Privacy policy

This policy follows the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) and the rules made under it. "We" means Rudrapur City (rudrapurcity.com) and its publisher Dipanker shah, who is the "Data Fiduciary" for your personal data under the Act.

• You need no account, login or phone number to read the site.
• No advertising networks. To count how many people read the website we use Google Analytics (see "Website statistics" below). Your data is never sold.
• We collect only what is needed to run the site or to publish what you send us.
• In most forms, giving your name and phone number is your choice. A blood request needs a contact number, and your consent for us to contact you on it and to show it with the request on the site, so that donors can call directly. Listing a shop offer or a place for rent also needs a phone number and your consent to show it with the listing, and adding a shop to the Rudrapur Bazaar needs the shop's mobile number and your consent to show it on the shop's page.
• You can ask to see, correct or delete your data at any time.

• What you send us: when you send news, an event, a job, an alert, a blood request, a place or a correction, the text of the form; your name and phone number if you choose to give them (a blood request needs a contact number); the permissions you choose (to be contacted, to have your number published) and the time of sending.
• Blood requests: blood group, units, hospital, area, contact name and number, and when it is needed. We do not ask for the patient's name; please do not include it.
• Shop offers and places for rent: the text of the form, the shop's or the contact's phone number (with your consent to show it with the listing), the contact name and the photos you send. A rent number is never printed on the page: it is shown only to someone who presses "नंबर देखें" (show number), and one person can see only a limited number of them in an hour. Until the listing is approved, only the editor can see the photos you sent.
• The listing's manage link: when you send a listing, you are shown a private link once, with which you can view, extend or close your listing. If you gave an email on the form, the same link goes to that email at the same moment. We do not keep the link, only its hash (a one-way code), so a lost link cannot be sent again. Do not share it.
• The manage link of a place, event, job or advocate listing: with it you can send changes (they appear on the site only after the editor has checked them) or take the listing down. You may give your mobile number with a change (optional) so that we can ask if we have a question; the change, any new photos and the time are kept and deleted like any submission.
• Your email on the form (optional): if you give an email when you send a shop offer, a rent listing, a place, an event, a job or an advocate listing, or when you ask for a manage link, we automatically send only this to it: right away, what we received (with its manage link); on approval, the listing's page; a new manage link made by the editor; and a note when your change is live. No newsletters or advertising. The email is never shown on the site, in the app or in an AI answer. It is kept and deleted with the submission; on a place, event, job or advocate listing it becomes the "owner's email" and stays as long as the listing does (when someone who asked for the manage link is confirmed, their email replaces the earlier one). The emails go from noreply@rudrapurcity.com through the email service of Amazon Web Services; one address gets at most three receipts a day. To have the email removed, see "Your rights" below.
• A claim on a listing already on the site ("Is this your listing?"): your name, mobile number, your connection to the listing and your message. Before we send a link we call you and the number on the listing to confirm, and we send the link to your number's WhatsApp. Your number is not shown on the site. As soon as a new link is made, the listing's old link stops working.
• Listing counts: for each offer and rent listing we keep just two numbers: how many times it was viewed, and how many times someone pressed call, WhatsApp, directions or "नंबर देखें". A reader is counted once a day (views) or once an hour (contacts) using the daily-changing IP hash. Who viewed it or who took the number is not recorded anywhere.
• A shop in the Rudrapur Bazaar: the text of the join form, the shop's photo, the owner's name (never shown on the site) and the shop's mobile number. With your consent that number is shown on the shop's page so that customers can call and WhatsApp the shop, and it is also the shop owner's login. The owner may also give an email address: it is never shown on the site, and it is used only to confirm that we got the request and to send the set-up link for the PIN (through the email service of Amazon Web Services). We never keep the owner's 6-digit PIN itself, only its scrypt hash (a one-way code from which the PIN cannot be recovered). The set-up link for making the PIN is also kept only as a hash and stops working after 72 hours or once it has been used. A count of wrong PINs in a row is kept to block guessing. The stock, prices and photos the owner adds are shown to everyone on the shop's page.
• Following a shop: no account is needed; the shops you follow stay on your phone or in your browser. If you turn on notifications of new stock, we keep only which push subscription (browser) or app push token follows which shop, the language of the notifications and when you followed — not your name, number or anything else. The shop owner sees only the number of followers, never who they are.
