Privacy Policy for Pariksha Saathi

What this app is

Pariksha Saathi is a free exam-preparation app and website for 26 Indian government exams: SSC, banking, railways, state police, defence, teaching, state PSC and state staff-selection exams. The Android app works offline without an account; the website needs an internet connection. An optional account lets your progress sync across devices.

What we collect

If you never create an account: nothing leaves your device except your study progress (quiz attempts, lesson completions, bookmarks), tagged with a random identifier generated on your device — not your name, phone number, or any hardware identifier — so it can be recognized as belonging to the same device on a later sync, and nothing else.

If you create an account: your email address and a password (which we never store directly — only a one-way cryptographic hash of it, so we can't see or recover your actual password). Your study progress becomes associated with your account instead of just your device, so it's available if you reinstall the app or use it on another device signed into the same account.

We do not collect: your name, phone number, location, contacts, photos, or any device identifier tied to your hardware (IMEI, advertising ID, etc.). The Android app does not use analytics, crash reporting, or advertising SDKs of any kind — nothing about your use of the app is shared with ad networks or analytics companies. The website at parikshasaathi.com currently shows no ads either — see "Advertising on the website" below for what would change if that ever happens.

How we use what we collect

• Study progress (quiz scores, completed lessons, bookmarks) is used only to show it back to you — your streak, your average score, your mistake notebook.
• Live mock leaderboard. If you sit a live mock, your score, number correct and rank are counted on that mock's leaderboard among Pariksha Saathi learners. Other learners see only the leaderboard name you choose (optional — leave it blank to appear as "Learner"), your score and your rank; never your email or your device's identifier. Names and ranks appear only once at least 100 learners have taken that mock. The daily test shows each learner only their own rank.
• Your email is used to let you sign in, and to send you a password-reset link if you ask for one.
• Nothing is used for advertising, and nothing is sold or shared with third parties, except as described below.

Third parties

Cloudflare hosts the website and delivers its pages. Like any web host it processes your IP address and browser details to serve pages and to protect the site from abuse; it does not receive your study data.

Fly.io hosts the server that the app and the website talk to.

SendGrid (Twilio) sends the password-reset email if you request one. It receives only your email address and the reset link at the moment you request a reset — nothing else, and only for that purpose.

Google AdSense: the website carries an AdSense site-verification tag, which loads no script and sets no cookie. No ads are shown and no advertising script is loaded today — see below.

Advertising on the website

The website at parikshasaathi.com shows no ads today, and the Android app never has. The only AdSense-related thing on the website is a verification meta tag, which loads no script and sets no cookie. If we ever switch ads on, we will update this policy first (the "Last updated" date will change) and describe exactly what Google's advertising cookies do and how to opt out of personalised ads at adssettings.google.com and aboutads.info/choices.

• The Android app is free of ads and ad SDKs. If that ever changes, this policy will say so before a release that includes them.

Your data, your control

• Delete your account from the app (Me → Account → Delete account). This removes your email and password immediately. Your study progress isn't deleted — it reverts to being anonymous: it stays on our server linked only to your device's random identifier, the same as if you'd never made an account, so the app can keep showing it to you. To have your progress removed together with your account, ask for deletion by email instead (see the account deletion page) — we then delete both.
• Uninstalling the app removes everything stored only on your device. If you had an account and synced progress, that data remains associated with your account server-side until you separately delete the account as above.
• There is currently no separate "export my data" feature; your account's summary (quiz count, average score, lesson/bookmark counts) is visible in the app itself.

Data security

Your password is never stored in plain text (only a bcrypt hash). Your session token is encrypted at rest on your device (Android Keystore). All communication between the app and our server uses HTTPS.

Children's privacy

This app is aimed at exam aspirants (typically adults preparing for competitive government exams) and isn't directed at children.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date above will change, and material changes will be reflected here before they take effect.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data: sriwastava2@gmail.com