Privacy Policy — Sanatan Vani (सनातन वाणी)

This is an independent, devotee-made Sanatan app. It is not operated by, endorsed by, or affiliated with any organisation or individual. Satsang is aggregated from several public YouTube channels and always played through the official YouTube player; any donation is handled on the relevant organisation's own website — never inside this app.

Nothing about you reaches us. No account, no sign-in, no analytics, no server — there is nowhere for it to go. The App does show ads, served by Google AdMob, which uses your device advertising ID; section 5 explains that in full. Ads never appear on a video player or in the kids corner. Some of what the App holds is personal — your journals, and the birth details you type into कुण्डली — and all of it stays on your phone. Sections 2 and 3 cover that.

This policy describes how the Sanatan Vani Android application (package com.sanatanvani.app, “the App”) handles information.

1. Information we collect

Nothing reaches us.

We run no server and no analytics, so the App does not send us any personal or sensitive user data. Specifically, it does not read or transmit:

Your email address, phone number, or any account information
Your location — the App requests no location permission and cannot read GPS
Contacts, calendar, SMS, or call logs
Photos, media, or the files on your device
Camera or microphone
Your installed-app list

Two clarifications, so that nothing here is misleading:

You can type personal details into the App, and some are personal by nature — the कुण्डली, गुण मिलान and नामकरण screens ask for a name and a date, time and place of birth, and the journals hold whatever you write. This is entered by you, kept in the App's private storage on your phone, and never sent anywhere. We cannot see it. See section 2.
The App can read one file, and only when you hand it over — a backup file you created and then chose to open with this App. It has no permission to browse your storage and cannot open anything you have not explicitly given it. See section 3.

The advertising ID is the one thing a third party receives, and it is taken by Google's ad SDK rather than by us — see section 5. We never receive it.

2. Information stored on your device

Everything the App records is kept in Android's private storage for this App, on your phone only. It never leaves your device, and we cannot see any of it:

What	Why
Theme, language, elder mode, chosen tradition	Remember your preferences
Notification on/off choices	Respect your settings
Jaap and likhit jaap counts, streak and कवच	Your personal jaap record
पुण्य balance, भक्त tier, milestones, daily quests, seasonal vows	The practice record the App shows back to you
Lifetime totals — malas, paath minutes, aartis, active days	वार्षिक साधना and the tier ladder
कृतज्ञता डायरी, सत्संग डायरी and प्रार्थना सूची entries	Your own writing, kept for you to re-read
Saved कुण्डली profiles — name, date, time and place of birth you typed	So you need not re-enter them each time
Verses you are memorising, paath plan progress, notes and highlights	Continue where you left off
मन्दिर श्रृंगार items bought with पुण्य, kids' stickers	Your temple and your child's progress
Saved/bookmarked videos, aartis and shlokas	Your own lists
Cached video listings	Show content quickly and work offline

Birth details deserve a plain word. If you use कुण्डली, गुण मिलान or नामकरण, the name and birth date, time and place you enter are personal information. They are stored the same way as everything else above — in this App's private storage, on your phone, never transmitted, never seen by us — and they are used only to compute the chart on your screen, entirely on the device. Delete a saved profile in the App, or clear the App's storage, and it is gone.

This data is excluded from Android cloud backup and device-transfer, so it is never copied to Google's servers. You can erase all of it at any time by clearing the App's storage in Android Settings, or by uninstalling the App.

One consequence you should know: because nothing is backed up to any cloud, changing phones or uninstalling the App permanently erases everything above. That is why the App offers a backup file you make yourself — section 3.

3. Backing up your practice

Because nothing is stored on a server and nothing goes to Android's cloud backup, a new phone or a reinstall would otherwise take your streak, your पुण्य, your journals and your saved कुण्डली profiles with it. So the App lets you make a backup yourself, as a file you keep.

Making one. Settings → साधना सुरक्षा → बैकअप बनाएँ writes a plain-text .json file and hands it to Android's ordinary share sheet. You choose where it goes — Drive, WhatsApp, your Files app, anywhere. We are not involved and receive nothing. No copy is uploaded, and the App has no server to upload it to.

What is in it. Everything listed in section 2 except the cached video listings, which are simply re-fetched. That includes your journal entries and your saved birth details. It is plain text, so anyone you send the file to can read it — treat it like a personal document, and think before sharing it with anyone you would not show your journal to.

Restoring one. Open the backup file from wherever you saved it and choose सनातन वाणी. Android hands the App that one file, with permission for that file alone; the App has no permission to browse your storage and cannot open anything you have not chosen. It then asks before overwriting anything.

Whose file it is. Yours. Once written, that file is outside the App and outside our reach — its safety, and who you share it with, is in your hands.

4. Network connections

The App connects only to the following, purely to fetch publicly available content:

YouTube (youtube.com, ytimg.com) — public channel feeds, video thumbnails, and the official embedded video player
Google AdMob (googleadservices.com, doubleclick.net and related Google ad domains) — to request and display ads
aniruddhacharya.com / en.aniruddhacharya.com — opened in your browser when you choose to visit a linked page
donation.sggg.in — opened in your browser when you choose to donate

All connections use HTTPS. No personal information is included in any request.

5. Advertising

The App is free and is paid for by advertising. Ads are served by Google AdMob, and Google is the only third party that receives anything from this App.

What Google may collect

Google's ad SDK runs inside the App and may collect, for the purpose of selecting, delivering and measuring ads and preventing ad fraud:

What	Note
Advertising ID	A resettable identifier Android gives every device. It is not your name and is not linked to any account with us.
Approximate location	Derived from your IP address — country/region level, not a precise position. The App requests no location permission and cannot read your GPS.
Device and app information	Device model, operating system version, and the fact that the ad was requested by this App.
Ad interaction	Whether an ad was shown, viewed or tapped, plus diagnostics.

