Privacy policy

1. Introduction

This policy explains what Tracker Pro ("the Service") collects about you, what it does with it, who else sees it, and how to have it removed. "We", "our" and "us" mean Tracker Pro, from the house of Atish Mathur. Using the Service means accepting the practices described here.

2. What we collect

2.1 What you give us

Signing in with Google passes us three things, and only these three:

• Your name, as your Google account states it
• Your email address, which Google confirms is verified
• Your Google account identifier — an opaque number that stays the same if you change your address

We do not ask Google for anything else. We cannot read your Gmail, your Drive, your calendar or your contacts, and the Service never requests permission to.

2.2 What we record as you use it

• Server logs of requests to our API, including IP address, and errors when they happen
• When your account last signed in, and when each of your sessions was last used
• Product analytics, through PostHog: the pages you open, the browser and device you use, and a rough location worked out from your IP address. Once you are signed in these are tied to your account identifier, name and email. PostHog is set to discard the IP address itself.
• Session replays, through PostHog, for a sample of sessions from readers who hold or have held a subscription: what appeared on screen, where you clicked and scrolled, the page's console messages and the timing of its network requests. What you type into form fields is masked and never recorded. Replays are deleted after 30 days.
• What you search for, with the filters you chose and the results we showed you, kept to improve search. This includes searches made on Tracker Pro pages inside UPSC Path.

We run no advertising product.

2.3 What stays on your device

Which articles you have marked as read or saved is kept in your browser's own storage, not on our servers. It never leaves the device and does not follow you to another one.

PostHog keeps a random identifier for this browser in its storage and in a cookie (see section 4), so that visits from the same browser are counted as one visitor.

3. What we use it for

• Signing you in and keeping you signed in
• Deciding whether an account may read the archive
• Operating, maintaining and repairing the Service
• Understanding how the Service is used, and finding what is broken or confusing in it
• Answering your support messages
• Detecting and stopping abuse, including automated harvesting of the archive
• Meeting our legal obligations

4. Cookies

Signing in uses three cookies. All are HttpOnly, meaning no script can read them.

• refresh_token — keeps you signed in between visits, and is exchanged for a short-lived token as you read. Necessary; without it you are signed out.
• browser_token — an opaque value identifying this browser, so signing in again here replaces your session rather than adding another one.
• signin_state — exists for ten minutes during a sign-in and is deleted the moment you come back from Google. It is what stops somebody else's sign-in finishing in your browser.

One more cookie belongs to analytics. It is set on our own domain, and it is not HttpOnly, because PostHog's script in the page reads it:

• ph_…_posthog — the random identifier PostHog uses to recognise this browser, and the account identifier once you have signed in. Not needed to read the archive.

We set no advertising cookies and no third-party cookies, except YouTube's, if you press play on the video on our landing page (see section 5). Clearing cookies signs you out and is a legitimate way to end a session on a shared machine.

5. Who else handles your data

Each of these receives only what it needs to do its job, and each is bound by its own privacy terms:

• Google (Sign in with Google) — verifies who you are. Google knows you signed in to Tracker Pro; we receive your name, email and account identifier.
• Railway — hosts the application and its database. Your account record, your sessions and our server logs live here.
• Google Cloud Storage — holds the newspaper clippings the archive serves. It stores no personal data about you.
• PostHog — product analytics and session replay, hosted in the European Union. Our pages send to it through our own domain. It receives your account identifier, name and email once you are signed in, the pages you open and what you do on them, your browser and device, and for sampled sessions the replay described in section 2.2.
• Google Cloud Vision — reads the printed words on a clipping so the text can be selected. It receives the photograph of the newspaper, never anything about you.
• YouTube (Google): plays the video on our landing page. Its player loads, from youtube-nocookie.com, only when you press play. From then on YouTube may store data in your browser and receives your IP address, under Google's own privacy policy.

6. How long we keep it

Your account record is kept while the account exists. Sessions end at sign-out, at revocation, or thirty days after their last use, whichever comes first. Server logs are kept for a limited operational period and then discarded. Session replays are deleted after 30 days; other analytics events are kept for as long as they help us understand how the Service is used. Ask us to delete your account and we delete the record and its sessions.

7. Security

Everything travels over HTTPS. Session credentials are never stored as written: the database holds only a SHA-256 hash of your refresh token and of your browser cookie, so a copy of our database would not let anyone sign in as you. The short-lived token the reader uses is held in the page's memory and is never written to storage a script can reach. No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim otherwise.

8. Suspension

An account can be suspended — by us, for abuse of the Service or breach of our Terms of Service. A suspended account can still sign in with Google, but is refused by Tracker Pro and reads nothing. Write to us if you think that was a mistake.

9. Your rights

Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, you may ask us to:

• Access — tell you what personal data we hold about you
• Correct or erase — fix what is wrong, delete what is no longer needed
• Withdraw consent — stop processing where consent is the basis for it, which in practice means closing your account
• Raise a grievance — complain about how your data has been handled
• Nominate — name someone to exercise these rights for you if you cannot

Write to admin@atishmathur.com for any of these.

10. Children

The Service is for adults preparing for the Civil Services Examination. We do not knowingly collect data about anyone under 18. Tell us if you believe we have, and we will delete it.

11. Where the data sits

Railway, Google Cloud and PostHog may store and process data on infrastructure outside India; PostHog's is in the European Union. Using the Service means accepting those transfers, which remain subject to the protections applicable law requires.

12. Changes

We may revise this policy. Revisions appear here with a new date at the top. Continuing to use the Service after a change means accepting it.

13. Contact

Questions, requests and grievances: admin@atishmathur.com.