• Bazaar counts: for each shop and each item, per day, we keep just two numbers: how many times it was viewed, and how many times someone pressed WhatsApp, call or directions. A reader is counted once a day (views) or once an hour (contacts) using the daily-changing IP hash. Who viewed or asked is not recorded anywhere; the shop owner sees only the numbers.
• Asking a shop on WhatsApp: pressing "WhatsApp पर पूछें" (ask on WhatsApp) opens WhatsApp on your phone, and the message goes straight from your phone to the shop's number. We never see or keep that message, your number or the shop's reply.
• The bazaar map: wherever a map is shown (the bazaar's page, its "बड़ा नक्शा" (big map), "कहां है" (where it is) on a shop's page, or the bazaar in the app), the map pictures come from the servers of OpenStreetMap (the OpenStreetMap Foundation). For that your browser sends them, as for any picture, your internet address and this site's address. The map's code (Leaflet) comes from our own server. The exact place of a shop run from home is never shown, only its locality.
• The daily show's videos (YouTube): the videos of the news section's "डेली शो" (daily show, "क्या चल रहा है?") are kept on YouTube (Google LLC). When a page opens you see only our own picture; nothing comes from YouTube. Only when you press "देखें" (▶, watch) does YouTube's player load, from youtube-nocookie.com; your browser then sends YouTube, as for any website, your internet address and this site's address, and YouTube may use browser storage under its own rules to play the video. That data is covered by YouTube's privacy policy (policies.google.com/privacy); we get nothing from it.
• Daily show views: for each episode we keep just two numbers: how many times its video was started on the website and in the app. A reader is counted once a day, using the same one-way hash of your IP address that changes every day (see "Hashed IP address for abuse prevention" below). Only the editor sees these numbers; they are not shown on the site or in the app.
• Website statistics (Google Analytics): when a page of the website opens, Google Analytics (Google LLC) records which page it was, which site or app you came from, your device and browser type, screen size, language, an approximate city worked out from your internet address, how long you stayed, how far down the page you read, and which link to another site or which file you opened. For this a cookie is stored in your browser (see "Cookies" below), so that the same browser coming back counts as one reader. Google uses your IP address only to estimate the city and does not keep it in the reports. We see only totals (such as "1,200 readers today, 60% of them from Google") — never who a person is. Words searched on the site and form activity are not sent to Google, and a listing's private manage page is not counted at all. We have turned off Google signals and the use of the data for advertising. If your browser sends "Do Not Track" or Global Privacy Control, we do not load Google Analytics at all; Google's own opt-out add-on (tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout) works too. The app does not use Google Analytics. Google Search Console tells us only how often our site appeared in Google search, for which words and how many clicks it got — it contains nothing about individual people.
• Notifications (web push): when you tap "सूचना चालू करें" (turn on notifications) and allow it, your browser creates a subscription consisting of a web address (endpoint) and two encryption keys. It contains no name, number or email. Alongside it we keep only its creation time and a count of delivery successes and failures.
• App notifications (Android and iPhone apps): when you tap "सूचना चालू करें" (turn on notifications) in the app and allow it, your phone creates a push token, a random code that lets notifications reach this app only. With it we keep the phone type (Android or iPhone), the app language (Hindi or English), the app version, and when the token was first and last received. It contains no name, number, email, advertising ID or location.
• Without notifications turned on, the app only asks our server for the same news, events and numbers the website shows. No account or identifier is sent for that. A question you ask on the app's "Ask" screen is handled as described under "Asking the AI" below; the app shows that notice once and asks for your agreement before the first question.
• Polls: when you vote, an anonymous cookie (rc_voter) holding a random code is stored in your browser. We store a hash (a one-way code) of that code with the option you chose, so that each device is counted once. It does not identify you.
• Hashed IP address for abuse prevention: to stop spam and repeated form submissions, we derive a one-way hash from your IP address that changes every day. It is used for counting (rate limiting) and stored with any submission. Your actual IP address is not stored in our database.
• Server logs: like every website, our hosting servers may create technical logs such as IP address, time, page requested, browser type and error details.
• Things kept on your phone: the site stores a few preferences in your browser (such as a dismissed notice or whether you voted in a poll) and copies of some pages for offline reading. These stay on your device and are not sent to us. The app likewise keeps your chosen language and a copy of recent content on your phone for offline reading.
• If you contact us on WhatsApp or by email, your number or email address and your messages stay with us in that app.

