Privacy policy

What we hold

• Your email address, to sign you in. It is never shown to anyone you talk to.
• Your mobile number, collected when you set up, so we can reach you about your account

and anything to do with money. It is never shown to anyone you talk to.

• Your password, if you set one, stored hashed, never in a form anyone here can read.
• Your Google account id and name, only if you choose to sign in with Google. We ask

Google for your email address and name, and nothing else. We cannot read your Gmail, your contacts, your files or anything else in your Google account.

• Your display name and photo, which other people see.
• Your conversations, messages, and the time and cost of calls.
• Payment records, including what you paid and when. Card and UPI details are handled by

our payment provider and never reach our servers.

• Technical data, device, approximate location from your IP, and logs.

Calls: what happens to the audio

We do not record calls, and we do not store call audio. Audio passes through our server to reach the other person and is not written to disk.

While a call is running, it is transcribed automatically by software so that shared contact details can be detected, this is described fully in the Safety policy. That transcript is held for about thirty seconds and then deleted. Nothing is kept unless the software finds something that breaks the rules, in which case a short excerpt is retained for a person to review, and you are told.

No human listens to your calls.

Messages

Messages are stored so that you and the person you were talking to can read them again. They are screened automatically before delivery; where a contact detail is found, the original is kept in a moderation log for review.

Who sees what

• The person you talk to sees your display name, photo and what you say. Never your

number, email, or payment details.

• Our team can see account details, payment records, reports and moderation logs, when

there is a reason to.

• Meta, to measure our ads, see Cookies and ads below.
• Nobody else. We do not sell your data.

Outside AFTER, data goes only to our payment provider, to take a payment; to Meta, as described below; and to the authorities, where the law requires it.

Cookies and ads

We advertise on Facebook and Instagram, and we use the Meta pixel to see whether those ads work. It runs on our public pages only: the home page, Become a Listener, About, How it works, Safety, Contact, the blog's front page, and these policies. On those pages it tells Meta that a browser visited them. Meta also receives what any website you open receives, your IP address and the kind of browser and device you use, and sets a cookie of its own.

If you apply to be a Listener after one of our ads, it also tells Meta when you started the application, when you signed up, when you finished your details (with the gender you chose), and when you sent it, so we can tell which ads bring applicants. It does not send your name, email, phone number, date of birth, or anything you wrote or recorded.

Inside the app it is told three things, and nothing more: that a new account was made, that a conversation with a Listener began (and whether it was chat, voice or video), and that money was added to a wallet (and how much). It is told these only once you are on a page whose address says nothing about you. It never learns who you talked to, what was said, which room you were in, your payment details, or anything about signing in, and it never learns which blog article you read.

Meta uses this under its own privacy policy. You can stop it by blocking cookies or trackers in your browser, AFTER works the same without it, and you can control the ads you are shown in your Facebook or Instagram ad settings.

When a link to us carries campaign tags, we also keep which campaign it was with a Listener application, so we know which ads bring Listeners. That stays with us.

How long we keep it

Conversations and payment records are kept while your account is open, and after it closes for as long as tax and accounting law requires. Call transcripts are deleted within about thirty seconds. Moderation records of a rule broken are kept longer, because they are the basis of a decision about an account.

Your choices

You can ask for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete your account. Deleting an account does not delete the payment records the law requires us to keep.

Email privacy@theafterhoursapp.com. That address works whether or not you can sign in, which matters most for the request people make when they have already left: delete my account. If you are signed in, You → Support is faster, because it carries your account with it.

Complaints can also be sent to our grievance officer at the same address, under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. We acknowledge within 24 hours and resolve within 15 days.

Signing in with Google

If you choose Google, we ask Google only for your email address, name and account id, and we use them for one thing: to sign you in and to recognise you next time.

AFTER's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We do not transfer that information to anyone, we do not use it for advertising, and no human at AFTER reads it. We cannot see your Gmail, your contacts, your calendar, your files, or anything else in your Google account, because we never ask Google for access to them.

You can disconnect AFTER at any time from your Google account permissions. Your AFTER account stays; sign in with a code sent to your email instead.