, and horoscopes; generate personalised AI readings and chat responses; run compatibility matching you request; read the palms you photograph; hold spoken conversations with you in Voice Chat; operate, secure, and debug the Service; send service notifications you opt into; and meet legal obligations. We do not sell personal data, and we do not use it for third-party advertising.

Palm photographs are used for one purpose only — producing the palm reading you asked for. We do not use them for identification, verification, matching against any other person, or training AI models, and we do not share them with anyone outside the AI inference provider that generates the reading itself.

Device location, where you grant it, is used only to localise time-sensitive astrological calculations — panchang timings, sunrise and sunset, and transit readings are all specific to where you are — and to name that place back to you in the interface. We do not use location for advertising, profiling, or tracking, and we do not share it with data brokers.

We process your personal data on the basis of consent (Section 6, DPDP Act), collected at onboarding through a free, specific, informed, and unambiguous affirmative action. You may withdraw consent at any time in Settings or by deleting your account; withdrawal stops future processing but does not affect processing already carried out. Some features (chart, horoscope, chat, matching) cannot function without the birth data they compute from — withdrawing consent for that data means those features stop working.

Chart mathematics run on our servers using astronomical (ephemeris) calculations. Narrative content is generated by AI language models that receive your computed chart context (and your chat messages) to produce a response. Consent events are recorded in an append-only audit log with timestamps and document versions, as the DPDP Act's accountability provisions contemplate.

We share personal data only with processors who operate the Service under contract and on our instructions: cloud hosting and database providers, Google Firebase (phone authentication), and AI inference providers that process chart context and chat text to generate responses. Processors are not permitted to use your data for their own purposes.

Two of those flows are worth stating plainly because they involve the most sensitive categories. Palm photographs are transmitted to our AI inference provider to be interpreted into a reading. Voice Chat audio is streamed to that provider in real time for the duration of a call so it can respond in speech. In both cases the provider acts on our instructions to answer your request, and is not permitted to use the images or audio for its own purposes, including model training.

One exception is disclosed for completeness: when you grant location, your coordinates are sent to the OpenStreetMap Nominatim service to convert them into a place name for display. That is a public lookup service used without an account, not a contracted processor, and it receives coordinates only — never your identity, phone number, or birth details.

Some processors may store or process data outside India. Such transfers are made in accordance with Section 16 of the DPDP Act (which permits transfers except to countries restricted by the Central Government) and with contractual safeguards.

We may disclose personal data where required by Indian law or lawful government request.

We retain personal data while your account is active. Deleting your account in the app (Settings → Delete Account) submits a deletion request, which we review before acting on it — normally within three to seven business days. We do this so that an irreversible erasure is never triggered by a mis-tap, and we will tell you on screen that the request has been received. Your account continues to work during the review, though we stop sending you notifications and stop generating new readings for you from the moment you ask.

Once the request is approved the erasure itself is irreversible and is not merely a flag: your name, gender, email, date, time and place of birth, gotra, current location, relationship status and every other identifying field on your profile — and the same fields on any third-party birth profile you created — are overwritten outright.

Your palm photographs, chat transcripts, saved AI memory, and feedback are the highest-risk categories, so they are permanently destroyed outright rather than overwritten in place. Push notification tokens for your devices are revoked and scrubbed.

Two things are deliberately retained, and we would rather state them than imply a completeness we do not deliver. First, your mobile number and authentication identifier are kept on the emptied account shell. This is a security and anti-abuse measure, not a use of your data. It serves two purposes: mobile numbers in India are recycled to new subscribers, and keeping the shell is what guarantees that whoever is issued your number next receives a blank, freshly-onboardable account instead of inheriting anything of yours; and because new accounts receive a one-time sign-up credit, retaining the number is what stops the same person from claiming that credit repeatedly by deleting and re-registering. If you sign in again on that number you return to the same emptied account — we will say so, and you will need to enter your details afresh. Nothing of substance remains attached to it. Second, the consent audit log keeps a skeleton record — which consent, which document version, and when — because the DPDP Act's accountability provisions require us to be able to evidence the lawful basis on which we processed data; the IP address and device string on those records are scrubbed with everything else.

Payment and tax records are retained for the period Indian law requires. Backup copies purge on their own rotation cycle. If you want the retained shell and consent skeleton removed as well, write to the Grievance Officer in Section 10 and we will action it manually.

You have the right to: access a summary of your personal data and the processing done on it (write to us and we will provide a machine-readable export); correct and update it (your profile is editable in the app); erase it (delete your account, or write to us); a readily available grievance mechanism (Section 10 above); and nominate another individual to exercise your rights if you die or are incapacitated.

You also have duties under Section 15 of the DPDP Act, including not to impersonate another person or suppress material information when providing data.

The Service is for users 18 and over. We do not knowingly process the personal data of children as defined by the DPDP Act. If you believe a minor has created an account, contact the Grievance Officer and we will delete it.

We follow reasonable security practices under Section 43A of the IT Act, 2000: encryption in transit (TLS), AES-256 encryption at rest for the most sensitive fields — birth details, gotra, and chat transcripts — access controls, authenticated APIs, and audit logging. Palm photographs are never publicly addressable and are served only through an authenticated, ownership-checked route. No system is perfectly secure; in the event of a personal data breach we will notify the Data Protection Board of India and affected users as required by Section 8(6) of the DPDP Act.

Grievance Officer (also our contact point for all data-protection questions): Subir Dutta. Email: subir@arohaastrology.in. Address: Aroha Astrology, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.

We acknowledge every grievance within 24 hours of receipt and endeavour to resolve it within 15 days, as required by Rule 3(2)(a) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Use the same address to exercise any right in Section 7, including erasure of retained records described in Section 6.

Aroha has not been notified as a Significant Data Fiduciary under Section 10 of the DPDP Act and is therefore not required to appoint a statutory Data Protection Officer; the Grievance Officer above performs that contact function. If that notification status changes, this Section will be updated and a DPO named.

If you are unsatisfied after exhausting this mechanism, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India under the DPDP Act.

We may update this Policy. Material changes will be notified in the app; where the change expands the purposes of processing, we will seek fresh consent as the DPDP Act requires. The version and date above always reflect the current text.