• No advertising networks or tracking pixels, and no cookies for advertising.
• For statistics we use only Google Analytics (see "Website statistics" above), with the use of the data for advertising turned off. If any other statistics service is ever added, this policy will be updated first.
• We never ask for your location, except when you press "मेरे पास" (near me) on the bazaar map: your browser then asks your permission, and your place is used only on your phone to move the map there; it is not sent to us. Weather is for a fixed point in Rudrapur city.
• Fonts and weather data are served from our own server, so opening a page does not send your details to any font or weather service.
• Your data is not sold, rented or given to anyone for marketing. We do not send promotional messages or calls to your number.

• The photographs you see are stored in this site's own database. No external image or photo service is used, so simply looking at a picture sends nothing about you to a third company.
• When the editor adds a photograph from a phone, the phone's browser shrinks it and re-creates it before it is sent. That is also why the camera's hidden data (EXIF) — such as location, camera model and the original time — does not travel with it to the server.
• Freely licensed photographs are likewise stored only after being resized and stripped of the camera's hidden data.
• Photos you send with a shop offer, a rent listing or a place (or with a change to your listing) are also shrunk and re-created in your phone's browser, so the camera's hidden data does not come with them. Until approval only the editor can see them; they are deleted with the listing 90 days after it ends. If a listing has not been reviewed within 21 days its photos are deleted then, and the photos of a rejected listing are deleted after 7 days.
• Every photograph stays attached to the record it was added for, such as a place, event, job or story. If that record is deleted, the photograph is attached to nothing and the automatic cleanup deletes it: at the cleanup run after it is more than 30 days old. The editor can also delete any photograph at any time.
• We do not publish a photograph in which a private individual can be identified without their permission, and we never publish photographs of children (see the editorial policy). To have a photograph removed, write to contact@rudrapurcity.com.

• To check and publish what you send, and to contact you to confirm it, only if you allowed us to contact you.
• To show your phone number on the site, only if you separately allowed it to be published (for example on a blood request or as an event organiser's number).
• To send notifications about important alerts and news, if you turned notifications on.
• To prevent the same device from voting twice in a poll.
• To prevent spam, fraud and attacks, and to keep the site secure and running.
• To comply with a law or a lawful order.

• Consent: you choose the consent options when you submit a form, and you grant browser permission to turn on notifications. Each consent is for a specific purpose and can be withdrawn at any time.
• Data you give voluntarily: when you send information yourself for a specific purpose, such as getting news published, we use it only for that purpose unless you tell us you do not agree. The DPDP Act treats this as a "legitimate use".
• Security and legal duties: the Act expects us to take reasonable safeguards to protect your data. The hashed IP and server logs are used in a limited way for that purpose and to comply with any law or lawful order.

If a law, court order or government direction requires any of this data to be kept longer than stated above, it will be kept securely, only for that period and only for that purpose.

