Privacy & Security Policy

1What we collect

When you book with us we collect your name, email address, phone/WhatsApp number and delivery address; the birth details needed for your sankalpa and calculations (date, time and place of birth — yours and of family members you add, up to four); for Nadi readings, your thumb impression; the questions you submit for a consultation; and your order history. Payments are processed by PCI-DSS-compliant gateways — we never see or store your card number, CVV or banking passwords. Like every website we also receive technical data: IP address, browser and device type, and the pages you visit.

2How we use it

Your information is used to perform what you booked and for nothing more surprising than that: casting your chart and calculating your muhurta, speaking your sankalpa at the ritual, preparing your consultation report, locating your Nadi leaf, delivering your prasadam and yantra, sending your telecast links and download notices, and answering your support messages. With your consent we may send occasional updates — you can opt out at any time, and opting out never affects your orders.

3Birth details & thumb impressions

We treat these with special care. Birth details are used solely for your charts, muhurtas, sankalpas and reports, and are visible only to the astrologers and staff who need them for your order. Thumb impressions are used solely to locate your Nadi leaf bundles; they are access-restricted to the Nadi team, are never included in any data export, and are never used for any other purpose. Edits to birth details on an active order are logged, and may require your muhurta to be re-confirmed for your own protection.

4What we share — and never share

We share the minimum necessary with trusted providers under confidentiality agreements: payment gateways (to process your payment), our courier partners (name, address and phone — to deliver your parcel), our email/WhatsApp service (to reach you), Google Analytics (to understand, in aggregate, how the site is used), and Google’s and Meta’s advertising measurement (to learn which of our adverts lead to bookings — see Cookies). We never sell or rent your personal data. Your name, email, phone number, birth details and thumb impression are never sent to Google or Meta for advertising. We disclose data only if required by a court order or government authority under Indian law.

5How we protect it

All traffic to AstroBhava.com is encrypted with TLS 1.2/1.3 — the same technology banks use; you'll see the padlock in your browser. Data is stored on secure, firewalled servers with 256-bit encryption, access controls on a need-to-know basis, and regular audits and vulnerability testing. Payment card data is handled entirely by PCI-DSS-compliant processors. If a breach ever affects your data, we will notify you within 72 hours, as the DPDP Act 2023 requires, alongside immediate containment. One ask of you: keep your sign-in confidential — we will never request your password by email, WhatsApp or phone.

6Cookies

We use a few cookies of our own to make the site work: your sign-in and a security token, your cart and your currency, and the town that the panchang line at the top of every page, the Panchang page and our opening hours are shown for — ab_loc when you choose the town yourself (kept 180 days) and ab_geo when we have estimated it (kept one hour, and never for visitors in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom). ab_tz is set only on a phone or computer whose clock is on Indian time, and notes just that, so we never show it a town outside India, or prices in another country’s currency, that we estimated from its internet address (kept 180 days). ab_cc is set only when you press “Use my location”, and notes the country of the town it found, so prices show in that country’s currency (kept 180 days, as long as the town). ab_cal notes that Google sign-in has already offered you your AstroBhava calendar on this phone or computer, so that it is offered only once (kept 400 days). The cart and sign-in do not work without them.

Before you tell us otherwise, we estimate your approximate town from your IP address, so the panchang line at the top of every page (today’s date, tithi, nakshatra and place), the Panchang page, sunrise and our opening hours are shown for where you are, and your country, so prices show in your own currency — unless your phone or computer tells us better: the town “Use my location” finds, and a clock on Indian time, come before the address for both. The lookup happens on our own servers against an offline database — your IP address is never sent to a third party for this, and we do not store it against your account. You can change the town at any time with “Use my location” in the panchang line at the top of every page, or on the Panchang page, and the currency with the currency selector. On your first visit we ask your browser for your position once — your browser shows its own request, and you may say no — and after that only when you press “Use my location”, in that line, or “Use my location instead” on the Panchang page. The position is used once to find the nearest town, and its country for prices, and is not kept. That we have asked is noted in your browser’s own storage (ab-loc-asked), so on that phone or computer it is asked only once, and it is not asked at all while you have a town kept.

We also use Google Analytics, which sets its own cookies (_ga and _ga_…) so we can see, in aggregate, how the site is used. Because we advertise on Google and on Facebook and Instagram, we also use Google’s advertising cookies (_gcl_…) and the Meta Pixel (_fbp, _fbc): they tell Google and Meta which pages of our site were visited and when a booking was made, with its value and the rite booked, so we can see which adverts work and show our adverts to people likely to be interested. They never receive your name, email, phone number or birth details from us. If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, all of these stay off unless you accept them, and anyone can change their choice at any time.

Like every website, our servers keep standard access logs — IP address, time and the page requested — to keep the site secure. They are kept for 180 days, as India’s cybersecurity rules require, and then deleted.

7Retention & your rights

We keep personal data only as long as needed for your orders and our legal obligations, then delete or anonymise it. Under the DPDP Act you may access, correct or delete your personal data, withdraw consent, opt out of marketing, and lodge a grievance with the Data Protection Board of India. Write to support@astrobhava.com and we will act on your request; most account details you can edit yourself in your dashboard.

8Children

Our services are for adults. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18; where a ritual's sankalpa includes a child's birth details, they are provided by the adult booking the ritual and used only for that sankalpa. Any account data found to belong to a minor is deleted.

9WhatsApp messages

Where you give us your mobile number and consent, Vedhon Management Consultants (OPC) Private Limited may contact you on WhatsApp about the things you booked: booking confirmations, ritual dates and reminders, delivery of reports and parcels, account authentication and membership status. Your consent is recorded with a timestamp, and you may withdraw it at any time by replying STOP to any message or by writing to support@astrobhava.com. Withdrawing consent stops the messages; it never affects an order you have already placed, and we will still reach you by email about anything you have paid for. Messages are delivered through the WhatsApp Business Platform operated by Meta, whose handling of message data is governed by its own terms.

10Google & Apple sign-in, and your calendar

Signing in. When you sign in with Google or Apple we receive your name and email address (and, from Google, the link to your profile picture): never your password, your contacts or the events in your own calendars. Google’s sign-in screen may also show one box to tick, for your AstroBhava calendar (below). We offer it once on each phone or computer, and if you leave it unticked we receive nothing more. Apple may give us a private relay address in place of your own; our letters reach you through it just the same.

Your calendar, only if you ask. You can keep your Homa dates, sittings and reminders in your own calendar, by ticking that box when you sign in with Google, or from your account at any time:

• Google Calendar. We ask Google for one permission: to create a calendar called AstroBhava in your Google Calendar, and to add, change and remove events on that calendar only. Google does not let us see your other calendars or events, and we do not ask to. We keep the permission’s token encrypted, so that your AstroBhava calendar can follow a date or time that changes. You can turn it off in your account at any time — we then take the AstroBhava calendar out and withdraw the permission — or withdraw it yourself at myaccount.google.com/permissions.
• Apple Calendar, Outlook and others. You can subscribe to a private link that lists the same dates. Anyone who has the link can read those dates, so keep it to yourself; resetting it in your account stops the old link at once.

The entries carry the name of the rite or sitting, its time, and the links to join or watch it — never your birth details, your questions or your family’s names. AstroBhava’s use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We use the Google permission only to keep your AstroBhava calendar up to date: never for advertising, never sold or shared, and we cannot read your own calendar.

11Jurisdiction & changes

This policy is governed by Indian law, with exclusive jurisdiction in the courts of Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. When we update it, the date above changes and material updates are announced on this page.