Privacy

What we count

• Which sections and pages are visited (item numbers are replaced by :id), and the website that sent you here, as a domain only.
• Campaign tags in a link (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign).
• The kind of device (phone, tablet, desktop), browser family, operating system, and screen size class.
• Your country, from our network provider's country header or from your browser's time zone or language, and your preferred language.
• How long a page was visible, and how long you listened or watched, with the item's language, station, and type.
• How many searches, chats, voice questions, read-aloud plays, downloads, and Learn practice sessions happen. Never what you said or asked in a chat.

Clicks and other interactions

To learn which parts of Smriti are useful, our script also notes what you do on a page, under the same daily hash:

• Which link, button or tab was clicked, named by a label on the element or its visible text (for example "Read aloud" or "Timeline tab"), and the part of the page it sits in. Links to other websites are kept as the site's domain only, links within Smriti as the page template.
• Downloads, form submissions and menu choices, without anything typed into a field.
• Searches in Smriti's own search boxes, including the words searched (at most 120 characters) and how many results came back. A search that contains an email address or a long number, such as a phone, Aadhaar or account number, is kept without its words.
• How far down a page you scrolled (25, 50, 75 or 100 percent), when the page was hidden or shown again, and that something was copied (never what).
• That an Ask question was sent, how long the answer took to start, and whether you rated it; not the question or the answer.
• Script errors (the error message, file and line), pages that were not found, and page speed (how quickly the page appeared and responded).

These events set no cookies and store nothing in your browser. They carry the daily hash, a visit number, coarse device and country, and your screen width rounded to 50 pixels; never your IP address, user agent, or account.

How visits are told apart without cookies

For each request we compute a one-way fingerprint: sha256(today's random salt + the first part of your IP address + your browser's user agent + "smriti"). Only this hash is stored, never your IP address or user agent.

The salt is replaced at midnight India time and the old one is deleted, so the same person gets an unrelated hash every day. We cannot link your visits across days, and neither can anyone who obtains our data.

What we never collect

• Names, email addresses, phone numbers, or accounts.
• Cookies, local storage, or any identifier that lasts longer than a day.
• IP addresses, full user-agent strings, full referring URLs, or query strings.
• What you type: form fields, chat messages, voice, and copied text are not part of these statistics. The only words kept are site searches, as described above.
• Device fingerprints: no canvas, font, or hardware probing, and nothing that survives the daily hash change.

Ask conversations

So that Ask can follow a conversation, the server keeps a short summary of it (what was asked; the places, languages, dates and bulletins discussed; open questions; and preferences you stated, such as answer language) together with the last place, language and bulletins you talked about. Our language model writes the summary, and email addresses, phone and ID numbers, passwords and keys are removed before it is stored. Chat history is also kept on the server so you can come back to a conversation: each question, the answer, and the sources it cited, filed under a one-way keyed hash of a random id your browser creates (never your IP address or user agent). Credential-like text is removed before it is stored. You can delete a saved conversation; it then disappears from every list.

Shared links. When you share an answer or a conversation, a copy of it is saved and anyone with the link can read it. Shared pages are not listed or searchable and carry nothing that identifies you. "Stop sharing" turns the link off.

The summary is filed under a one-way keyed hash of a random conversation id that your browser tab creates. The id itself, your IP address and your user agent are not stored with it, and it is not linked to the visit statistics.

If you are not signed in, that is all we keep, and it is deleted 7 days after your last question in that conversation. It cannot be linked to you or to your other conversations.

If you are signed in (members and staff), your conversation summaries are linked to your account and kept for the same 7 days. Ask also keeps one short note about you from earlier conversations, so later answers can suit you: the places, languages, topics and stories you follow, your reading or listening level, and the answer language and length you prefer. The note is kept until you delete it. Your account page shows it, and "Forget my conversation history" there deletes it together with all of your conversation summaries.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, our scripts send nothing (no clicks, searches, scrolling, or errors) and the server records only one anonymous pageview, or one anonymous "page not found": no hash, no session, no events.

Retention and your rights

Raw counting events are deleted after 30 days. After that only daily and hourly totals remain (for example, "412 visitors read Hindi bulletins on 3 March"). The anonymous record of clicks and other interactions (including a copy of the counting events) is kept for 395 days and then deleted automatically; because the hash changes every day, it cannot be joined up into anyone's history. Because nothing we keep about listeners who are not signed in identifies a person, there is no personal data to access, correct, or erase for them under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. Signed-in members and staff can see and erase what Ask remembers about them on their account page. If you have a question, contact the Smriti team.