• Submissions (name, phone and form content): deleted 90 days after the editor's decision (approved or rejected). Submissions that were never reviewed are also deleted 90 days after they were sent.
• Anything that was published (such as an event or job) stays on the site while it is useful or until you ask us to remove it. It includes your number only if you allowed it to be published.
• Photographs: kept as long as the record they are attached to. Once that record is gone, a photograph that is used nowhere is deleted at the cleanup run after it is more than 30 days old.
• Blood requests: hidden from the site after 48 hours (or earlier once the need is met) and fully deleted within 30 days after that.
• Shop offers and rent listings: an offer leaves the site after its last day (or when it is closed early), a rent listing after 30 days (longer if extended) or when it is marked as rented. 90 days after it ends it is deleted completely, with its phone number, photos and counts. A rejected listing is deleted after 30 days, and the photos sent with it after only 7. If a listing has not been reviewed 21 days after it was sent, its photos are deleted then; the rest follows the rule for submissions above.
• Rudrapur Bazaar: when a shop owner deletes an item, its photos are deleted at once. A closed shop is deleted completely 90 days after closing, with its items, photos, follows, counts and notifications. Daily counts are deleted after 400 days and follower notifications already sent after 30 days. A follow is deleted when you unfollow, turn notifications off, or the shop is deleted. The join form is deleted like any other submission. To have a shop deleted sooner, contact us.
• Notification subscriptions: until you turn notifications off. If the browser's push service reports that a subscription no longer works (for example because you removed permission), it is deleted automatically.
• App push token: until you turn notifications off in the app, which deletes it from our server straight away. If you uninstall the app or turn off permission in phone settings, the token is deleted automatically the next time a notification is sent and the delivery service reports that it no longer works.
• Anonymous poll votes: kept until the poll is deleted, so results can be shown. They contain nothing that identifies you.
• Questions asked to the AI (Ask): the question and answer text is deleted automatically after 90 days.
• Google Analytics: the record of page views stays with Google for at most 14 months and is then deleted automatically; totals (such as a day's readers) stay in the reports. The browser cookie expires after 13 months.
• IP hashes: counting records are deleted in about a day. A hash stored with a submission is deleted with that submission. The hash changes every day, so hashes from different days cannot be linked.
• Server logs: kept for 180 days (as required by the CERT-In directions of 28 April 2022) and then deleted, or longer only where a law requires it.
• Complaints and rights requests: one year after they are resolved, so that we can answer questions about them later.
• Deleted data may remain in database security backups for up to 35 days, after which it is removed automatically.

• Readers: what you send becomes visible to everyone once approved and published. Your name or phone number appears only if you allowed it to be published.
• Hosting: the site runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud servers in India (Mumbai region). AWS stores and processes data on our behalf, under our contract, only to provide this service.
• Notification delivery: push notifications reach you through your browser's push service (for example Google for Chrome, Apple for Safari, Mozilla for Firefox). Messages are sent encrypted. Notifications of new stock from a shop you follow travel the same way.
• App notifications: app notifications are sent through the push service of Expo (650 Industries, Inc., USA) and then delivered by Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging on Android phones and by the Apple Push Notification service on iPhones. They receive only the push token and the notification itself (title, short text and the link it opens), so this data may pass through servers outside India. It is sent over an encrypted connection (HTTPS).
• Statistics: website statistics are counted through Google Analytics (Google LLC, USA), as described under "Website statistics" above. This data may go to servers outside India. Google processes it on our behalf, under our settings.
• Video: a daily show video plays from YouTube (Google LLC, USA) when you press "देखें" (watch), as described under "The daily show's videos" above. Nothing goes to YouTube before you press it.
• Shops: when you press "WhatsApp पर पूछें" (ask on WhatsApp) or "call", you talk to the shop directly; what the shop does with your message and number is the shop's responsibility. We give the shop none of your data.
• External websites: when you open a news link, Google Maps, a WhatsApp share or a government website, you move to that website and its own privacy policy applies.
• Legal requests: in response to a lawful request from a court, the police or a government authority, only the data requested and necessary.
• We never sell your data.

On the "Ask" page (and the app's "Ask" screen) you can ask questions about Rudrapur. An AI model writes the answer, using only this site's information (news, numbers, places, alerts and the other sections). The cards under an answer are built from our checked information. The AI's own words can be wrong, so check the cards before you act on anything important.

• What is sent: your question and the previous three questions and answers of the same conversation, and your ward number if you chose "my ward". It is sent to Anthropic (Anthropic PBC, USA), the company that makes the Claude AI model. So this data may pass through servers outside India. We do not send your name, phone number or any account.
• Asking by voice: when you tap the mic, your own browser turns your voice into text with its speech service (Google in Chrome, Apple in Safari), whose own privacy policy applies. Only the written question reaches us; your voice never reaches us and is never stored by us. The browser asks for microphone permission, and you can turn it off at any time. In the app, the phone's own speech recognition does the same (Apple on iPhone, Google on Android); the app asks once for microphone and speech recognition permission, which you can turn off in the phone's settings at any time. The app does not send us any recording of your voice either.
• Do not type your name, mobile number, Aadhaar or address in a question. Before a question is stored with us, numbers such as mobile, Aadhaar and e-mail are hidden automatically.
• What we keep: the question, the answer, which sections of the site were looked up, the time and the cost, for 90 days, to improve the answers and to learn what information the site is missing. Your IP address is not kept with it. A daily-changing anonymous hash is used to count how many questions one person can ask.
• The conversation on your screen stays only in that tab of your browser and is cleared when you close the tab. In the app it stays while the app is open and is not saved on the phone. Pressing "New conversation" clears it too.
• Listening to an answer: when you press "Listen", the text of the answer (not your question) is sent to a voice service so it can be read in a natural voice: Google Cloud Text-to-Speech (Google, USA). The audio stays in our server's memory for a short while so the same answer can be played again; it is not stored anywhere. If this fails, your phone's own voice reads the answer.
• Your 👍 or 👎 is kept with that question.

