Privacy Policy

• Account details: when you register you give us a username, your first and last name, your email address and a password. Your password is never stored as you typed it - our sign-in system (Keycloak, which we run ourselves) keeps only a secure hash of it.
• Your display name: your first and last name are shown publicly next to every debate and opinion you post.
• What you post: debates (title, argument, category and tags), opinions (text, and whether you are for or against), and any images you add to them. All of this is public.
• Images, as uploaded: images are published exactly as you upload them, including any information stored inside the file, such as the location where a photo was taken or the device used. Remove that information before uploading if you don't want it public.
• Totals, not tracking: we count views of debates and likes and reports on opinions. We store only the totals, not which user viewed, liked or reported something.
• Technical data: our servers log requests and errors - including IP addresses, browser details, and the account behind actions such as creating, editing or deleting a debate - to keep Pakshya running and secure.

• To run Pakshya: publishing debates and opinions, showing who posted them, and search.
• Your email address is used only to sign you in and to send password-reset emails. We don't show it to other users and don't send marketing email.
• To keep the service secure, investigate abuse, and fix problems.
• We don't use your data for advertising, and we don't build profiles of you.

• Sign-in cookies keep you logged in, for up to 30 days.
• A language cookie remembers whether you chose English or Hindi.
• Your light or dark theme choice is saved in your browser's local storage.
• There are no advertising or analytics cookies and no third-party tracking scripts.

• Microsoft Azure stores the images you upload, on our behalf, in a data centre in India. Microsoft doesn't use them for its own purposes.
• Everything else - accounts, debates, opinions, the search index and logs - runs on infrastructure we manage.
• We don't sell your data or share it with advertisers. We disclose information to authorities only when Indian law requires us to.

• Your account: until you ask us to delete it.
• Deleting a debate permanently removes it, every opinion on it and every image in them, and removes them from search.
• Deleting an opinion removes it from the site and from search straight away. For now we still keep its text in our database, and its images stay stored - anyone who already has the direct link to one of those images can still open it. Ask us and we will delete them permanently.
• Editing: earlier versions of a debate or opinion are not kept, and images you take out while editing are deleted.
• Images you upload but never publish are not public, and are deleted automatically, normally within a day.
• Server logs: we have not set a fixed retention period yet. We will state one here when we do.

You can edit or delete your own debates and opinions at any time. You can also ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it, and you can raise a complaint with us about how we handle it.

Deleting your account does not automatically delete what you have posted. Each debate and opinion keeps the name you had when you posted it, even if you later change your name or delete your account. Ask us to delete your content as well and we will.

Passwords are stored only as hashes, links for uploading an image expire after 10 minutes and work for that one file only, and access to our systems is restricted. No service can promise perfect security; if a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Pakshya is not intended for anyone under 18, and we don't knowingly collect personal data from children.

When Pakshya changes how it handles personal data, we will update this page and the "last updated" date above. Material changes will be called out on this page.

To make a request or a complaint about your data, contact the Pakshya team via the About page. A dedicated privacy and grievance contact will be listed here before Pakshya opens to the public.