Privacy notice
Hostel Connect lets hostel students call their families from a secure kiosk. A service fee per minute of use is paid from a prepaid Hostel Connect wallet. This notice explains what personal data we use, why, and the rights you have under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.
Who is responsible, and whom to contact
- Data Fiduciary
- To be published before launch
- Contact person for personal data
- To be published before launch
- To be published before launch
- Phone
- To be published before launch
- Address
- To be published before launch
- Notice version
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What we collect, and why
- Parents and family members: name, mobile number, relationship to the student and preferred language — to let the student call you, to sign you in with a one-time code, and to send call and recharge messages.
- Students (with a parent's consent, recorded at admission): name, student ID, hostel, a PIN stored only as a one-way hash — to let the student sign in at the kiosk and call approved family members.
- Calls: who called whom, when, how long, and the charge — to bill the prepaid balance correctly and show you your call history. Voice calls go over the normal phone network. Video calls are encrypted in transit. No call is ever recorded.
- Money: wallet recharges, service fees and refunds — to keep accurate accounts, as the law requires.
- App installs: a notification token for your phone — to ring the app for a video call. Kiosk tablets: signed technical records of each call — so a call is billed only for the time it really lasted.
What we never do
- No advertising, no profiling, and no tracking or behavioural monitoring of children.
- We do not sell or rent personal data, and we do not record calls.
Who processes data for us
Service providers that act only on our instructions, under contract: cloud hosting, the video-calling relay, the SMS provider and Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (notifications). Recharges are paid in cash at the hostel desk; no payment gateway is used. Their names are listed below once contracted.
How long we keep it
- While the student uses the service. When the student leaves and the balance is refunded, names and phone numbers are erased.
- Sign-in, call and access logs: at least one year, as the DPDP Rules require for security, then deleted.
- Money records (amounts and dates, without names): as long as tax and accounting law requires.
Your rights
- Access: download everything we hold about you from the app (Account → Download my data).
- Correction and update: ask us to correct or complete your or your child's data.
- Erasure and withdrawing consent: delete your account, or withdraw consent for your child, in the app or on the account deletion page. Withdrawing consent stops calling; it does not undo what happened before.
- Nomination: name someone to use these rights for you if you cannot.
- Grievances: tell us if something is wrong. We answer every request within the time shown below. If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Data Protection Board of India.
Children
Students' data is used only with the verifiable consent of a parent or lawful guardian, recorded at admission. The main parent can see and control the child's data and withdraw consent at any time.
Security
Encrypted connections everywhere, phone numbers encrypted at rest, PINs stored as one-way hashes, tamper-evident money records, every staff action logged, and kiosks that only run our genuine, locked app. If a breach ever affects your data, we will tell you and the Data Protection Board without delay.
Make a privacy request in the app: Account → Privacy requests. We answer within 30 days.
Data Protection Board of India