Privacy Policy
Updates Group · last updated 8 September 2026
Updates Group is a community app for Melvisharam, Vaniyambadi, Ambur, Arcot, Ranipet, Pernambut, Gudiyatam, Chennai and Vellore. It shows prayer and jamath timings, events, doctors, function halls and a directory of local tradespeople.
This policy explains what we hold about you, why, and how to make us stop. It is deliberately short, because there is not much to explain: we do not advertise, we do not sell anything about you, and we do not track you.
You can use most of the app without telling us anything
Prayer timings, jamath timings, events, doctors, halls and the directory are all readable without signing in. If you never sign in, we hold no record of you at all — the town you picked and your colour scheme are saved on your own phone and are never sent to us.
What we hold if you do sign in
Signing in happens through Google. We never see or store your password. From Google we receive, and store on our own server:
- your name, as it appears on your Google account
- your email address
- the web address of your Google profile picture
- the account identifier Google gives us, which is how we recognise you next time
- the town you chose, so that a report you send reaches the right people
- the dates you first signed in and last used the app
That is the whole list. We do not ask for your phone number, your address, your date of birth or anything about your health, and there is nowhere in the app to give them to us.
Why we hold it
- To know who you are between visits — so the app remembers you rather than asking you to sign in every time.
- To decide what you may do — most people may read and suggest corrections; a few keep a mosque's timings or a doctor's schedule up to date. Your name and email are how an administrator identifies the right person to give that job to.
- To show who changed something — a jamath timing shows the name of the person who last updated or confirmed it, so the town can see it is being kept by somebody real.
- To send a report to the right town — the town on your account decides whose queue your correction lands in.
What you write, and who can see it
If you correct a timing, add an event, list a business in the directory or ask for a change, that becomes part of the town's information and is visible to everyone who uses the app.
A directory listing is public on purpose. The name, phone numbers, address and hours you enter are published so that people can ring you. Do not put anything there that you would not put on a shop board.
Who else sees your details
We use two companies to run the app, and nobody else:
- Google (Firebase Authentication) handles signing in, and Firebase Cloud Messaging delivers notifications — see below for how little that involves. Google's own privacy policy covers what they do with your Google account: policies.google.com/privacy.
- Hostinger hosts our website, our server and our database, which are located in India.
We do not sell your details. We do not share them with advertisers. There is no advertising network, no analytics, and no tracking of any kind in this app. We would hand something over to the police or a court only if we were legally required to.
Notifications
The app can tell you when something is added for your town — an event, a prayer timing correction, a new post. You choose which kinds you want, and you can switch them all off, from the Account screen.
We do not keep a record of your phone. This is unusual enough to be worth explaining. A notification is not addressed to you; it is addressed to a subject and a town, such as “events in Ambur”. Your phone subscribes itself to the subjects you asked for, and Google's messaging service delivers to everyone subscribed. We never learn which phones those are, we hold no device identifiers, and we could not send a message to one named person even if we wanted to.
Two things follow from that, and both are in your favour. Switching a kind off means your phone stops receiving it rather than trusting us to skip you. And your choices are saved on your own phone, not on our server — we do not know what you switched off.
What we do keep is the announcement itself: its title, its message, which town it went to and who sent it. That is a record of what the town was told, not of who read it, and you can see the same list yourself from the bell on the Home screen.
Delivery is handled by Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging), the third of the companies named above.
How long we keep it
Your account for as long as you have one. Corrections, events and bookings stay as part of the town's record, but see the next section for what happens to your name on them.
Deleting your account
Open the app, tap the person icon at the top right, scroll to the bottom of the Account screen and choose Delete my account. It takes effect immediately. You can also do it without the app — see how to delete your account.
Deleting removes:
- your name, email address, picture and account identifier
- anything you were allowed to do, and any mosque, doctor, hall or resort you were keeping
- your directory listings, unless you tell us to leave them
Corrections, events and bookings you made stay in the app, with your name taken off them. The town keeps the work; we stop saying it was you. We do this because deleting a mosque's prayer timings because the person who typed them has left would harm everybody else in the town.
We cannot delete your Google account, and we will not pretend we can. We sign you in through Google and hold no key that gives us any power over it. If you want that removed as well, do it with Google.
Your other rights
Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act you may:
- ask us what we hold about you
- ask us to correct anything wrong
- ask us to erase it, which is what the delete button above does
- withdraw your consent, by deleting your account
- complain to us, and then to the Data Protection Board of India if we do not sort it out
Write to contact@techirsh.com and we will answer.
Somebody else's details in the app
The app lists doctors, mosque imams and muezzins, hall keepers and tradespeople, with the numbers people need to reach them. These are published so the town can use them.
If your name or number is in this app and you want it taken down, write to contact@techirsh.com and we will remove it. You do not have to explain why, and you do not need an account to ask.
Children
The app is meant for adults and there is nothing in it aimed at children. We do not knowingly hold the details of anyone under 18. If you believe a child has signed in, tell us and we will delete the account.
If something goes wrong
If a break-in ever exposed your details, we would tell the Data Protection Board and everybody affected within 72 hours, in plain language: what happened, what was exposed, and what you should do about it.
Changes to this policy
If we start collecting something new, this page changes on the same day and the date at the top changes with it. We will not quietly widen what we take.
Contact
Questions, corrections, complaints and takedown requests: contact@techirsh.com
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