Privacy Policy

1 · Data you provide

Birth details. When you create a chart, you enter a name or label, date of birth, time of birth, and birth place. For family members or other people you add, the same details. This is the core personal data the app processes.

Account email. Only if you choose to sign in with Google to enable the optional daily email digest. We receive your verified email address from Google; we never receive your Google password.

Questions you type in Ask Phala. The wording you send to the chat, and the recent turns of that conversation, so the assistant can follow what you are asking. See section 6: what you type is sent as written, so avoid typing your birth date, time, or place there — the app already has them and deliberately does not send them.

Photos and video you take or choose. Sky Photo uses your camera to take a picture of people with their birth star in the background, and Sky-Eye can record a short video clip of the sky. You can also set a reference photo for a saved chart so the app can tell who is who in a family shot. These images and videos never leave your device. We do not upload them, we cannot see them, and there is no copy of them on our servers.

• Photos and video clips are saved to your own device gallery, in Phala albums, exactly like any other photo or video you capture. They are yours; delete them the way you delete any photo.
• Video is recorded by your device's own camera app, which may include audio. The app itself has no microphone permission and never records audio — it simply receives the finished clip and saves it to your gallery.
• Reference photos for a chart are kept in the app's private storage and are deliberately excluded from the chart file, so that when you share or export a chart, nobody's face travels with it.
• If you choose to share a Sky Photo or video clip, the app hands it to Android's normal share sheet and you pick where it goes. From that point the file is governed by whichever app or service you sent it to, not by us.
• To place each person's star path above the right head, the app detects where faces are in a Sky Photo, on your device, using Google ML Kit. It finds the position of a face; it does not recognise or identify anyone, builds no faceprint, and this processing never leaves your phone.
• The app reads a photo's orientation tag so pictures appear the right way up. It does not read, add, or transmit location data in your photos.

2 · Data collected automatically

Approximate device location. The app requests coarse location (city-level accuracy, foreground only) to anchor the panchang — the almanac that shows sunrise, sunset, and Rahu Kala — and the sky view to where you are. You are asked for permission first, and both screens work without it. The coordinate is stored only on your device and is used there in the calculation; it is never transmitted to any server. The app never requests precise or background location.

Approximate location from your IP address. When you first open the birth-place picker, the app asks ipapi.co (an IP-geolocation service) for the approximate location of your public IP address and uses it once to center the map. Your device's GPS is not involved, the result is not stored, and it never replaces the birth place you pick.

Birth-place and time-zone lookup. When you search for or select a birth place, the place name you typed is sent to Google Maps Platform (the Geocoding service) to resolve it to coordinates, and the selected coordinates are sent to its Time Zone service to find the birth time zone. Only the typed text and the resulting coordinates are sent; no device location is used for these lookups.

Anonymous identifier. On first launch, a random account ID is issued by Supabase (our backend provider). It contains no name, email, or device data and is used solely to associate your encrypted chart backups with your device.

Usage analytics. The app sends a small set of anonymised behavioural events to PostHog (our product analytics provider). Events are limited to an explicit allowlist — feature interactions, app version, language, and astrological cohort buckets. No names, birth dates, exact coordinates, or any personally identifying information are included. Screen recordings and session replays are disabled.

Crash reports. If the app crashes, a report is sent to Sentry (our error-monitoring provider). Reports are scrubbed of personally identifying information before they leave the device.

Notification token. If you enable notifications, a push messaging token is issued by Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) so we can deliver your daily reading to your device.

Purchase data. If you subscribe to Vedic Phala Plus, Google Play provides a purchase token we use solely to verify and activate your subscription. We do not receive or store your payment card details.

3 · How we use your data

• To compute your birth charts and generate readings, entirely on your device.
• To answer the questions you ask in Ask Phala (see section 6).
• To sync your charts to your account and restore them on a new device (Plus subscribers only).
• To deliver daily notifications and, if you opt in, a daily email reading to your verified address.
• To verify and restore your subscription.
• To keep the app stable through anonymised crash reporting and usage analytics.

4 · How your data is stored and protected

On your device. All birth details, chart data, and account information are stored encrypted using the Android Keystore (AES-256-GCM). No readable personal data is written to unencrypted storage.

In transit. All connections to external services use HTTPS. Chart data is additionally encrypted at the application layer before transmission, independent of the transport encryption.

Retention. We retain your data as long as your account is active or as required by law. You can delete all of it at any time (see Section 6).

5 · Who we share your data with

We do not sell your personal data. We use the following service providers, each under their own terms and privacy policies:

The email relay receives only the finished reading prose and your destination email address. It never receives birth dates, times, places, or chart contents.

We may disclose data if required by law or to protect the rights, safety, and integrity of the app and its users.

6 · Ask Phala (the chat)

Ask Phala answers questions in plain language. Generating an answer needs a model we do not run ourselves, so this feature — and only this feature — sends chart data off your device. What it sends is deliberately narrow.

Your birth date, time, and place are never sent. Nor are your coordinates or the chart's name. That is not a promise we keep by care alone: the data structure that crosses the wire has no fields for them, and two separate steps — one on your device, one on our server — strip the name and the exact daśā dates before anything is transmitted. Automated tests fail our build if that stops being true.

What is sent is the result your device already computed:

• the sign and degree of your Lagna, Sun, and Moon;
• each graha's sign, house, dignity, and whether it is retrograde or combust;
• your Janma Nakṣatra;
• which daśā period you are in, and roughly how much of it remains — never the exact dates, because those could be used to work backwards to a birth date;
• the current gocara (transit) phase and any yogas found;
• your question, the recent turns of the conversation, and your language.

Your question is sent as you wrote it. If you type your birth date, time, or place into the question, that text is sent. The app warns you before sending when it notices something that looks like birth details, and the assistant is instructed never to ask you for them. Neither replaces your own judgement about what you type.

We do not keep your conversations. Our server counts how many questions you have asked, to apply your plan's limits — nothing more. Questions and answers are not stored on our servers. Anthropic processes what it receives, under its own terms, in order to produce the answer.

7 · Your choices and rights

Use anonymously. You can create and read charts without signing in. No email address or account is required.

Notifications and email. You can turn off notifications and the daily email digest at any time in the app settings.

Your legal rights. Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, export, or restrict processing of your personal data, and to object to certain uses. To exercise any of these rights, contact us at Phala.Support@piconsultants.us.

8 · Children

Vedic Phala is not directed to children under 13 (or under 16 where a higher age applies, such as in the EEA and UK). We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. Do not enter a child's birth details without the consent of a parent or legal guardian. If you believe a child has provided data through the app, contact us and we will delete it promptly.

9 · International transfers

Your data may be processed in countries other than the one in which you live. Where transfers require appropriate safeguards under applicable law, we ensure those safeguards are in place.

10 · Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. Material changes will be indicated by a new effective date and, where appropriate, an in-app notice.

11 · Contact

Pi Consultants, LLC
Phala.Support@piconsultants.us
piconsultants.us
A postal address is available on request.