Privacy Policy

The short version

You can use Sri Bhakti Bhava’s free features (the daily shloka and a limited number of guide conversations) without creating an account or giving us any personal information at all. There is no login, no password, and no profile. The sections below list every kind of data we handle and why, including the small amount we keep about purchases so that paid access works across your devices.

What we collect

• Free usage: a signed, anonymous cookie that tracks how many guide questions you’ve asked today, so we can apply the free daily limit. It contains no personal information and cannot be used to identify you.
• Purchases on iPhone: Apple processes the payment and never gives us your name, email, or card. We store the anonymous transaction identifier Apple issues, which product it was for, and whether it is still active, so your access keeps working and so a refund or cancellation takes effect.
• Purchases on the web: our payment processor (Stripe) collects your email and payment details to process the transaction. We store your email and which plan you purchased in our own records, so we can recognize your access on another device. We never see or store your card details. Stripe handles those directly.
• Checking that a purchase is not being shared: when paid access is unlocked on a device, we record a one-way scrambled fingerprint of the network address it came from, together with the anonymous transaction identifier. We cannot reverse it back into an address, and we never store the address itself. It exists only to count how many different networks one purchase is being unlocked from. A high count is reviewed by a person, never used to block you automatically, because families and travel produce high counts honestly.
• Conversations with the guide: messages you send are passed to our AI provider (Groq) to generate a reply. We do not keep them. The one exception is when you choose to report a reply as wrong or harmful: reporting sends us that exchange so a person can read it and improve the guide. Nothing is reported unless you tap to report it.
• What stays only on your device: your journal entries, streak, reading progress, japa counts, reminder settings, and chat history are stored on your phone and are never uploaded to us. Deleting the app deletes them, so back up anything you want to keep.

What we never do

• We never sell or rent your data to anyone.
• We run no advertising, no analytics, no tracking pixels, and no third-party cookies. There is nothing following you between apps or sites, which is why this app asks for no tracking permission and shows no cookie banner.
• We never require an account to use the free features.
• We never store passwords, because there is no password-based login to have one.

How your data is protected

Everything travels over an encrypted connection (HTTPS), and our database encrypts what it holds on disk. Purchase records are reachable only by the app’s own server, never by a browser or by the app on your phone, so there is no public route to them. Network fingerprints are stored only as one-way hashes with a secret salt, meaning even we cannot turn them back into addresses.

No system is perfect, and we would rather say that plainly than promise otherwise. If you believe you have found a security problem, please write to us from the Support page and we will take it seriously.

How long we keep it

Purchase records are kept while your access is active and afterwards only as long as tax and accounting rules require. The scrambled network fingerprints are deleted automatically after thirty days. Reported conversations are kept until the problem has been reviewed and addressed. The anonymous free-usage cookie expires on its own and you can clear it at any time from your browser or by deleting the app.

Children

Sri Bhakti Bhava is intended for a general audience and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. The free features require no account and collect no personal information from anyone, and purchases run through Apple or Stripe, which have their own age and payment requirements.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe a child has given us personal information, write to us from the Support page and we will delete it promptly.

Third parties

In the iOS app, purchases are processed by Apple and we receive only anonymized transaction records, never your payment details. On the web we use Stripe for payment processing. We use Groq for AI responses, and Vercel for hosting. Each has its own privacy policy governing the data that passes through their systems.

Your choices

You can stop using the app at any time with nothing left behind beyond an anonymous cookie your browser controls. You may ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Write to us from the Support page and we will respond within 30 days, subject to any records we are legally required to keep for tax and payment purposes. We will not treat you differently for asking.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data, reach us through the Support page in the app.