Privacy Policy

Who we are

iamsuratcity is operated by Eagle Wing Agency, Surat, Gujarat, India ("we", "us"). Questions about this policy: WhatsApp +91 83200 62415 or email iamsuratcity@gmail.com.

What we collect, and why

• Submission forms (deals, foodie spots, events, vacancies): your name, WhatsApp number and optional email, used only to verify and follow up on your submission.
• News tips: identifying yourself is optional. If you share contact details with a tip, only the news team sees them, they're used solely to verify the story, and they are never published or shared.
• Daily Brief & newsletter: phone/email, used to deliver the brief you subscribed to.
• Insider Pass & bookings: name, phone, payment reference (UPI UTR), used to activate and manage your membership or booking.
• Technical data: standard server logs (IP, user-agent) for security and rate-limiting.

City Issues

• What a report contains: when you report a non-emergency civic issue, we collect the category, your description, the area you select, your consent record, and the signed-in account that sent it. You may attach one photo and one video. City Issues does not request GPS or precise location; the area is selected manually from the city's area list.
• Review and publication: the team can see the report and its private media while reviewing it. If the report is published, everyone can see its category, description, area, cleaned photo and any video the team approves. Your account identifier, name, phone number and email are not included in the public report.
• Photos and videos: uploaded media is kept in private storage for review. Before a photo is displayed publicly, its metadata is removed. Videos are checked and cleaned of location metadata; a video is copied to public storage only after the team approves it. A removed video's clean private copy may be retained so the team can restore a moderation decision.
• Comments: comments on a published issue are public with the commenter's display name and are associated with their account for moderation. Phone numbers and email addresses from the account are not displayed with a comment. Content reports, blocks and moderation records are used to handle abuse.
• Retention: withdrawn and unpublished reports are deleted after 30 days. Published and resolved reports are kept for 12 months. Deleting your account deletes your City Issues reports and their stored photos and videos. Related event, comment and abuse-report records are removed when the report is deleted.

What we never do

• We do not sell your personal data.
• We do not share subscriber or tipster details with advertisers or any third party, except services we use to run the site (hosting, database, WhatsApp delivery) under their own safeguards.
• We do not run third-party ad trackers on this site.

Your rights

Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 you can ask us to show, correct or delete the personal data we hold about you, and withdraw consent (e.g. unsubscribe from the Daily Brief: reply STOP on WhatsApp or message us). We action requests within 30 days.

Retention & security

Data lives in access-controlled databases (Supabase) with row-level security; payment screenshots/UTRs are kept only as long as needed for accounting. We keep subscription contacts while your subscription is active and delete them on request.

The iamcity app

The iamcity iOS and Android app is covered by this policy. In addition to the above:

• Camera, photos and microphone: requested only at the moment you attach a picture or video to something you are posting (including a listing, a Connect post or a City Issues report). We never access them in the background, and the app works without granting them.
• Your phone number as your identity: bazaar chat, the job profile and Spin and Win are keyed to your number so you can return to your own conversations and listings. Contact details are never shown publicly unless you choose to publish them.
• On-device profile: your name, number, area and email are remembered on the phone itself to prefill forms. This never leaves the device on its own.
• Instagram giveaways: if you choose to link your Instagram handle to your iamcity account, we store the handle with your account so we can check your giveaway entries. We only read public comments on @iamsuratcity posts: the commenter's handle, the comment text and the accounts it tags. We never see your likes, shares, messages or password. Your phone number is never shown with your handle outside our own team dashboard, and winners are shown only as a masked handle. You can unlink at any time from the Giveaways screen in the app, and the link goes with your account if you delete it.
• Connect Instagram (Hire talent): if you choose to connect your Instagram Business or Creator account to your talent profile, Instagram shares your username, profile photo, follower and post counts and your recent posts with us, so you do not have to type them. We keep them with your talent profile and show the username, follower count and the posts you tick. We never see your messages or password. Disconnect at any time from the profile screen to delete the connection and everything imported; deleting your account removes it too.
• Notifications: if you allow them, we store a push token so we can send you city news. Turn them off any time in iOS or Android settings; deleting your account removes the token. Alongside the token we keep your device's city and area, app version, language and install date, and use them only to decide which notifications reach you (for example, Mumbai news goes to devices in Mumbai). If you are signed in, the join date, gender and date of birth you gave in your profile can also be used to choose who gets a notification. We never send these to anyone else. We also count when a notification is tapped, so we can tell which ones are useful.
• App usage: to learn which parts of the app help people and which to improve, the app sends our own server a record of how it is used. That is a random install id the app makes for itself (not your phone's hardware id and not an advertising id), each time the app is opened and how long a visit lasts, which screens you open and how long you stay on each, taps on named buttons (for example the News tab or “Sell something”, and the id of the story or listing opened), which kind of search was run and how many results it found, and when a notification or link opened the app. With it go the app version, your device model, operating system and version, language, timezone and screen size, and the city you picked in the app. When you are signed in, this is linked to your account. We never collect what you type, the words you search for, your messages or your contacts, we do not use GPS for this, and there is no third-party analytics or advertising SDK: it goes only to our servers and database provider, is seen only by our admin team, and is never sold or shared. Raw usage records are kept for about 13 months and then deleted; running totals (such as how many screens an install has opened) are kept without them. If you delete your account, these records are de-linked from you and stay only as anonymous counts.
• Moderation: when you report or block content, we receive the report (what was reported, the reason, and any details you add) so our team can act on it. Reports of objectionable content are acted on within 24 hours; safety, threats and minors come first.
• Service providers and external links: the app uses our servers and our database provider (Supabase). It contains no advertising SDK and no third-party analytics SDK; the only usage analytics are our own, described above under App usage. Links to maps and other external services are handled by those providers under their own policies.

Deleting your account: open Profile in the app and tap Delete my account. That removes or de-links account data, posts, submissions, bazaar chats, job profile and Spin and Win entries from our servers and clears the phone. See the account deletion page for the full list and for how to ask us to do it if you have lost access to your number.

Grievance officer

Aakash Mashruwala · iamsuratcity@gmail.com / WhatsApp +91 83200 62415. We acknowledge complaints within 48 hours and resolve within 30 days.