Privacy policy

Calls, call history, contacts, SMS messages, call notes, blocking rules, quick replies, speed dial and spam protection work on your phone. Message text and your call history stay on your phone. When you are signed in, only numbers are looked up, for caller ID, photos and birthdays (see Caller identification). Contact names are sent only if you choose to share them (see Names from shared contacts).

Two exceptions exist, both to prove a phone number is yours: when you verify your number, your phone sends one verification SMS and the app sends us its code; and a phone enrolled by us as a verification gateway forwards only the verification messages it receives.

Without an account, the app downloads its settings, lists and categories from us, and sends nothing about you.

Signing in verifies your SIM. We then keep:

• your phone number, name and the profile details you add (photo, email, second number, gender, birthday, company, job title, about, website, address, social links), with who may see each one;
• your settings, and the devices you are signed in on (device model, Android and app version), with the IP address used at sign-in, for security;
• businesses you list, with their photos and the documents you upload for verification;
• enquiries, contact requests, reviews, reports, favourites and notifications;
• business pages and members’ profiles you open: the owner can see in Discovery that you viewed them, and gets an alert (once a day), with your name and photo, or as “A PeopleConnect24 member” (“Someone” in the alert) if your profile is private. Turn on View profiles privately in Privacy Center and no view of yours is recorded;
• chats with businesses and with buyers or sellers, which are stored on our server so both sides can read them;
• paid features you ask for (plans, featured listings, Featured and Boost for ads), with their payments and receipts;
• numbers you block, only to keep you hidden from them;
• your availability, if you turn on “Show my availability”: when you are on a call or have a call on hold, when your phone is on silent, and when you last had a call. Members who have your number see it only while they show theirs too. Turning it off deletes what is stored at once;
• when you were last online, if you allow it. Members who see your availability also see it on your contact page;
• who asked to be told when your call ends (“Notify me when free”), until the call ends or two hours pass;
• invites: your invite code, who joined with it, and the Premium days given. So that a number earns an invite reward only once, we keep a one-way coded form of the number of each member who joined through an invite (not the number itself), also after that account is deleted.

• Ads you post: the title, details, price, photos, area and city are shown to everyone. Your phone number is shown only if you choose, or to a buyer whose request you accept. Ads are checked by our team before they go live.
• Saved ads and number requests you make are kept with your account.
• Job profile and CV: your name, experience, education, skills, languages, expected salary and the CV you upload are shared with an employer when you apply to their job or accept their invite. The employer sees your application and can shortlist, reject or hire; you see its status.
• “All employers”: if you choose it, verified employers can find your profile and see your photo, first name and last initial, headline, role, experience, skills, languages, education, preferred places and job types, expected salary and notice period. Never your phone number, email, address or CV. “Not looking right now”, or not opening the app for the number of days we show, hides it.
• Views, invites and number requests: when an employer views your profile, invites you or asks for your number, we record it and show it to you (the business, the date, and whether they invited you). Your number is shared only if you accept, and you can stop sharing it at any time.
• Job safety checks: job ads, and messages employers send in job chats, are checked automatically on our server for requests for money or documents, contact details and other signs of fraud. A matching message is marked for you and reviewed by our team. Employers’ searches, views and invites are logged to stop the collection of job seekers’ data.
• Bans: when an employer is banned for fraud, we keep their phone numbers, device keys and business registration numbers to stop them coming back.
• Job posts show the verified business name (or, for household hire, your name), salary, place and details, with the logo.

When you are signed in, the app sends these numbers to our server to look them up:

• the number of an incoming or outgoing call, of a message thread you open, and of up to 24 recent unknown numbers in your call history;
• numbers without a photo, to show members’ profile photos;
• your contacts’ numbers that have no birthday saved, at most once a week, to find members who share their birthday;
• numbers on screen, to show members’ availability (on a call, silent, last seen);
• when you call a member who uses Call alerts, the number you are calling, so their phone can show your number a moment before it rings (through Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging). We pass it on and keep nothing about the call. Only members’ numbers are sent this way, and only while both of you have Call alerts on (Settings › Calling).
• when you mute or unmute on a video call while signed in, the number you are on the call with and whether you are muted, so a member there sees “Muted” on their screen (through Firebase Cloud Messaging). We pass it on and keep nothing.

These lookups send only numbers, never the names you saved. When a caller-ID lookup finds a member, we keep a record that you looked them up, and that member can see it in Discovery, with your name and photo, or as “A PeopleConnect24 member” if your profile is private. Turn on Search profiles privately in Privacy Center and no such record is kept. Answers are kept on your phone for a few hours so the same number is not looked up again. Turn off Identify unknown numbers in Privacy to stop call, message and history lookups. Signed out, no number is looked up.

Your own number shows your name to other members only while Let other users identify my number is on.

