Privacy Policy

Puja Parikrama is a free pandal discovery and route planning service for Kolkata's pujas, operated by Arunabha Banerjee, an individual developer based in India. In this policy, "we" means the operator of Puja Parikrama, and "you" means anyone using the app or website.

For any privacy question or request, write to growwithhustler@gmail.com.

You can browse pandals, use the map and build a route without an account. You give us information when you do the following.

• •Sign in with Google. We receive your name, email address, profile photo and a Google account identifier. We never see or store your Google password.
• •Set your preferences. Your home location, whether you want notifications, the pandals you mark as visited, and the pandals in your current route.
• •Save a plan. The name you give it, the area and times you chose, and the list of stops with their timings.
• •Report live conditions. The pandal, the crowd level from one to ten, and the rain status.
• •Share a photo. The photo you choose, an optional caption, the pandal, and when you shared it. The app resizes the photo on your device before uploading it, which also removes the details stored inside the file, such as the GPS location and camera model. If you report someone else's photo, we keep the reason you chose and any note you add.
• •Join or create a group. The group name and picture, who is in it, and the invite code. While you keep a group map open, your position, and where your device reports it, your accuracy, speed and battery level.
• •Send us a form. Contact messages, bug reports, support requests, requests to add a pandal, business partnership enquiries and pandal pass listings. These include the contact details you type, such as name, email, phone number and business address.
• •Edit your profile. A display name of your choosing, which replaces the one from Google.

• •Usage analytics. The website and the Android app use Google Analytics for Firebase, which records events such as screens opened, along with device and browser information and an approximate location derived from your IP address.
• •Advertising. The app does not show ads at the moment and does not read your device's advertising identifier. If a future version shows ads, we will update this policy before that version is released, naming the ad provider and the information it uses, and the app will ask for your consent where the law requires it.
• •Technical logs. Our hosting and database providers record standard request information, including IP address and timestamps, to run and secure the service.

Location is always optional and is only requested when you tap something that needs it, such as centring the map on you, setting your home location, attaching a location to a pandal request, pinning a business, or confirming you are close enough to a pandal to report its queue.

• •Stored and shared: while a group map is open, your position is saved to that group and visible to its other members, along with your accuracy, speed and battery unless you hide them. It updates at most once every twenty seconds, and only when you have moved.
• •Stored, private to you: your home location, a location you attach to a pandal request, and a business pin submitted through the partner form.
• •Not stored: the position used to centre the map on you, and the position used to check you are near a pandal before posting a live report. Those are used on your device and discarded.
• •Sharing stops when you close the group map. There is no background tracking. You can also pause sharing, set it to end after a couple of hours, clear the last position you shared, or leave the group.
• •You can refuse the location permission and keep using everything else. You can withdraw it at any time in your browser or device settings.

• •To sign you in and keep you signed in.
• •To save your preferences, routes and visited pandals so they are there next time.
• •To show live crowd and rain conditions to other people planning their visit.
• •To reply to your messages, reports, partnership enquiries and pass listings.
• •To keep the service working, prevent abuse and spam, and fix problems.
• •To understand which parts of the app are used, so it can be improved.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers for their own marketing.

Your name, email and saved plans are private to your account. Nobody else can read them from the app.

Live crowd and rain reports are one exception, and that is the point of them. When you submit a report, other signed-in users see the combined result for that pandal, such as an average queue level and how many reports it is based on. Your name is never attached to a report in the app.

Groups are the other. The people in a group you join can see your name, your profile picture, and your position on that group's map while you are sharing, plus your speed and battery unless you hide them. Nobody outside that group can see any of it. A group holds at most three people, and you can leave at any time.

Photos you share are the third. Every photo is reviewed by a moderator first. Once one is approved, anyone using the app or the website can see it on that pandal, along with your first name, the year and your caption. Moderators can see your photo, caption and first name while they review it. If someone reports your photo, moderators see the report, but you are never told who sent it, and they are never told anything about you beyond the photo.

We use a small number of providers, and information passes to them only as needed to run the service.

• •Google Firebase. Sign-in, database, photo storage and analytics.
• •OpenFreeMap and OpenStreetMap. Map imagery and map data. Loading the map reveals your IP address to the map provider.
• •Google Fonts. Typefaces used across the app.
• •Vercel. Hosting for the website.
• •Google Maps. Opened only when you tap Navigate or Directions, after which Google's own terms and privacy policy apply.

• •Account information and preferences: until you ask us to delete your account.
• •Saved plans, visited pandals and routes: until you delete them, or until your account is deleted.
• •Live crowd reports: they stop being shown thirty minutes after they are posted, and the record is kept only for abuse prevention.
• •Group positions: your latest position only, replaced each time it updates. It is deleted when you leave the group, and you can clear it yourself at any time without leaving.
• •Photos you share: until you delete them, a moderator removes them, or your account is deleted. When a photo is not approved, its image is deleted during review.
• •On your device: a copy of your saved plans, route and preferences, and the maps you save or recently viewed, so the app keeps working without signal. Changes you make offline wait on the device until you are back online. Signing out removes your copy of your data and your saved maps.
• •Reports about photos: until a moderator has dealt with them.
• •Form submissions such as enquiries and reports: kept while we deal with them and for a reasonable period afterwards for our records.

• •Change your display name, home location and notification preference in your profile at any time.
• •Delete any saved plan from My plans in the planner.
• •Unmark a pandal you marked as visited.
• •Delete any photo you shared, from Your photos in your profile, or from the photo itself.
• •Turn off notifications or location in your device settings.
• •Pause location sharing in a group, shorten how long it runs, or clear the last position you shared.
• •Leave a group, which deletes the position you shared with it.
• •Sign out from your profile, which stops any further data being linked to your account and removes your data and saved maps from the device.
• •Delete your account and its data yourself, from Profile, Delete account.

You can delete your account yourself, inside the app: open Profile and choose Delete account. Once Google confirms it is you, this straight away removes your profile, preferences, saved plans, visited pandals and route, the photos you shared, your crowd reports, your group memberships and the positions you shared with them, and your sign-in.

If you cannot use the app, email growwithhustler@gmail.com from the address you signed in with, with the subject "Delete my account", and we will do it for you, normally within thirty days. The account deletion page sets out exactly what is removed and what is kept.

Messages and forms you sent us are kept for a reasonable period for our records. We may keep the minimum needed to meet a legal obligation or to resolve a dispute.

You may also ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you, or ask us to correct it, using the same address.

Puja Parikrama is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has given us personal information, write to us and we will delete it.

Traffic is encrypted in transit. Access to the database is restricted by security rules so that your profile, plans and preferences can be read only by you, and form submissions cannot be read by any app user at all. No service can promise perfect security, but we keep what we collect to a minimum for exactly that reason.

We may update this policy as the app changes. The date at the top always shows the current version, and significant changes will be highlighted in the app.

Questions about this policy or your data go to growwithhustler@gmail.com, or through the contact page.