Under the DPDP Act, 2023 you have these rights:

• Right to information: ask what data we hold about you and how it has been used.
• Right to correction and updating: have inaccurate, incomplete or outdated data corrected.
• Right to erasure: have your data deleted, unless a law requires us to keep it.
• Right to withdraw consent: at any time, as easily as you gave it. Withdrawal does not make earlier use unlawful, but that use stops afterwards (for example, a published number is removed).
• Right to grievance redressal: complain to our grievance officer.
• Right to nominate: nominate a person to exercise these rights for you in the event of your death or incapacity.

Email contact@rudrapurcity.com or write on WhatsApp to +91 74170 57764. Tell us which data it is, such as the date you sent it, what it was about and which phone number you gave, so we can find it. To confirm your identity we may ask you to confirm from that same number or email. We aim to resolve requests within 15 days.

To stop notifications, tap the "सूचना चालू है" (notifications on) button again, or turn off notification permission for this site in your browser or phone settings. In the app, switch "Notifications" off on the "App & settings" screen, or turn off notifications for the Rudrapur City app in phone settings. You can delete the poll cookie from your browser settings at any time.

The Act also gives you duties: do not file false or frivolous complaints, do not send information in someone else's name, and give correct information when asking for a correction.

If you are not satisfied after completing our grievance process, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

• Anyone can read the site, but you must be 18 or older to send a form, a name or a phone number. People under 18 should ask a parent or guardian to send it.
• We do not knowingly collect children's personal data, track children or show them targeted advertising.
• If we learn that a child sent personal data without a guardian's consent, it is deleted.

• The site is served only over HTTPS (an encrypted connection).
• Submissions can be seen only by the editor, in a password-protected admin panel.
• Your actual IP address is not stored in the database, only a hash that changes daily.
• No system is 100% secure. If a personal data breach ever occurs, affected people and the Data Protection Board of India will be informed as the law requires.

• rc_voter — an anonymous random code used to count one vote per device in polls. Set only when you vote.
• rc_admin — only for the editor's login. Never set for readers.
• rc_manage — set after you send a shop offer, a rent listing, a place, an event, a job or an advocate listing, only to show the manage link once on the thank-you page. It is sent to that page only and deleted as soon as the page opens (or after 15 minutes).
• rc_shop — only for a shop owner's login to "मेरी दुकान" (my shop). 90 days with "इस फ़ोन पर लॉगिन रखें" (keep me logged in on this phone), otherwise until the browser closes. It holds the shop's id and a signature, never the PIN, and stops working when the PIN is changed, on "log out everywhere", when the login is revoked or the shop is suspended. Never set for readers.
• _ga and _ga_<ID> — Google Analytics cookies, so that the same browser coming back is counted as one reader. They hold a random code, not your name or number. They expire after 13 months, and are not set when "Do Not Track" is on.
• If you press "देखें" (watch) to play a daily show video, YouTube may store its own cookies or browser storage for its player (its rules apply). Not before you press it.
• No other cookies, and none for advertising.

When this policy changes, the new date will be shown on this page. For a significant change (such as collecting a new kind of data) we will also post a notice on the site.

• Data Fiduciary: Rudrapur City, publisher Dipanker shah
• Grievance officer: Dipanker shah
• Email: contact@rudrapurcity.com
• WhatsApp: +91 74170 57764
• Address: रुद्रपुर, ऊधम सिंह नगर, उत्तराखंड 263153