Unknown callers can be named from the contacts that members chose to share. The app asks after you sign in; if you choose “Not now”, it asks at most twice more, days apart, and at most once a week after a call from a number with no name. If you agree, it sends the numbers in your contacts with the name you saved for each to our server, and afterwards only what changed, at most once a week. These names are stored and can be shown to other members as the caller’s name. Photos, emails, notes, groups and other details are never sent. Before anything is stored, words such as “Papa”, “Bhai” or “Office” are removed, and names that accuse someone (such as “Fraud”) or mark a person who has died (“Late …”, whose number may now be someone else’s) are not kept. We also keep the names exactly as your phone sent them, on our server only and never shown to anyone, to improve how names are read; they are deleted when you stop sharing or delete your account.

• A name is shown only when several members saved the number under the same name (spellings such as “Mohd” and “Mohammed” count as one). A name that claims a bank, the police, a government office or a helpline needs many more. Nobody sees who saved it, or what you saved.
• A member’s or business’s own name always comes first. Numbers of members and businesses never get a name from contacts.
• Turn off Share contact names in Privacy at any time: everything you shared is deleted at once. It is also deleted when you delete your account, or after a year without opening the app.

Anyone can stop a name being shown for their number, with or without the app, on unlist your number. Members can also do it with Unlist my number in Privacy.

You can tell the community that a number is spam, fraud, telemarketing or an AI call, suggest a name for it, or say it is not spam. The first time, the app asks whether to share. If you agree, it sends the number and your answer only, never your contacts, call details or messages. Other members see the community’s answer for the number, never who gave it.

Change your choice at any time with Share spam answers in Privacy, and remove an answer you gave from the same screen where you gave it.

Spam protection decides on your phone which calls to silence or block and which messages to keep out of your inbox. What it stopped stays on your phone for 90 days for you to review. When you are signed in, the app sends us one total per day: how many calls were silenced and blocked, how many messages were filtered, and the protection level. We store these totals under a key that does not identify you, to see how well protection works.

The app reads your location only while you use it for: searching for businesses or Marketplace ads near you; sharing a location in a chat; placing your business on the map; or placing a Marketplace ad. It does not track your location in the background.

A Marketplace ad keeps only an approximate location (about 1 km) so buyers can see how far it is; your exact location is not stored, and buyers see only the distance and the area you chose. Your own location for Near me is rounded the same way and is not saved.

With a Near me search or Get quotes, the app also sends the name of your state, which your phone works out from your location, so businesses serving your whole state can be found. It is used for that search only and is not saved (a Get quotes request keeps its rounded location, as before).

Backups are yours and never reach us. A full backup is a file encrypted with a password you choose, saved where you pick it, such as on your phone or in Google Drive. Android’s own backup to your Google account also carries your lists, blocks, quick replies, speed dial, call notes and starred messages.

• Google Play services: suggests your phone number when you sign in, and scans QR codes with Google ML Kit. Google may collect device, app and performance information for these features under its own policy.
• Google Maps: map previews and links send the location shown to Google.
• WhatsApp: opened only when you choose to message a number on WhatsApp.

There are no ads and no analytics or crash-reporting tools in the app, and we do not sell or rent your data.

• Phone and call log: to be your phone app: make and answer calls, show call history, screen calls for spam and let you delete history.
• Phone numbers and phone state: to read your SIM numbers for sign-in and to show your SIM names.
• SMS and MMS: to be your messages app: receive, show and send messages, filter spam and send your verification SMS.
• Contacts: to show names, edit and back up contacts, and to share contact names if you choose.
• Microphone: not used. The app never records calls or listens to you.
• Location: only for the uses above.
• Notifications: for calls, messages and updates.
• Camera: asked only when you start or answer a video call (your mobile network carries it; we never see or keep the video) or take a photo for a contact or your profile.
• Full-screen notifications: to show incoming calls on the lock screen.
• Internet, network state, vibration and keeping the phone awake: to reach our server, ring and vibrate for calls and messages, and finish work in the background.

We keep account data while you have an account, and erase it when you delete the account. How to delete, and what is removed or kept, is on delete your account.

Some records are kept longer: information about removed content and closed accounts for 180 days (IT Rules, 2021), employers’ search, view and invite logs for 180 days, the identifiers of employers banned for fraud until the ban is lifted, payment records for as long as tax law requires, and reports you made, as safety records. Enquiries and chat messages you sent stay with the business or member you sent them to.

Accounts are for people aged 18 or over. We do not knowingly keep personal data of anyone under 18. If you believe a child has an account, write to us and we will delete it.

Data travels over encrypted connections (HTTPS), and access on our side is limited to the people who run the service. Backups you make are encrypted with your password. If a breach of personal data happens, we inform the people affected and the Data Protection Board of India, as the law requires.

Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 you have the right to:

• get a summary of the personal data we hold about you and what we do with it (Privacy Center › Download my data gives you a copy as a file);
• correct, complete or update it (most of it you can edit in the app);
• have it erased (delete your account, or ask us);
• withdraw a consent you gave, as easily as you gave it (the switches in Privacy);
• name someone to use these rights for you if you die or cannot act;
• have your grievance answered.

Write to hello@peopleconnect24.com (Sasmita Roul, Grievance Officer, Satya Vihar, Bhubaneswar, Odisha 751010, India). We acknowledge within 24 hours and reply within 15 days. If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

Changes to this policy are posted here with a new date, and important changes are shown in the app.