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**Privacy Policy for civisence Platform**

**Last Updated:** March 11, 2026

**1. Introduction**
This Privacy Policy explains how the civisence ("we," "our," or "us") collects, uses, discloses, and safeguards your information when you use our mobile application and web dashboard. We are committed to protecting your personal data while providing a transparent, efficient, and community-driven campus issue reporting system.

**2. Information We Collect**
To provide and improve our services, we collect the following types of information:

*   **Account and Registration Data:** When you register, we collect your college domain email, full name, and password. To build your profile, we may also collect your registration number, date of birth, gender, phone number, and a 6-digit pincode.
*   **Academic and Residential Information:** We collect data regarding your campus life, including your department, course, year, semester, and designation. If you are a hosteler, we collect your hostel name and room number.
*   **User-Generated Content:** This includes the civic issues you report (titles, descriptions, location addresses, building names, and wards), comments, upvotes/downvotes, and poll responses.
*   **Media and Files:** We collect images and videos you upload for profile avatars or issue reporting (including resolution photos uploaded by staff). These files are securely managed and subject to a 50MB per-user storage quota.
*   **Technical and Session Data:** We track your active sessions (including devices, browsers, and locations) for security monitoring and account management. 

**3. How We Use Your Information**
We use the information we collect for the following purposes:
*   **Service Delivery:** To facilitate the reporting, tracking, and resolution of campus infrastructure issues.
*   **Authentication & Security:** To secure your account using Two-Step Email OTP verification, JWT (JSON Web Tokens) authentication, and Bcrypt password hashing.
*   **Community Trust & Moderation:** To power our Peer Verification System, calculate your reputation points, and operate our leaderboard of top contributors.
*   **Communication:** To send you system notifications, status updates on your reported issues, and administrative alerts via in-app channels, WebSockets, or email.

**4. Information Sharing and Visibility**
Because civisence is a community-driven platform, certain information is shared with other users and administrators:
*   **Publicly Visible Data:** To foster transparency, a limited "Public Profile" is visible to other verified users. This includes your name, avatar, verification status, reputation points, and basic academic info (department, course, year). Sensitive contact details are strictly hidden.
*   **Administrative Access:** Campus administrators, staff, and system developers have access to detailed user profiles and activity statistics to assign tasks, resolve issues, and moderate platform safety.
*   **No Third-Party Selling:** We do not sell your personal data to third-party marketers or advertisers. 

**5. Data Storage, Security, and Cloud Infrastructure**
We implement robust, industry-standard security measures to protect your data:
*   Your data is stored securely on modern serverless infrastructure.
*   Media files (avatars and issue images) are processed and hosted securely via Cloudinary.
*   Connections are secured via SSL, and all sensitive inputs are validated and sanitized to prevent injection attacks.

**6. User Rights and Account Deletion**
You maintain control over your personal data:
*   **Profile Management:** You can review and update your personal, academic, and hostel information at any time through the application settings.
*   **Session Management:** You may remotely revoke specific active sessions or log out of all devices if you suspect unauthorized access.
*   **Account Deletion:** You have the right to permanently delete your account. **Note on Data Preservation:** If you choose to delete your account, your personal profile data will be erased. However, to maintain the historical integrity of campus maintenance records, your previously submitted issues, comments, and votes will be preserved but permanently anonymized (attributed to a "deleted user").

**7. Changes to this Privacy Policy**
We may update this Privacy Policy periodically to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. We will notify you of any material changes via platform notifications or email. 

**8. Contact Us**
If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or your data, please contact our administrative team at:
**Email:** civisence@zohomail.in

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