Privacy Policy

Who we are

DroidCrunch is an independent tech publication and YouTube channel, founded in 2016 and run by Lokesh Kapoor from India. In this policy, “DroidCrunch”, “we” and “us” mean the team behind droidcrunch.com.

We decide how and why the personal data described here is used. That makes us its data controller under the EU and UK GDPR, and its data fiduciary under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

Privacy questions and requests go to [email protected]. Putting “Privacy” in the subject line gets your email to the right person faster.

What we collect and why

Here’s everything the site collects, grouped by what you’re doing at the time. The legal basis column matters mostly to readers in the EU and UK, and our GDPR page explains it in more detail.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to see which articles people read, how they arrive and where a page could be clearer. Google Analytics 4 doesn’t log or store IP addresses: it uses your IP briefly to estimate a general location, then discards it. We look at aggregated reports, we don’t try to identify individual readers, and we haven’t linked Analytics to Google’s advertising products.

Google keeps the detailed event data for the retention period set in our Analytics account, which is 14 months at most for accounts like ours. After that, only aggregated reports remain.

We also use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts visits and measures page speed without cookies, and a built-in view counter that shows how often each article is read. To avoid counting one visit twice, the counter briefly keeps a scrambled (hashed) version of your IP address in a temporary cache. It stores only totals.

Prefer not to be counted? Block cookies in your browser or install Google’s Analytics opt-out add-on. Our Cookie Policy lists every analytics cookie by name.

Affiliate links and click tracking

Many reviews link to products through short addresses such as droidcrunch.com/go/tool-name or droidcrunch.com/recommend/tool-name. They’re run by Pretty Links, a plugin on our own server. When you click one, we record:

• your IP address, browser, operating system and device type
• your country, worked out from your IP address
• the page you clicked from and the link you clicked
• a random visitor ID, stored in a cookie, so we can count unique clicks

Then we send you on to the partner’s website. The partner, or an affiliate network working for it such as Impact, PartnerStack or Awin, sets its own cookie so a purchase can be credited to us. From that point, their privacy policy applies.

Partners send us reports of clicks, sign-ups and sales, with the commission due. We don’t receive your name, email address or payment details from them.

We keep click records while they’re useful for measuring which recommendations readers act on and for checking partner reports. If you’d rather not be tracked at all, go to the product’s website directly instead of using our link. Our Affiliate Disclosure explains how these links pay for the site.

Comments

When you comment, we collect what you type into the form (your name, email address and, if you add one, your website), the comment itself, your IP address and your browser’s user agent. Your email address is never shown publicly.

• Moderation. Every comment is held for review before it appears, which also keeps spam off the site.
• Consent. You agree to this policy before commenting, and you can ask us to remove your comment at any time.
• Avatars. A scrambled string made from your email address (a hash) may be sent to Gravatar, a service run by Automattic, to show your profile picture if you have one. See Automattic’s privacy policy.
• Spam protection. The comment form is protected by Google reCAPTCHA.
• Remembering you. If you tick “Save my name, email, and website in this browser”, cookies keep those details on your device for about a year.

Approved comments stay with the article unless you ask us to remove them. Comments we don’t approve go to the trash, where WordPress deletes them permanently after 30 days.

Newsletter

Our newsletter runs on MailerLite, an email service based in the EU. When you sign up through the footer form or a popup, MailerLite stores your name, email address, the date, the page you signed up on and your IP address.

Like most newsletters, our emails record whether they were opened and which links were clicked, using a tiny tracking image and tracked links. It shows us which topics are worth writing about. Turning off automatic image loading in your email app blocks the tracking image.

Every email has an unsubscribe link, and it works immediately. After you unsubscribe, we keep your address marked as unsubscribed so you aren’t emailed again by mistake. If you want it deleted completely, just ask. We never sell or rent our list. MailerLite’s privacy policy explains how it protects subscriber data.

Contact form and email

Messages sent through our contact form include your name, email address, the reason you’re getting in touch, your message and the page you sent it from. The form also records your IP address and browser details, and it’s protected by Google reCAPTCHA.

