Privacy Policy

1. What Valkala Collects

You can read Valkala and use its devotional tools without creating an account. Valkala receives personal information when you choose to contact us: your name, email address, selected topic, message, and the technical information ordinarily sent with a web request.

2. Information Stored in Your Browser

LocalStorage keeps preferences and tool state on your device, including interface language and theme, reader mode, long-form reading position, font and audio choices, onboarding hints, recently read and favorite texts, your Pooja Queue, Japa progress, history and streaks, and an optional internal-traffic marker used by site operators. This browser data is not submitted through the contact form. You can remove it by clearing site data in your browser.

3. Contact Form Processor

The contact form sends the fields you enter to FormSubmit, a third-party form delivery service, which forwards the message to [email protected]. Do not include passwords, financial data, health records, government identifiers, or other sensitive information. FormSubmit’s own processing is described in its privacy and terms notice.

4. Analytics

Google Analytics 4 loads only when Valkala is deployed with a valid production measurement ID and the browser has not been marked as internal traffic. When active, it can set a first-party identifier and receive page location and title, reader-mode and reading-depth interactions, approximate location, and browser or device information. Valkala configures the analytics stream without Google Signals or advertising-personalization signals. If no measurement ID is configured, or an operator has opted that browser out as internal traffic, the Google Analytics script is not loaded. See Google’s Privacy Policy for Google’s processing practices.

5. Advertising and Cookies

Valkala uses Google AdSense to show advertisements on its pages. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a visitor’s prior visits to this website or to other websites. Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to Valkala and/or other sites on the Internet. Advertising cookies and similar identifiers may record which ads were shown and whether they were clicked, along with your browser, device and approximate location.

You can opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google’s Ads Settings. You can also opt out of some third-party vendors’ use of cookies for personalised advertising at www.aboutads.info, and, in the EEA and UK, at youronlinechoices.eu. If you opt out, you may still see ads, but they will not be personalised. How Google uses information from sites that use its services is explained at How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services, and its advertising cookies at Google advertising technologies.

Where the law requires consent for advertising cookies, such as in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, Valkala asks for it through a Google-certified consent message before personalised ads are shown. Advertising does not influence which texts, sources or practices Valkala publishes.

6. Use, Retention, and Your Choices

Contact details are used to respond to inquiries, investigate corrections, and protect the service from abuse. Messages may remain in our email records for as long as reasonably needed for those purposes. To request access, correction, or deletion of a contact message, email [email protected] from the address used in the message. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings; the reader works without them. Applicable rights depend on your location and should be assessed for your circumstances.

6a. Valkala Accounts (Optional Sign-in)

You can read Valkala, use japa and puja mode without an account. If you choose to sign in with Google on valkala.com or in the app, Valkala uses Google Firebase Authentication and Cloud Firestore (Google Cloud, Mumbai region) to keep: your Google account identifier, name and email address; your synced practice data (japa progress, totals, streak and history, your saved prayers and your puja list); and, if you buy the ad-free option, its type, its end date and the payment reference. This lets your practice follow you across devices and lets the ad-free option work everywhere you are signed in.

Payments on the website are processed by Razorpay and in the app by Google Play; Valkala never receives your card, UPI or bank details. Payment records are kept as long as tax law requires.

You can sign out at any time. You can delete your account on valkala.com/account or in the app’s Settings; this removes your profile and synced practice data from Valkala and deletes your sign-in. What is stored on your own device stays until you clear it. For help, email [email protected].

7. The Valkala Android App

The Valkala app for Android (“Valkala: Aarti, Chalisa & Japa”) works without an account. It does not ask for your contacts, location or any other personal information you type in.

Optional account (app version 1.1 and later). You may sign in with Google in the app’s Settings, with the same Valkala account as on valkala.com. Valkala then stores your Google display name and email, your saved prayers (“My prayers”) and your Valkala Pro status in Google Firebase, so they are the same on the website and your other phones. Sign out at any time; Delete account in the app’s Settings, or on valkala.com/account, removes the synced data and the sign-in; the steps and what is kept are on Delete your Valkala account. Payment records kept for tax law are held separately.

Your saved prayers, their order, your reading position and text-size choices, japa counts, settings, and the record of which days you read, did puja or counted japa (shown as “Your puja journey”) are stored only on your phone. Valkala does not receive them. Uninstalling the app, or clearing its data in Android settings, deletes them.

Usage analytics. The app uses Google Analytics for Firebase to count how it is used: which prayers are opened, the reading view and language chosen, when puja mode is started and finished, and when a japa mala is completed, together with an app-instance identifier, device model, Android version and approximate location derived from your network. These counts help us improve the app and are reported to Valkala only in aggregate. The app also uses Firebase Remote Config, which lets us adjust some app settings, including whether ads appear, without an app update, and to test two versions of a setting with different groups of users.

Advertising. The app shows ads from Google AdMob: a banner below the prayer lists and the reader, one ad card on the Today screen, and a full-screen ad as puja mode opens or when a puja ends, never more than one every few minutes. No ads appear during a stanza, in japa or in Simple mode, or for anyone who has bought the ad-free option. AdMob may use your device’s advertising ID, network address and approximate location, and record which ads were shown or tapped, to serve and measure ads, and, where you allow it, to personalise them. You can reset or delete your advertising ID, or opt out of ads personalisation, in your phone’s Android settings (Google › Ads or Privacy › Ads). Where the law requires consent, such as in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, the app asks for it through a Google-certified consent message before any ad is requested, and an “Ad privacy choices” entry in the app’s Settings lets you change your choice. See how Google uses information from apps that use its services.

Notifications (app version 1.1 and later). The app asks for permission to send notifications only after you choose a daily puja reminder, or switch notifications on in Settings. The daily reminder, a few tips in your first month and a weekly reading summary are made on your phone from your own saved prayers and reading history, which never leave it for this purpose. Festival, vrat and Valkala news notifications are sent through Google Firebase Cloud Messaging, which gives your installation a random token; the app subscribes it to general topics (all readers, festivals, news and your app language), and Valkala sends to those topics, never to a named person. Turn any of these off in the app’s Settings → Reminders or in your phone’s notification settings.

Measuring our own ads on Meta. When Valkala advertises the app on Facebook or Instagram, the app uses the Meta SDK to tell Meta that it was installed and opened, when a puja is completed, when a prayer is opened (its name only) and when the ad-free option is bought through Google Play, together with your device’s advertising ID and basic device information. Meta uses this to measure and improve those ads and to show them to people likely to use the app. Where the law requires consent, the Meta SDK stays off until you agree through the consent message described above. You can limit this through your phone’s advertising ID settings and your Meta ad preferences. See Meta’s privacy policy.

Buying Valkala Pro in the app. Payments in the app go through Google Play, which handles your payment details; Valkala never sees them. The app asks Google Play whether your Google account, or your Google family group where family sharing applies, owns Valkala Pro (no ads and the full puja journey), and remembers the answer on your phone.

About once a day, when the phone is online, the app downloads updated prayer texts and festival dates from valkala.com. These are the same public files for everyone; the request carries no account, advertising identifier or personal data. Like any web request, it reaches Cloudflare, which hosts valkala.com, and its delivery uses your network address under Cloudflare’s own privacy policy.

Links to valkala.com and other websites open in your browser, where this policy’s website sections and the other site’s own policies apply. Google Play may provide Valkala with aggregated install, rating and crash statistics under Google’s privacy policy.

8. Contact

For privacy questions, contact Valkala Editorial at [email protected].