Google's use of this data is governed by Google's Privacy Policy and by how Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.

What we receive

Nothing. The App has no server, no analytics and no account system. The advertising ID and everything above go from your device to Google directly. We only ever see aggregate earnings totals in the AdMob dashboard — never anything about an individual person or device.

Personalised ads and your consent

Where the law requires a choice — the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom — the App shows Google's certified consent form the first time it runs, and your answer is applied to every ad request afterwards. Decline, and you get non-personalised ads.
Elsewhere, ads may be personalised using the advertising ID.

Your controls, on any device

Android → Settings → Privacy → Ads — reset the advertising ID, or delete it entirely to stop ads being personalised.
Uninstalling the App ends all of it immediately.

Where ads never appear

Never on a video player, or on any screen listing videos — required by YouTube's terms, and right in any case.
Never on opening the App — not on the splash screen, during onboarding, or when you return to the App.
Never in the बाल संस्कार kids corner.

Ad requests are additionally restricted to creatives Google rates as suitable for general audiences, and adult, dating and gambling categories are blocked at the account level.

Elsewhere in the App you may see a banner at the foot of a screen. A full-screen ad appears only after you finish a quiz or the daily puzzle, at most twice in a session and at least three minutes apart.

6. Video playback

Videos play through the official YouTube IFrame player. When you watch a video, your interaction is with YouTube, and Google's Privacy Policy and YouTube's Terms of Service apply to that playback. The App does not download videos, extract audio, or play content in the background.

7. Donations

The App never processes payments and never displays or stores bank account or UPI details. Donation buttons open the relevant organisation's own official website in your browser. Any payment happens entirely on that site, under their terms, and we receive nothing and see nothing of it. Please verify all donation details on the official website before sending money.

8. Notifications

Notifications are optional and off by default. Each is switched on separately in the App's Settings:

Daily wisdom — a scripture verse once a day, chosen on your device.
संध्या alerts — ब्रह्म मुहूर्त and the morning and evening संध्या, worked out from sunrise and sunset on your device.
व्रत and festival reminders — a morning reminder before each upcoming एकादशी or festival, from the calendar bundled in the App.
आरती alarm — a reminder at a time you choose.
Live darshan alert — your device periodically checks the public YouTube channel to see whether a live broadcast has started.

Every one of these is a local notification created on your phone. There is no push service, no push token, no notification server, and nothing about you is sent anywhere in order to produce them. Only the live-darshan check touches the network, and it asks YouTube a public question that identifies no one.

Because these are scheduled alarms, Android clears them when the phone is switched off. The App therefore holds the RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED permission purely so your reminders survive a restart. It does nothing else at boot, and this permission grants no access to any of your information.

You can turn any of them off at any time in the App's Settings or in Android's notification settings.

9. Children

The App is a general-audience devotional app; it is not directed at children and is not enrolled in Google Play's Designed for Families programme. It does not knowingly collect information from anyone, including children. The बाल संस्कार (kids corner) is a section of a general-audience app and carries no ads of any kind.

10. Data retention and security

On your device. Everything the App saves stays in Android's private storage for this App. It is excluded from cloud backup and device transfer. It is kept until you delete it — clear the App's storage in Android Settings, or uninstall the App, and it is gone.
In a backup file you made. That file is yours and lives wherever you put it. Nothing expires it and nobody else can reach it through the App; deleting it is up to you. See section 3.
With us. Nothing. We run no server and no database, so there is nothing for us to retain, breach or hand over.
In transit. Every network connection the App makes uses HTTPS. Cleartext traffic is disabled at the operating-system level (usesCleartextTraffic="false"), so the App cannot fall back to an unencrypted connection even if asked to.
With Google. Advertising data is retained by Google under Google's Privacy Policy, not by us.

11. Your choices and rights

Ads. Reset or delete your advertising ID in Android → Settings → Privacy → Ads. In the EEA and the UK, the consent form shown on first run can be revisited by clearing the App's storage.
Notifications. Off by default; switch them off at any time in the App's Settings or in Android's notification settings.
Your data. Because we hold nothing about you, there is nothing for us to export, correct or delete on request. You can export everything the App holds yourself at any time, as the backup file in section 3, and deleting the App's storage deletes everything the App has ever kept.
EEA and UK users. Where the GDPR applies, our lawful basis for showing personalised ads is your consent, collected through Google's certified consent form, and you may withdraw it as described above.

12. Third-party content and copyright

Videos and thumbnails belong to their respective channel owners and are shown through the official YouTube player and image servers. Scripture in the App (Gita, Ramcharitmanas, aarti, chalisa) is widely published traditional text. The App stores no video and copies no one's photographs. If you are a rights holder and would like something removed, contact us at the address below and we will act promptly.

13. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date above will change and the revised policy will be published at this same URL.

14. Who we are, and how to reach us

Sanatan Vani is an independent app published by the developer named on its Google Play listing. It is not operated by or affiliated with any organisation or individual whose content it links to.

For any question about this policy, a data question, or a content-removal request:

Email: suwaz.gautam@gmail.com

We answer removal requests promptly.

The Data Safety declaration on this App's Google Play listing matches this policy: the only data collected is the device advertising ID, collected and shared by the Google Mobile Ads SDK for advertising and fraud prevention. Everything else described here stays on your device and is therefore not “collected” — including the birth details in section 2 and the backup file in section 3, which you create and control.