THE PRIVACY NOTICE

The short of it

You can read every word PT24 publishes without telling us who you are. There is no account to sign in to and no story page asks you for a name. We run no advertising network and no tracking pixel.

One thing is counted, and only if you say so. PT24 uses Google Analytics to see which stories are read and on what kind of device. It is switched off until you agree, we ask once, and the switch is on You for the day you change your mind. Say no and no analytics cookie is set at all.

We hold your details in four places only: the morning mail, the three doors you write to us through, PT24 Awaaz, and alerts on your phone. You start each one on purpose, and you can stop each one without asking us.

What we hold when you only read

Nothing that names you. Four things, and the last two are yours to switch off.

A reader id

A random number this site invents on your first visit and keeps in a cookie called pt24_reader for up to 400 days. It is not your name, your number or your address, and it is not joined to any of them. It exists so the city, the language, the areas and the text size you chose are still chosen when you come back.

Your language

A second cookie, so a page opens in the language you last read it in.

Reading counts

How many times each story was read on each day. That is a count against the story and not against you: it carries no reader id at all. It is deleted after 90 days.

Interest weights, if you leave them on

Numbers against your reader id describing subjects and not people: sections, kinds of story, keywords and areas. No name, no age, no community, no device. The switch is on You and with it off nothing is written or read. Weights untouched for 90 days are deleted.

A measurement cookie, only if you agreed

Google Analytics sets its own cookies and gives this device an id of its own, separate from the reader id above and not joined to it. We ask before any of it is set, nothing is set while the question is open, and saying no leaves it unset. Your answer, and the day you gave it, are kept against your reader id so that we are not asking you again every morning and so that we can show what you agreed to.

What your own device keeps

Some of what makes the site behave the way you left it never reaches us at all: whether you dismissed the install prompt, the places saved in the weather panel, the haptics switch, whether you have seen the opening questions. Your browser holds those, we do not, and clearing this site's data in your browser clears them.

Your address, and why we do not keep it

We never store the IP address your connection arrives on. Where we have to count what comes from one connection, to stop a flood of messages or signups, we store a one-way hash of the address salted with a secret this server holds, which is enough to say two messages came from the same place and not enough to say where.

What we hold when you write to us or sign up

Each of these you give us on purpose, and each carries its own period.

The morning mail

Your email address, the city and language you asked for, which control you signed up through, and the times you asked, confirmed and left. We send the 07:00 paper and nothing else. Every mail carries a link that unsubscribes you without a sign-in, and a row we have unsubscribed is kept rather than deleted so we can answer why a mail ever arrived.

Contact, the tip line, advertising

Your name, phone, email, an organisation if you give one, your message, your area and any photograph you attach. The desk reads it. None of it is published.

PT24 Awaaz

What the consent notice on that page sets out: your name, mobile number, area, your piece and its photographs, and your email if you give it. A piece we do not publish, and the details with it, is erased 90 days after we tell you the outcome. A piece we publish keeps your name and number for 3 years after publication, to answer replies, corrections and complaints, and then they are erased.

Alerts

A token your browser mints for its own push service, and your browser's description of itself. It is created only after you allow notifications, and it is destroyed when you refuse them or when your browser stops answering.

Who else sees any of it

Nobody buys it and nobody is sent it for their own purposes. We sell no data and we run no behavioural advertising. The advertisements on this site are booked with us and served by us; they set nothing on your device, and what is counted about one is how many times in total it was drawn and clicked, by everybody, never by you.

Four outsiders can be involved in drawing a page, and you are entitled to know which. Only the first of them is a choice you have already made:

Google Analytics

Only where you have agreed. It sets its own cookies on your device, gives this visit a random id of its own, and tells Google which pages were opened, roughly where from, and what kind of device and browser you are using. It is not joined to your name, because we do not have one. Google holds it as our processor and the figures are kept for 14 months. Until you agree, the tag is on the page and is under instructions to store nothing and read nothing.

Google Tag Manager

The container that loads the measurement above, on the front page. It is named here rather than left out because a container is a door: what goes through it is changed in Google's own interface and not in this site's code. Anything we let through it is bound by the same consent and is added to this list before it runs.

Google Fonts

The typefaces are fetched from fonts.googleapis.com, so your browser asks Google for them and Google sees that request.

Open-Meteo

The weather line. If you ask the panel to use where you are, your browser hands us a position rounded to two decimal places, about a kilometre, which we pass on to get the forecast. We do not store it.

Your browser's push service

Google, Apple, Mozilla or whoever made your browser, which carries an alert from us to your phone. It sees that an alert went to your browser.

We also answer a lawful order from a court or an authority entitled to make one. That is said here rather than left for a reader to assume.

What you can ask us to do

Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 you can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct or complete it, ask us to erase it, withdraw a consent you gave, and name someone to do all of that for you if you cannot. Withdrawing is as easy as giving: an unsubscribe link, a reply to any mail from us, or a line to the officer named at the foot of this page.

We answer within 15 days. If our answer does not satisfy you, you can complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

One honest limit. We cannot find a reader by name in what this site records about reading, because it records no names: the preferences and the interest weights are held against a reader id and nothing else. To reach those we need the id, which your browser will show you in the pt24_reader cookie. Clearing this site's data in your browser detaches you from them just as surely, and they are then pruned.

Children

PT24 Awaaz is for adults, and you confirm you are 18 or older before you send a piece. We do not knowingly collect a child's personal data, and nothing on this site targets advertising or tracks behaviour by age.

Keeping it safe

Everything you send travels over HTTPS. Passwords exist for the desk and never for readers, so there is no reader password here to lose. A photograph you send is renamed the moment it arrives, because a phone names a file after a person, a place or a time often enough that the name itself can identify someone.

When this page changes

It is dated at the top and it will be dated again. A change that widens what we do with something you have already given us is not applied to it until we have asked you.