Submissions are saved in our website’s database and delivered by email to our inbox, which is hosted by Zoho Mail. Emails you send us directly are handled by Zoho Mail too.

We use your details only to reply and follow up. Contacting us doesn’t add you to the newsletter. We keep messages for as long as they’re useful for dealing with your request and any follow-up, and longer only when the law requires us to keep a business record.

Cookies

We use a small number of cookies for security, preferences, analytics and counting affiliate clicks. We don’t run advertising networks, so there are no ad-network cookies on our pages. The Cookie Policy lists every cookie by name, with what it does and how long it lasts.

Who we share data with

We don’t sell personal data, and we don’t share it for targeted advertising. We share it only with the services that help us run DroidCrunch, and each one gets only what it needs:

We may also disclose data if the law requires it, to protect DroidCrunch or our readers from fraud or harm, or if DroidCrunch is ever sold or merged. In that case the new owner would have to keep protecting your data as this policy describes.

International transfers

We run DroidCrunch from India, our server is in the United States, and some of our providers work worldwide. Your personal data will therefore be handled outside the country you live in.

When our providers move data out of the EU or the UK, they rely on recognised legal safeguards, such as the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses or, for US companies certified under it, the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and its UK extension. We only use providers that publish clear security and data protection commitments.

How long we keep data

How we protect your data

• Every page is served over HTTPS, so data travelling between your browser and our site is encrypted.
• Cloudflare and the Wordfence firewall filter out malicious traffic before it reaches the site.
• Team logins are protected by Wordfence login security, and only the people who need admin access have it.
• We keep WordPress, our theme and our plugins up to date.

No website is perfectly secure. If a breach puts your personal data at risk, we’ll tell you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.

Your privacy rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us to:

• tell you what personal data we hold about you and give you a copy
• correct anything that’s inaccurate or incomplete
• delete your data
• stop using it for a particular purpose, such as analytics or click tracking
• stop emailing you, which the unsubscribe link in every newsletter does instantly

In the EU, EEA and UK

You have the full set of GDPR rights, including restriction, portability and the right to complain to your data protection authority. Our GDPR rights page explains each one and how to use it.

In India

Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, as its provisions come into force, you can get a summary of the personal data we process about you and who we’ve shared it with. You can have it corrected, completed, updated or erased, nominate someone to exercise these rights for you if you die or become unable to, and raise a grievance with our Grievance Officer, named below. If we don’t resolve your grievance, you can take it to the Data Protection Board of India.

In the United States

Some US states, including California, give residents the right to know, access, correct and delete personal information, and to opt out of its sale or its sharing for targeted advertising. We don’t sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising, and we’ll honour the other requests wherever you live. Using your rights won’t change how we treat you.

How to make a request

1. Email [email protected] with “Privacy request” in the subject line.
2. Tell us what you’d like us to do and which data it’s about, for example your comments, your newsletter subscription or a message you sent.
3. Write from the email address involved if you can. It’s the simplest way for us to confirm the data is yours, and we’ll only ask for more if we really need it.
4. We’ll reply within 30 days, usually much sooner. Requests are free.

Children’s privacy

DroidCrunch is written for adults. The site isn’t aimed at anyone under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect personal data from children. Indian law treats anyone under 18 as a child, so if you’re under 18, please don’t comment, subscribe or send us personal details without a parent’s or guardian’s permission. If you think a child has shared personal data with us, email us and we’ll delete it.

Links and embedded content

Our articles link to software companies, documentation and other websites, and many embed YouTube videos. A video player loads only when you press play. Before that, you see a thumbnail image served from YouTube’s servers. Once embedded content loads, it behaves exactly as if you’d visited the other website, and that site’s privacy policy applies. We’re not responsible for how other websites handle your data.

Changes to this policy

We update this policy when the site changes, for example when we add or remove a service, and the date at the top always shows the latest version. If a change significantly affects how we use your data, we’ll post a notice on the site and email newsletter subscribers it affects. Earlier versions are available on request.