Privacy & Ethics

Sushaasan only processes content that is already publicly visible on the open internet — posts on Instagram, Reddit, X (Twitter), Google Maps reviews, Telegram public channels, and local news. If a post requires a login to view, we do not access it. We respect robots.txt on every platform we ingest from.

We never store raw usernames. Every author identifier is replaced with a SHA-256 hash of the username combined with a monthly-rotating salt before the record reaches our database. The original username cannot be recovered from the hash. The monthly salt means even the hash cannot be correlated across months.

We do not sell, license, or share individual post data or author hashes with any third party. The aggregated civic intelligence (ward-level issue summaries, solution briefs) is shared with PMC ward offices and published publicly on this dashboard — that is the entire purpose of the platform. No advertising. No data brokering. Ever.

The "Add Report" page includes an optional voice-to-text feature. If you choose to use it, your browser will ask for microphone permission — this is a standard browser permission prompt, and you can decline it to type your report instead. Audio is sent only to our transcription endpoint to convert speech to text; it is not stored, logged, or used for any other purpose. If you deny microphone access or skip the feature entirely, the platform works identically via text input.

We infer ward-level location from the text of public posts (e.g., "NIBM Road junction" → Ward 46). We do not access device GPS or precise location. If you use the "Find my ward" feature on the map, your device coordinates are processed client-side only to pan the map — they are not sent to our servers or logged.

Raw scraped text is retained for 90 days, then deleted. Only the anonymised, PII-stripped classified posts and ward-level summaries are kept beyond that. AI-generated solution briefs are retained for 12 months for accountability and historical comparison. If you believe a post about you was collected in error, contact us and we will purge it within 7 days.

Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, you may ask us for access to, correction of, or erasure of any personal data relating to you that we hold, and you may withdraw consent at any time. As Sushaasan only stores anonymised, PII-stripped data by design, in most cases there is no personal data to act on — but if a report or post about you was collected, email us and we will correct or delete it within 7 days. We process civic data on the lawful basis of legitimate public interest and your consent when you submit a report; we collect the minimum necessary and use it only for the civic purpose described here.

Sushaasan is an independent civic-technology platform. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the Pune Municipal Corporation or any government authority. Submitting a report here is not a formal government complaint. See our Terms of Use for the full position.

For data-access, correction, or erasure requests, takedown requests, or any privacy concern, email our Grievance Officer (Harsh Sonavane) at grievance@sushaasan.in, or privacy@sushaasan.in. We acknowledge within 24 hours and resolve within 15 days, as required under the IT Rules, 2021 and the DPDP Act, 2023.